Checking your site thoroughly is a must-do to boost its overall health. You may haven’t audited your area yet or plan to redesign it soon. No matter where you are, this guide is your checklist for a website audit.
What’s a website audit, anyway? A website audit looks closely at page performance before you dive deep into SEO enhancements or a site redesign.
It helps you determine if your site is set up to grab the traffic you want and shows you ways to improve it.
What Is SEO Website Audit?
Think of a website technical audit for SEO as a deep dive into your website’s world to see if it’s SEO-friendly. Unlike just peeking at who links to your site, this website technical audit checks all the nuts and bolts that affect how well your site ranks on search engines.
Here’s the scoop:
- Keywords: Are you using the right words that people type into search engines? An audit checks if you’ve got these magic words that help people find you.
- Content Quality: Is your website content good? Does it answer visitors’ questions and keep them reading?
- Metadata: This is the behind-the-scenes info like titles and descriptions that search engines read to determine what your pages are about.
- Page Speeds: People like a fast website. An audit shows if your pages are zipping or crawling like a tortoise.
The Benefits of a Website Audit
1. You can compare your website to your competitors
Conducting a website audit will allow you to compare your website to your competitors. You can analyze how well you’re ranking against competitors for keywords and determine potential new sources of revenue.
You can use tools like HubSpot’s Website Grader to audit your competitor’s websites to gather more insights. You can learn how your competitors attract visitors and see how they generate conversions. Ultimately, this will help you brainstorm new tactics and strategies for your site.
2. You can improve your SEO
With a website audit, you will be able to identify any missed SEO opportunities and remedy any misguided or poorly executed SEO pitfalls (e.g., keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text links, etc.) throughout the content of your website.
One great tool that can help keep your SEO details organized is HubSpot’s Free On-Page SEO Template. An audit will also allow you to refocus your SEO efforts on users first and search engines second.
This will protect you from constantly chasing changes to search ranking algorithms, meaning you won’t be applying misguided practices to show up at the top of the SERPs.
3. You can optimize conversion rates
Website audits also enable you to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your website in terms of lead generation and conversion.
As a result, you’ll be able to spot any previously overlooked opportunities to convert visitors into leads so you can add relevant CTAs and identify deficiencies in your landing pages to optimize them to boost conversions.
4. You can optimize your website performance
As mentioned above, website audits usually evaluate a site for its content and technical performance. As a result, an audit will allow you to inspect the robustness of your website’s technical framework and infrastructure.
It will also evaluate how friendly your website is to search engines and determine how easy it is for users to navigate it to find the content they are looking for.
5. You can identify issues early
Finally, a website audit finds problems hurting your SEO and conversions, such as broken links, hidden content, and long page load speed times. Identifying these issues will help you address problems that are diverting traffic.
Assessing your website’s content and technical aspects will open up opportunities to drastically improve the traffic and conversions your website generates.
Now that you know what a website audit is and why you should do one, let’s look at how to conduct one.
How to Do a Website Audit to Improve SEO
Improving your site’s SEO starts with a good website audit and the right website audit checklist. This is like a checkup for your site to figure out what’s rocking and what’s not. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to audit your website to improve your SEO game.
Step 1: Start with a crawl
First things first, you want to crawl your website. Use a tool like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, SEMrush or Ahrefs to simulate how a search engine would crawl your site. This will help you spot errors like broken links, missing page titles, or pages that need to be indexed. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to audit your website to improve your SEO game.
Step 2: Analyze your on-page SEO
Get up close and personal with your website’s content and structure. This includes:
- Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Check if they’re there, if they’re the right length, and if they’re catchy enough to get clicks.
- Headings: Make sure your H1s, H2s, and so on are in order, and include your main keywords.
- Content Quality: Do you have original content that is useful and relevant to your audience? It should be valuable and include a healthy mix of your target keywords.
- Images: Check that all images have alt text that describes them. Search engines can’t see images like we do.
Step 3: Dig into your keywords
This is the heart of SEO. What keywords are you going for? Are people searching for these? Use keyword research tools to see what’s hot and what’s not. Make sure each page focuses on a primary keyword and relevant secondary keywords.
Step 4: Get technical
Even the best content needs a solid technical foundation. Technical SEO bits include:
- Mobile Responsiveness: Your site should look good on all devices – phones, tablets, and desktops.
- Page Load Speed: Check your site speed. Slow websites can be a turn-off both for visitors and search engines.
- Internal Linking: Ensure your pages are connected with internal links. This helps search engines and users navigate your content.
Step 5: Assess user experience
A great user experience keeps visitors happy and engaged. Review:
- Navigation: Can visitors easily find what they’re looking for?
- Design: Is your website clean and modern, or does it look like a relic from the early days of the Internet?
Step 6: Review your off-page SEO
When addressing off-page SEO, it’s crucial to evaluate your online reputation in conjunction with a thorough SEO technical audit. Evaluate your backlink profile by checking who’s linking to you. You want quality links from reputable sites, not spammy ones.
Step 7: Peek at your competitors
See what the competition is up to. Use your website audit tool to scope out the competition so you can see where you stand and uncover strategic advantages. You might learn something about what to do (or what not to do) with your own site.
Step 8: Practice local SEO (if applicable)
If you have a local business, make sure you’re listed correctly on maps and local directories. Your address and phone number should be the same everywhere they appear.
Step 9: Embrace social media
Social signals don’t directly impact your SEO but help get the word out about your content. Check your social media presence and ensure it’s consistent with your brand.
Step 10: Report and Plan
Put all your findings into a report, prioritize issues based on their severity, and create a plan of attack. Decide what you can fix quickly, what might take more time, and what you need professional help with.
Final Step: Implement changes and monitor
Take action on your plan. Fix the quick wins, tackle the big issues, and keep an eye on your site’s performance. Remember, SEO isn’t a one-off endeavor. It’s an ongoing battle.
Doing a thorough website audit and following these steps will give you a clear roadmap for boosting your site’s SEO performance. Get ready to roll up your sleeves and dive in—the higher rankings are worth the effort!
Final thoughts
Check your website like you would check your health—both are important but easy to skip. Use this time to tackle minor problems, like fixing broken links or bland page titles that don’t help you. Imagine a website audit as a game where you’re looking for hidden treasure, and that treasure is better SEO—the thing that helps people find you online. Look closely at everything, from the words on your site to how it feels to visit. You want your website to be welcoming, just like an excellent shop window.
