Because of Google’s immense power and increasingly severe rules for the websites it ranks, there are more ways than ever for a website to go off the rails. Following all of the rules is becoming increasingly difficult, but the rewards are increasing as well. A website audit is a way to go if you want to be sure you’re getting the most out of your website’s commercial benefits.
What Is A Website Audit?
A website audit is a thorough examination of your website that will help you identify all of the elements that are obstructing or assisting your site’s search engine visibility. Site audits necessitate a number of tests in order to provide detailed findings that you can examine and use to learn more about the problems with your website. A good website audit considers all of the aspects that can influence the success of your website, including your own, your customers, and Google’s perspectives. Examining the performance of a page before making major changes, such as a complete website redesign or the start of a new search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, is part of a comprehensive website audit. Essentially, a website audit identifies if your site is optimized in a way that helps you reach traffic-related goals, as well as what areas you can enhance to improve performance and meet those goals. The problem is simple: a website audit has a lot of moving elements.
In fact, at each phase, there are a variety of technologies and ways to choose from. As a result, each “step-by-step website audit guide” will be unique. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a proper technique to audit your website. In actuality, a website audit is divided into five sections. While a large team may be able to work on all five at the same time, we’ve found that doing so in the sequence stated can help you maximize the insights each stage gives while also reducing redundant work.
The Best Website Auditing Software
- HubSpot Website Qualifier
The HubSpot Website Sorter is a free application that anyone with a website and an email address may use. This tool does an automated assessment of your website based on a number of factors, including website traffic/performance, SEO metrics, mobile accessibility, and security (like SSL provisioning). The best thing about this tool is how simple it is to use. All you have to do is provide the Website Grader with the URL of your company’s website and your email address, then wait for it to analyze your website and provide you with a number between 0 and 100 indicating the site’s performance. It also explains why your website received a particular score. This is an excellent way to figure out what your website’s strengths are and what needs to be improved. You should aim for a website with a high ranking (above 70). Of course, not every website receives such high ratings right away. You know you need to improve a few things if your website score is less than 50.
- Hotjar
Hotjar allows customers to include a tracking code on their website in order to monitor how visitors interact with it. You can also create a video of a comprehensive recording of a user’s interaction with your website. Businesses use this software to see if their website has any confusing user interface (UI) features that could frustrate users, to improve website conversion routes, and to undertake some site design focus testing. Users of Hotjar, in particular, request the service and place a special tracking code on their website, allowing HotJar to begin collecting data. You can log in to Hotjar and examine the data they present after a significant number of users have been through the site. The heat map, which utilizes a colour filter similar to an infrared camera image to show you where people are clicking, is the most often utilized feature. Points With a few clicks are a drab blue tint, while points with a lot of clicks are a bright red colour.
- Google Search Console
Many of these lists appear to be created using Google technologies. They are, however, tools from the most popular search engine provider, so keeping them off these lists would be unusual. In essence, Google Search Console assists users in three main tasks: analyzing Google search clicks, locating critical website flaws and problems, and determining whether the Google search engine can interpret your content. These are all significant concerns for anyone trying to boost their website’s performance and return on investment. You may analyze how your website ranks on Google’s search engine results pages, for example, using the website report (SERPs). Knowing if you have major crawl issues will help you locate and fix them so that they don’t harm your website’s SERP rating. Finally, it’s critical to determine whether Google can see your pages in the first place. This service should not be confused with Google Analytics, which takes a different approach to traffic analysis that focuses more on external data than data on the site itself.
- Ahrefs
In 2018, the Ahrefs site audit tool was released. It includes a number of interesting features that have been introduced each year since then. They feature a site structure report that may show you your site’s subdomains and subfolders, as well as predicted organic traffic, HTTP status code distribution, and other structural elements. You can also use Ahrefs to create segments to isolate problems in certain areas of a website. If you don’t want to undertake a full site audit, this is a good option. The ability to “display changes” is another useful feature of this auditing tool. This allows you to compare your current crawl to past crawls to see what has changed. You may just perform a new crawl to determine if a team member has updated the meta descriptions, for example. They also go into great depth about the issue, including how to fix that component of their website. You will save time and effort if you do it this way rather than trying to figure it out on your own.
- SEMrush
SEMrush Site Audit comes with a huge collection of automatic reports that let you prioritize tasks, rate performance, track progress and compare traces. It also lets you see your internal broken link concerns and gives you security certificates to ensure your security protocols are up to date. SEMrush has the advantage of providing you with a Site Health Score that includes the density of problems discovered on your site, allowing you to gain detailed information about your site’s health. The higher your site’s score, the more healthy it is. Another noteworthy feature of SEMrush is its on-page problems feature, which finds bothersome duplicates, poor titles, and headlines in your material that may impact your SEO. SEMrush Site Audit provides full site functionality as well as 100 free page crawls! There is a slew of additional excellent website auditing tools worth investigating. You’re ready to undertake a full audit once you’ve found the tools that best meet your needs and budget.
How to Audit a Website in 5 Easy Steps
1. Assess the technical components of your site’s functionality.
A technical audit is an initial stage in any website audit since it tells you how well or poorly the underlying technology is operating. This has an impact on all other areas of the site and how visitors interact with it, thus it takes precedence.
2. Check the page’s SEO efforts.
Many people consider on-page SEO services to be the most enjoyable aspect of website auditing because it is the component over which you have the greatest control. It can take months for a business to make significant changes to the technology it uses and supports, yet on-page SEO can be drastically enhanced in as little as one day.
3. Examine your existing off-page SEO strategies.
For technologists, marketers, and business owners alike, off-page SEO is sometimes the most difficult component of attaining high visibility online. Because there are several aspects over which you have only a limited amount of indirect control, moving the needle on off-page SEO can be more challenging.
4. Consider the entire user experience.
If you want your website to be useful and persuasive, the user experience is crucial. Simply put, it refers to a user’s ability to locate what they’re looking for on your site, utilize it as expected, and form favourable connections with your brand along the way. The intersection of design, technology, and intent to promote activity on your site is called user experience.
5. Conduct a review of your present content assets.
Without mentioning content strategy, no website audit would be complete. Good content has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for increasing online visibility and establishing trust with potential clients. Content is at the heart of the inbound marketing strategy because it shows your willingness and skill to bring value to the lives of your prospects.
