The goal for every business website is to rank as high as possible on search engines so traffic to the site increases and boosts company revenue. However, unresolved issues on the website pages can cause them to be overlooked by web crawlers, damaging your search engine ranking. If you aren’t getting the results you want from your website, a web audit can help.
I understand your frustration, you have already paid a “website expert” to build your website. Your super annoyed because you didn’t receive what they sold you. There are a lot of poor website designers, who actually don’t know what their doing, they simply send it offshore.
As a web developer you have to keep up with trends, that make a successful website. There are a lot of moving pieces that require regular management and maintenance. If your website has not been maintained then perhaps, this itself is the problem.
What Is a Website Audit?
A website audit checks your site pages in several key areas to identify any problems for you to fix. The goal is to make sure your website is running at peak efficiency to get the best SEO results on all pages. For optimisation success, include a web audit as part of your regular site maintenance.
What Does a Website Audit Check For?
The auditor tests the pages of your website in several different areas to identify any issues blocking the page from ranking high in search engine results. He or she will provide you with data to help you fix any errors and increase the promotion of your site.
A typical website audit will advise;
Is it Easy To Navigate
Visitors to your site want to find what they are looking for in five seconds or less. Anything longer than that and they are likely to surf over to another website. The auditor checks your website to ensure the content is well organized into pages with an easy-to-read menu and clear navigation.
Does it Load Quickly
Loading speed is important because users typically won’t wait beyond three seconds for a slow page to load. If your pages take longer than that, the auditor can look for ways to speed it up by:
- Reducing the size of large files
- Minimizing large images
- Removing unnecessary plugins
- Enabling browser caching
Works as Designed
The auditor looks for broken hyperlinks, missing text or images, and 404 error messages popping up instead of the requested page. These types of errors cause visitors to lose trust in the validity of your website and send them looking elsewhere for information.
Has Relevant Content
A large part of search engine ranking is based on the value of the content contained on your website. The auditor checks for:
- Keywords
- Clear page titles
- High-quality images
- ALT image descriptions
- CTAs
- Word count
- Relevant and short URLs
- Old content
Viewable on All Devices
Research shows that 68% of all website visits now come from smartphones and 2% from tablets. The remaining 30% of views are on a desktop computer. Therefore, your website needs to be readable on all types of devices. A website audit checks that:
- Text is easy to read.
- Links click and tap easily.
- Content fits the screen.
An Affordable Website Audit
Affordable Web Solutions will provide you a comprehensive report, including all of the characteristics above. We look deeper into the essential undertakings that relate specifically to SEO. Search engines such as Google and Bing are sophisticated enough to understand what makes a good website design.
The user experience, performance, security and conversion optimisation are all keys to a successful SEO strategy. We will take a deep dive into whether your website is mobile friendly, easy to navigate, has the proper use of images and even video. Are the headlines and page content relevant?
An audit should be included as a part of regular maintenance on your website to make sure no issues are causing your pages to rank low on search engines. Identifying problems allows you to fix them so that both web visitors and search engines can easily explore your pages.
Receive a prioritised list of recommendations you can fix yourself and get 30 minutes free labour to get you started.
Affordable Web Solutions website audit will give you a complete list prioritising the recommendations, to focus on getting your website back on track. You can even do the fixing yourself, or take advantage of our 30 minutes free with every website audit.
As mentioned earlier, there are a lot of moving parts to manage and maintain your website. If you need assistance, Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your small business.