Your website is the online shop of your business, and Google is the ultimate guide that changes its algorithm every now and then to provide maximum benefits to both, its visitors and businesses.
What is a Website Audit?
A website audit helps to keep your online shop relevant to customers’ expectations and needs.
On a simple note, a website audit is a process of checking your website’s performance in terms of design, usability, navigation, content, SEO, and much more. It goes on with never-ending tasks to be performed with multiple tools. To make our groundwork strong and relevant, we will first learn beginner concepts.
Let’s first check how your website is performing!
In a year, Google makes numerous changes in its algorithms to give the best possible experience to its users. If your website has not undergone any such changes and redesigning in the past 3-4 years, it’s high time to check the health of your website.
1. Use a website audit tool
A website audit tool will help you to analyze the status of your website w.r.t different parameters and give an overview of the errors and the areas for improvement.
Run your website URL through any of the free website audit tools or extract the data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console. It’s the beginning of your groundwork. Mention the points that need critical attention. From broken links to non-responsive pages, organic traffic, difficulty in navigation, etc.
2. Understand the user behavior on specific webpages
Know how your user behaves on each of your web pages and rework them. Collect the data like :
- The dwell time and scroll time of users: The time users are engaged with your website/ webpage
- Where do they click often – Navigation details through heatmaps
- User behavior throughout the scroll time
3. Check the UI/UX of a website
The design of the website plays a vital role in the audit. It is the way users interact with the website, and it is said that users hit the back button in 3 secs which is the considerable time your website should take to load.
Here is the absolute checklist you should refer to:
- Check the layout of the website.
- Place the CTAs properly.
- Collect the data from heatmaps or Clickmaps and create the proper navigation flow.
- Do not make the graphics and illustrations clumsy. Provide the white space to give pleasantness to the user’s sight.
- Let the content be legible. (Use of proper fonts, font size, headers, and table of contents ).
- Use Google Analytics to understand UX signals that give a report on bounce rate, dwell time, page views, unique pageviews, etc.
- Learn why the dwell time for certain web pages is low, as it indicates that the user has not found what they are looking for.
4. Check the responsiveness of a website.
It is said that 63% of the traffic is from mobile phones since it is convenient and handy. So, keep the website design and layout responsive to various devices like smartphones, tablets, desktop screens, and laptops.
If you want to check the type of audience by the usage of devices, Google Analytics will help you get the data on the number of mobile visitors, desktop visitors, etc.
5. Content is key. Keep it Simple and conversational.
Content is the one simple way on your website that initiates a conversation with the user. Content marketing strategy is important because it engages and provides answers to all the questions the user is looking for.
- Do not stuff the content with too many complicated dictionary words. Keep it simple and relevant.
- Improper punctuation often leads a website user to confusion. Grammar and spelling errors must be avoided at all costs! It is a matter of impression that is going to last in the user’s mind for sure.
- Be precise. Keep the descriptions of your products to the point. Keep it conversational and not technical.
- Update the FAQs regularly and address the questions or comments from your users.
6. SEO audit
An SEO audit is a major step when auditing your website. You dive in more technically; you get intense results for your website.
Here is the checklist for performing the SEO audit:
- Check for traffic, keywords, and rankings.
- Put your competitor’s website in an SEO audit tool and run their URL to analyze their special cases.
- Check if your website has multiple versions and if Google is indexing and crawling those different versions through the search console
- Fix the broken links, and know the organic traffic.
- Meta title and Meta descriptions, length of the content.
- Fix the 404 error, redirections, and non-crawled pages
Conclusion
Website auditing is an intense process that takes you to every minute aspect of a website, bound to different parameters that need various tools, processes, and strategic planning to complete it successfully. These are some of the steps that will help you get started.
These steps take you through the intense framework. Although auditing, of course, is a time-consuming process as it is a comprehensive way to check the overall health of your website. It definitely deserves to be time-and focus-demanding!!
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