Unveiling the Hidden Potential: Why a Website Audit is Crucial for Your Business
Like any business asset, your website should not be a “build and then forget” task. Websites need attention and maintenance to ensure they operate effectively and meet your business goals. The overriding question to ask yourself is, “What would your potential clients find when they visit your website? Closely followed by the secondary, equally important question, “Can the Search Engines find and understand it?”
Your website should incorporate all the factors a potential client would expect to find and enhance your business’s online presence. And it should engage visitors, drive conversions, and establish the credibility of your business.
Not only does your website need to satisfy people, but it also needs to meet the needs of the Search Engines, and a technical SEO Audit is essential to ensure that your website is visible to the search engines and functioning well.
The article outlines the 8 essential elements we at Website Warriors analyse during a website SEO and Technical Audit.
8 Reasons Why an Website Audit is Essential
1. Websites Break
It is not unusual to receive a phone call from a distressed business owner because their website is down.
When asked how long it has been down or the last time maintenance on the site was undertaken, they simply don’t know.
Technology and systems are forever changing and being updated, and websites need maintenance and a yearly service, just like a car.
Having a maintenance plan and conducting a technical audit can assist in protecting your website from disruptions.
A website ‘breaking’ is a serious issue and can significantly impact your business, particularly user experience and overall performance.
The issue of broken links on a website, while not as obvious at first glance, is just as serious. When we refer to broken links, we refer to the linking structure (hyperlinks) that no longer leads anywhere but results in an error page when clicked. This usually leads to a “This page cannot be found” message.
This is damaging from both a User Experience and SEO, as it can frustrate visitors and negatively affect their perception of your business. Broken links create a poor user experience as they disrupt navigation, hinder access to important information, and stop users in their tracks which ultimately could mean the loss of a sale or contact information not being submitted.
From an SEO perspective, broken links harm your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance. Search engines like Google consider broken links a sign of poor website quality, leading to a potential decrease in search rankings and organic traffic.
To maintain a positive user experience and preserve the credibility of your business, it is crucial to regularly monitor and fix broken links on your website to ensure smooth navigation and seamless access to information for your visitors.
2. Enhance User Experience
User experience is a crucial aspect of website optimization.
By engaging Website Warriors for your Website Audit we can provide fresh insight and perspective. Through the analysis of your website’s structure, content, and navigation, we will see your business from another angle, and it is always interesting what value a fresh perspective can bring.
This fresh perspective helps identify any pain points or areas where the user experience can be enhanced.
By thoroughly evaluating your website’s structure, a Website audit ensures that information and the user experience are logically organized, intuitive to navigate, and user-friendly.
Additionally, the content analysis aspect of a Website audit helps ensure that your website provides valuable and relevant information to your target audience.
By optimizing the content based on user intent and incorporating appropriate keywords, your website becomes more informative and engaging, further enhancing the user experience.
Surprisingly, many websites we audit are not optimised for a business’s core aspects and keywords.
Addressing this issue alone can significantly impact the number of website visitors and potential clients. As we consider Content and Keyword Research essential to the audit process, this is discussed in further detail in point 7.
3. Improved Search Engine Visibility
By assessing and optimizing your website’s visibility in search engine results, an SEO technical audit helps your website rank higher for relevant keywords, attracting more organic traffic to your site.
When your website is properly optimised for search engines, it becomes more likely to appear in the top search results, increasing its visibility and exposure to potential visitors.
Top search results deliver more clicks (website visitors); it is estimated that the top 3 results from a search receive more than two-thirds of all clicks. And the lower you go in the search rankings, the fewer clicks you receive.
Besides keyword relevancy, various other aspects are evaluated during the SEO technical audit process, including meta tags, internal linking, and overall website structure. By optimizing these elements based on relevant keywords and user intent, your website becomes more appealing to search engines, making it more likely to rank higher in search results and as we said earlier, more visitors and potential customers.
4. Website Speed Optimisation
Don’t give your website visitor time to think about something else – like searching for another website!
Website speed is essential to the user experience and the Search Engines. While we may preach patience is King, it is very hard to communicate this to website users in 2023. Anything that slows us down is sure to frustrate us, and that includes slow-loading websites. Frustrated website users leave a site more quickly, leading to higher bounce rates and site abandonment.
Search engines like Google consider website speed and user engagement as ranking factors.
Websites that load quickly are more likely to rank higher in search engine results, attracting more organic traffic and potential customers.
Several factors can affect the speed of a website, including:
- Hosting provider: The choice of hosting provider can significantly impact website speed. A reliable and high-performance hosting provider will ensure your website has sufficient resources and a fast server response time.
- Images: Images can look great, but they can be too big!! Large and unoptimised images can slow down website loading times. It is essential to properly compress and optimise images for the web to reduce their file size without compromising quality.
- JavaScript and CSS files: Excessive or poorly optimised JavaScript and CSS files can negatively impact website speed.
- Caching: Caching refers to storing temporary copies of website files on the user’s device or server to reduce the need for repeated requests. Implementing browser and server-side caching techniques can significantly improve website speed by reducing the time it takes to retrieve and load website resources for returning visitors.
5. Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage is a key objective for businesses striving to succeed in the online market.
By conducting a Website audit and analysing your competitors’ strategies, you can gain valuable insights into their approaches and identify areas for growth.
Evaluating your competitors’ SEO strategies, such as keyword targeting, content optimization, backlink profiles, and website structure, through the audit can help to refine your strategy and provide ideas for creativity and expansion.
To be clear, this is not about copying your competitors’ strategies but rather about understanding what works in your industry, identifying your strengths, and tailoring your strategy to fit your unique brand and target audience.
By leveraging the insights gained from the website audit, you can fine-tune your SEO efforts, differentiate your business, and stand out in the online market.
6. Mobile Optimisation
Understanding your website analytics is key to assessing the importance of mobile optimization for your specific audience. By analysing your analytics data, you can gain insights into the number of visitors accessing your website through mobile vs. desktop devices, enabling you to prioritise your mobile optimisation.
If over 90% of your users are using mobile to visit your business’ website then mobile optimisation should be a priority.
There are many factors to consider when optimising your website for mobile users beyond simply making your website responsive or adaptive.
Careful consideration needs to be given to the site design, layout and functionality for smaller devices because while devices make have gotten smaller are fingers haven’t!
The site design and functionality need to account for the navigation changes, ensuring enough room between menus and buttons to navigate the site easily.
Depending on your user’s technology preferences prioritising mobile optimisation, can increase user engagement, and reduce bounce rates, ultimately improving conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
A seamless browsing experience for mobile users contributes to a positive brand reputation, increased credibility, and long-term customer loyalty.
7. Content and Keyword Optimisation
As mentioned in point 2, Content and Keyword Analyses are foundational to the success of your business’s website and are a key component of the audit process.
From a content perspective, the audit evaluates the quality, relevance, and structure of the existing content on a blog, website, or landing page. This assessment helps identify improvement opportunities and ensures the content is optimised for search engines and user engagement.
It is impossible to separate the content analysis from a keyword audit as content is essentially words, and being aware of what each page needs to rank (be found for) is the critical building block of the content strategy.
By optimising the content based on keyword research findings, the website can attract organic traffic from relevant searches and improve its ranking in search engine results. Additionally, content optimisation ensures that the website’s content is valuable, informative, and engaging for the target audience, leading to increased user satisfaction and better conversion rates.
The information gathered from the website audit process can be used as the foundation for the content strategy going forward, ensuring that you receive a return on your investment both in the short and long term.
8. Return on Investment with a Website Audit
A website’s purpose goes beyond simply looking good.
A website should meet your business’s needs, whether to inform, sell products or services, or engage with users.
An SEO audit aims to align the website with its intended purpose and optimise it to achieve the desired outcomes.
Our focus at Website Warriors is to help you achieve your goals by improving functionality and providing your target audience with a seamless and satisfying experience.
A Website Audit will help unlock the Path to Your Digital Success
A Website and Technical SEO Audit can highlight current concerns and issues with your website and inspire you to create, grow and expand your website, ultimately benefitting your business.
By conducting a comprehensive Website and Technical SEO audit, businesses can examine their websites’ technical, content, on-page, and off-page aspects to optimise performance and improve search engine rankings.
Ultimately, a Website audit enables businesses to maximize their return on investment and mitigate risks by implementing strategic improvements based on a thorough evaluation of their digital assets.
Make time today to talk to us about our obligation-free Website Audit.