Face it, your website is a big deal! In today's digitally conscious world, your website is the main touchpoint for your existing customers, the magnet that attracts leads, and the tool with which conversions are made. Your website is the face of your brand to the outside world.
Ask yourself two quick questions...
Rather than take a guess as to the answer to those questions, the better course is to perform website assessments and audits to examine various aspects of your website. Audits in these 8 key areas yield valuable information about the effectiveness of your website:
If that list seems daunting, do not worry. Here are some tips about each type of audit and why it is important.
Simply put, a social media audit reviews your social media strategies to see what is working, what is not, and what you can do about it. Using platform-specific metrics, you will be able to identify which posts are your top performers, which platforms are delivering the most referrals, and so on. This information provides insight into where your social media marketing message should go.
More and more consumers digest content with smartphones, tablets, and mobile technology. Over the years this led to search engines implementing penalties on websites that were not mobile responsive. Google's Mobilegeddon of 2016 was merely a step towards normalizing the importance of mobile traffic. Since 2018, mobile page load speed as a key metric when determining a website’s search result ranking. As a business owner, having a mobile responsive site on a scalable platform is imperative to be found in search rankings and allows your visitors to have a positive user experience regardless of what device they are viewing it on.
A content audit is about evaluating the content elements on your website to ensure that each piece of content is doing what you want it to do. Ahref's "How to Do A Content Audit in 2022" lists several things a content audit will accomplish. Here are a few:
SEO audits often reveal opportunities you may be missing. An SEO and organic reach audit is the process of evaluating your website traffic, your keyword performance, and your search engine rankings. This information can help you forecast future growth and tweak your keyword strategies. This audit often reveals SEO opportunities you may be missing.
Most organic and paid campaigns are usually run separately from each other. That's why a paid visibility audit is vital to understanding if your ad spend is going to the right keywords. An audit of your website's paid media campaigns provides insight to identify what's working, where you may be wasting your ad spend, and keywords that may be good opportunities for growth.
A technical audit encompasses such features as load speeds, image optimization, content-to-code ratio, and other technical issues. This is an integral part of your website audit because how well your website functions directly impacts user experience, thus making or breaking your conversion rates.
Google's ranking algorithm takes notice of your website's linking profile. Quality backlinks help your ranking, whereas inferior backlinks drop your ranking like a stone. Knowing where your links are coming from gives you some indication of how search engines view your website's authority.
"Hey, what's the other guy doing?" should be a part of your website audit. Understanding the competition, where they rank, and their reach can give you valuable clues about where your marketing dollars and time should be spent.
Can your customers find you? A local audit examines all your local profiles to ensure that all information is correct. Leads need to know how and when to reach you. A local audit can reveal those freakish information accidents that sometimes happen so that any inconsistencies or errors can be corrected.
As part of a comprehensive website assessment, these audits should be performed regularly if you want your website to be a sharpened tool in your marketing drawer. However, for some organizations, there is little time to handle audits regularly.
If that is your case, there is no need to worry. Simply request a FREE assessment from Connection Model today, and let us do the auditing while you grow your business.