What is a Website Audit?

A website audit is a process that involves analyzing your website and finding ways to improve it. This is different from a site redesign or making changes to the site’s design, as those are separate processes.

Website audits are conducted before launching a large-scale search engine optimization campaign (SEO) or redesigning your site. By performing a website audit, you can determine if your website is optimized to achieve your traffic objectives, and if not, what can be done to improve it.

Anyone who has access to the backend of the site can do a website audit, but it’s usually something that happens before you begin a larger project, like a redesign or change in site direction.

Why is a website audit necessary?

A website audit is done to assess the quality and performance of a website. This process can be highly beneficial for companies that want to improve their online presence. It allows them to gain valuable insight into what needs improvement and where they should focus their efforts.

It allows you to identify and eliminate any SEO pitfalls across all the content on your site. This includes:

Discovering under-performing pages

Technical tweaks to improve the overall user experience

Assets that should not be in Google’s index

Keyword stuffing

Exact match anchor text links

Additionally, you will be able to refocus on users first rather than search engines. You’ll also be able to safeguard yourself from being constantly chased by changes to search engine ranking algorithms, so you won’t be resorting to misguided practices just to appear on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Performing an audit will help you evaluate how well the site converts, as well. For example, perhaps there are some leads or sales opportunities you missed in the past? Is it possible that your strategies so far haven’t been as effective as you anticipated? By analyzing the site, you can answer these and many other questions, leading to a greater probability of conversion.

You can compare your website with those of your competitors by conducting a website audit. Analysis of how you rank against competitors can help uncover potential revenue sources. The goal of a competitive analysis is to take a step back and look at the overall market area, your position, your competitors, and the search landscape for crucial keywords.

Even if your site ranks at the top of the search results for all your most important keywords, another site always tries to surpass you and capitalize on your weaknesses.

When a website audit is completed, what can a business expect?

A company’s website plays a critical role in its success. Having access to information like which pages are receiving the most traffic and how many visitors are converting into leads or customers can help you determine where improvements need to be made on your site. Without this data, businesses may invest time and money into projects that do not actually benefit their bottom line.

Businesses receive a summary report that includes any discrepancies found after an audit. It also outlines how to fix them. By regularly auditing websites, businesses remain agile and aligned with Google’s best practices.