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Auditing a Website for Traffic & Conversions: 5 Metrics That Matter (and 5 that don't)
If you’re like most business executives, you are always looking for ways to improve your website’s performance and visibility in the search engines. Maybe you’ve noticed that your website traffic has been on the decline, or that your conversion rate is lower than it used to be.
If this is the case, then it’s time for you to perform a website audit. In this article, we will discuss 5 findings that matter from a website audit (and 5 findings that don’t).
By understanding these findings, you will be able to better understand the importance of search engine optimization and how it can help improve your website’s performance!
What is a Website Audit?
A website audit is a process of evaluating a website for traffic and conversions. During this process, you will look at a website’s design, content strategy, on page SEO, internal links, sitemap structure, and page speed performance.
One of the most important aspects of a website SEO audit is looking at factors that matter for your business needs such as website traffic, user engagement, and conversion rates—In short, the numbers that “move the needle” and drive revenue for your business.
By understanding these factors, you can make changes to your website in order to improve its traffic, conversions, and overall performance.
The Importance of a Comprehensive Website Audit?
The importance of a proper Website Audit is to not only examine what’s been happening up to this point but also look towards the future. A full website audit is a perfect opportunity to assess where your website currently stands, understand what improvements can be made, and set achievable goals.
Not only does a website SEO audit help you identify areas for improvement, but it can also give insights into new opportunities such as increasing traffic or improving conversion rates.
In order to get the most out of a site audit, it’s important to understand the factors that matter for your business needs. Website performance and conversions are critical for your business growth and will allow you to make better strategic decisions for your company.
By understanding all the critical factors, you can make changes to your website in order to improve its overall performance for the long term.
How to know when it's time for a Website Audit?
Imagine for a moment that you’re sitting in front of your computer with Google Analytics pulled up. You’ve just noticed that your web pages have taken a traffic hit overnight, and there are unseen technical errors that have been haunting you since the site was published years ago.
What do you do?
It’s time for a fresh Site Audit!
In most cases, your earliest indicator to perform a website audit is when you see a decrease in website traffic. This could be due to any number of factors such as outdated content, competition outranking you, or search engine algorithm changes.
In addition to decreased website traffic, other signals that it might be time for an SEO audit include:
- A sudden drop in conversion rates
- Difficulty tracking user engagement on your website
- Unexpected changes in organic traffic from search engines
- Or an increase in website downtime or errors
If you’re seeing any of these red flags, it’s time for you to perform a website audit. By doing so, you’ll be able to better understand the health of your website and take actionable steps to improve its performance.
Is there a standard Website Audit Framework?
There is no standard website audit framework, as each business will have different needs and priorities. However, as we mentioned above, some key areas that should be assessed during a website audit include traffic, conversions, design, content strategy, internal links, sitemap structure, and page speed performance.
There are also a few key steps you can take that are common to most website audits:
In order to conduct a website audit, you will need to collect data about your website’s performance. This data can be collected from a variety of audit tools such as Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Once you have this data, you can begin to analyze it and look for trends or problems.
After analyzing the data, you will then want to make recommendations on how to address these issues. Oftentimes, this involves making changes to the website’s design, content strategy, or internal linking structure.
Finally, you will want to track these changes over time and see if they have improved your site’s performance.
By understanding and applying the steps above, you will be a little closer to better understanding the importance of search engine optimization and how it can help improve your website’s performance!
5 Findings that Matter from a Website Audit
Website Traffic and Conversion Rates
When performing a web audit, the most important metrics to look at are often traffic and conversion rates.
Traffic is how many people are visiting your website, and conversion rate is how many of those people are actually converting into sales from your website.
If your website isn’t generating enough traffic, it’s going to be hard to convert those visitors into customers. Conversely, if your conversion rate is low, that means you need more traffic in order to achieve your desired results.
If your website isn’t getting enough traffic, or if your conversion rate is low, it means that your website isn’t performing as well as it could be.
Mobile Performance & Responsiveness
A mobile responsive website is a website that responds to the size of a person’s device screen, typically by eliminating extra information and reformatting page content into a more compact format.
In general, people tend to spend more time on mobile devices than they do on personal computers, which means that mobile optimization for your site is important.
An unattractive site design can deter visitors from purchasing products or signing up for email lists leading to lower overall profits due to lost conversions.
People are often left confused by navigating through the site with touch screens or scrolling around an extremely long screenshot if there are too many navigation options. This could also lead to higher bounce rates because the visitor may not feel like it’s worth their time getting frustrated
Page Speed Performance
Page speed performance is critical to your website because it can impact your site’s rankings in the search engines, and lead to a decline in traffic and conversions.
If a website’s pages take too long to load, visitors are likely to leave before they even have a chance to see the content. And if a website’s pages don’t load correctly on mobile devices, that can lead to lost conversions.
That’s why page speed performance is one of the most important metrics to look at when performing a website audit.
The easiest way to check your page’s site speed is using a tool like Google Page Speed Insights, or GT Metrix. At Digital Operating Solutions, we use both for different reasons when evaluating a page’s loading speed.
Website Errors & Broken Links
Website errors and broken links are important for your SEO efforts. If your site is bogged down by technical errors, the search engine crawlers will take notice and penalize your site for having a poor user experience.
If a website has a lot of errors, that can indicate that the website is not well-maintained. And if a website has a lot of broken links, that can indicate that the website is not well-organized.
If you want to keep the search engines happy, you can use search engine audit tools like Google Search Console to identify your XML sitemap status and determine if any website improvements need to be made.
Search Engine Rankings
One of the most important findings from a website audit is how your website is performing in the search engines. If your website isn’t ranking high enough, it’s going to be hard for people to find your website. And if your website isn’t ranking at all, that means you’re not getting any traffic from the search engines.
That’s why search engine rankings are so important for a website audit. By identifying where your website falls in the search engine results pages (SERPs), you can determine which SEO improvements need to be made.
If you have posted a lot of website content, but you’re noticing that your articles aren’t generating any traffic then it’s time to up your website content strategy game. Are you performing keyword research, or looking through google search results?
If you are, and there are still issues, you can use tools like RankMath SEO to optimize the on page SEO technical aspects, like your meta descriptions, your post title tags, and your website URL.
There are a number of factors that go into determining how your website is ranked in the search engines, including page speed performance, website errors, and broken links.
5 Findings from a Website Audit that Do Not Matter
It’s no secret that in order to be successful online, your website needs to be seen by as many people as possible. To do this, you need to employ search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, such as addressing technical SEO issues, optimizing page performance, and performing regular website audits on your site.
But even if you’re doing everything “right” from an on page SEO standpoint, there are other factors that can contribute to a website’s success or failure. Here, we’ll take a look at 5 findings from a website audit that don’t matter, and why they shouldn’t be given too much weight when considering the overall health of your site.
Number of pages on the site
A common misconception website owners have is that the number of pages on their website directly contributes to how well it ranks in search engines. But this isn’t necessarily the case.
While having many pages on your site can be beneficial, if those pages don’t have solid keyword research or content strategy supporting them, or a strong internal linking structure, then they’re not going to do you much good. In fact, too many low-quality pages on your site can actually have a negative impact on your SEO efforts.
So while the number of pages on your website is certainly something to keep in mind, it’s not necessarily one of the most important factors that contribute to a site’s success.
Number of inbound links
The number of inbound links to your website plays a major role in how well it ranks, but that doesn’t mean you should focus on this one particular aspect alone. While having more links than the competition is certainly helpful, if those links are coming from low-quality sites or pages, then they won’t do you much good.
In order to rank well in search engines, you need a diversified link portfolio that includes links from high-quality sites across different industries. This will help show Google that your website is an authority on the topic at hand and should be ranked higher as a result.
Amount of time people are spending on the site
The number of time people spend on your website can certainly be a good indicator of how well it’s performing, but that doesn’t mean you should focus solely on this one metric either. If people are spending too long on certain pages or not enough time at all, then there could be other factors at play here.
You want to make sure your website loads quickly and has a responsive design that’s easy to navigate so people don’t get frustrated trying to find what they’re looking for.
Number of pages indexed by Google
This is another one that many business owners tend to focus on when evaluating their site, but it’s not necessarily the most important factor either. While having your entire website indexed by Google can certainly be beneficial, it’s important to understand that there are several different ways you can go about achieving this.
If your site isn’t getting indexed properly and consistently, then the quality of content on those pages may not be up to par with what search engines expect from high-ranking websites. This could result in poor rankings or even being removed altogether from search results.
Number of pages with duplicate content
If you have multiple pages on your website that are duplicates of one another, then this may not be a huge issue for SEO purposes. The problem arises when those duplicated pages get indexed by Google and appear in SERPs as two separate listings.
This can cause confusion among users who are trying to find what they’re looking for because there will now be two different pages with the same information but only one has an actual link back to it.
Ready to get an audit of your website?
Site audits are an important part of the process for any business looking to improve their site’s performance in search engines.
Identify errors and improve your SEO rankings and site health today!
How do I conduct a site audit?
To perform a site audit, you have a few different options. The first is performing the site audit manually using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. The second is outsourcing your marketing and content starting to an SEO agency or freelance web developers that will make sure they get paid for their time.
The third option is to use our free site audit tool above. All you need to do is enter your website URL, and your e-mail so we know where to send the report.
Then, you’ll be prompted to enter your competitor’s website, so we can show you where you stand.
Once it’s finished scanning, the tool will provide you with a report that outlines all the errors it found along with suggestions for how to fix them. You’ll get an e-mail with your technical audit results. That you can review, compare & contrast, or forward to one of your colleagues.
It’s important to remember that not all errors are created equal, so you should focus on fixing the ones that have the biggest impact on your SEO efforts.
How SEO Can Help Improve Your Website's Performance
The main purpose of SEO is to improve a website’s visibility in search rankings. SEO can also influence other factors such as user experience, content quality, and relevance.
When optimizing your website content for SEO, it’s important to keep in mind optimizing your page meta descriptions and site titles. It’s a good rule of thumb to include your page’s primary keywords in both. It’s also important to free your site of any page errors or use a site audit tool regularly.
SEO is one of the most important aspects for any business that wants to thrive in this competitive world we live in today. As more companies turn online more frequently than ever before, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to compete with each other without help from an expert like an SEO agency.
It’s no longer enough just having a website or social media page – all these things have become standard fare among modern companies looking to establish themselves as leaders within their respective industries and markets. In order to truly succeed online, businesses need more than that: they must ensure that every aspect of their digital presence works together seamlessly. This, in turn, can result in more traffic and conversions.
Should I Optimize my Website or contract a Website Redesign?
There isn’t a definitive answer, as it depends on the specific situation.
If a website’s design is outdated and not mobile-friendly, then it may be time for a redesign. Typically we see sites like this created 3+ years ago. However, if the website is already mobile-friendly and there are only minor errors that need to be fixed, then optimizing the website for SEO may be a better option.
Oftentimes, we’ve noticed that when a website was newly built, the website designer or web design agency didn’t take the thoughtful measures to actually help write out the content and set the site up for SEO success. In this situation, the site is ranking very poorly for keywords, does not have a well-defined content strategy, and is in need of serious improvements.
In this scenario, we recommend a redesign & website content audit to better match the needs of potential visitors.
It really depends on what you’re looking for and how much work you want to put into it. If you feel like you need more help, then contracting a website redesign may be the best option for you.
In either case, it’s important to consult with an expert to get their professional opinion.
Frequently Asked Questions about Website Audits
Website traffic is the number of visits your website receives over a given time period. Site Traffic refers to the movement of visitors, or “traffic”, to and from your website.
It can be influenced by the number of visitors and the actual number of page views. In general, a high volume of site traffic is an indication that your content or product offering is quite popular with online users.
Whether your website is a single page, or has thousands of pages, it’s incredibly important to perform a site audit and make sure that you’re getting the most out of your web traffic.
A site audit can be used by marketers in order to display their progress on improving search engine rankings and lead generation efforts. They are also good when used by businesses to ensure their sites comply with the latest search engine guidelines. They’re even great for internal website improvements, especially if you’re planning on a redesign or migration of your site content.
There are a number of common SEO mistakes that can hurt your website’s performance. Here are some of the top ones:
- Lack of quality content on your site (content is king!)
- Site speed issues like slow page load times or host downtime
- Site structure issues like broken links or missing images/pages
- Site security flaws such as insecure URLs (HTTPS) and redirects
An SEO consultant can help to improve website conversion rates in a number of ways, including:
- Developing keyword-rich content that is relevant to your target audience
- Optimizing your site for search engine visibility and user experience
- Creating effective calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout your website
- Providing regular consultation and support to help you track your website’s progress and maximize results.
A Site Audit will cover a number of questions, including:
- What is the current status of my site?
- How many pages do I have indexed in Google (and other major search engines)?
- Do they contain any links to external sites or internal pages which may be harmful for SEO purposes?
Know When Auditing a Website is Right For You
Site Audits are a great way to track your website’s progress and ensure that you’re always performing at your best. Site Audit tools can help give you insights into things like page errors, meta descriptions, keywords usage, backlink profile, site speed issues as well as many other metrics which will impact the performance of your business online.
To get started with an audit today or for more information on how to properly audit your site, in order to improve SEO ranking and conversion rates get your free audit report today!
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