A website is an integral part of an organization’s online presence. If your organization has a website, and we are assuming it does, that site is your online calling card. It is your presentation to the world, your offer to provide goods or services, and a library of information you want to share with visitors. But is your website accomplishing everything you want it to? That is where the website audit comes in.
Your website is designed to do certain things in certain ways. An audit tells you if it is performing as expected. Not only that, but an audit also shows how a site might be improved on multiple levels. Needless to say that website audits are a standard part of digital marketing and SEO. They are part of our menu of services here at Webtek.
There are more than a dozen elements we look at during a typical website audit. Space will not allow us to discuss all of them, so here are five key elements we believe every website audit should include:
1. Code Quality
What a visitor sees on his screen is made possible by the underlying code that powers a website. That code determines how a website performs, both in terms of user experience and search engine performance. Therefore, the code needs to be up to par. It must be high quality code free of errors; it needs to be free of any extemporaneous code that could hinder search engine performance, reduce speed, or turn off visitors.
2. Meta and Title Tags
Coders use a variety of tags that control everything from how browsers display a sight to how search crawlers understand it. The two big ones are meta and title tags. Both are reviewed in a comprehensive website audit.
Meta tags describe a page’s content and include targeted keywords. Search algorithms rely on meta tags to understand what a page is all about. As for title tags, they are tags that describe the main thrust of a page. Title tags are examined for relevance to the main body of content that follows.
3. URL Structure
Website audits take a good look at URL structure to make sure everything is in order. URL structure is important to web crawlers as they seek to assess websites in total, rather than focusing on individual pages. Think of a site’s URL structure as a roadmap. If a web crawler gets lost, that’s not good for the site’s search engine performance.
4. Crawlability
In order for a website to show up on Google or Bing, it must first be crawled (examined in detail) by search engine bots. Crawling can be a complicated task if a website’s URL structure and hierarchy are inefficient. Therefore, a website audit looks at crawlability. The more crawlable a site, the better it is for SEO purposes.
5. Usability
Since users are ultimately the beneficiaries of any website, usability is another key element in a typical website audit. How easily can a site be navigated? How quickly can visitors find the information they want? Is the website easy to look at in terms of text size, font, and colors? These are all things that play into the user experience.
There are many more things we look at when auditing a website. However, these five top the list as being most critical. If your site has never been audited, you have no way of knowing if it is performing well in these five areas. We can help by conducting a full website audit for you. To learn more, feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience.
