You have spent a lot of time and effort building your website. Maybe you even paid for professional web development services. Either way, has your website ever been audited for site health or technical SEO? If not, it is time for a change. The modern web requires sites capable of performing at a high level 24/7. There is no way to know if your site is doing the job without regular audits.
In a nutshell, a website audit is a detailed analysis of its performance, structure, and content. The goal of the audit is to identify strengths and weaknesses so that any necessary improvements can be made. A comprehensive audit reaches every corner of a site, leaving no visible or technical aspects untouched.
A Site with No Traffic
If you are not convinced that websites need regular audits, consider your own site. How much traffic does it get compared to the amount of work you put into it? How much traffic do individual pages get? Most important of all, has your website increased your ability to both reach new customers and close deals?
According to Ahrefs, a shocking 90.63% of all online content generates zero Google traffic. Think about it another way: Google sends absolutely no traffic to more than 90% of all web pages globally. That is a pretty big deal.
Google dominates the web in terms of sending organic traffic to websites. Organic traffic is traffic generated from searches. Your company needs that traffic to continually bring new customers in. Existing customers might return to your site because it offers the information they need, but how are potential new customers going to find your site without a little help?
The last thing you want is a site with no traffic. But that is exactly what you will end up with if you continue to ignore website audits. The fact of the matter is that without audits, you are leaving your website’s success to chance.
A Technical SEO Audit Will Identify Issues
A technical SEO audit identifies issues that inhibit strong search engine performance. A good example is page speed. A few years ago, Google clarified they would start ranking for speed based on the reality that people are unwilling to wait for slow websites. Believe it or not, just a second or two can make an enormous difference in whether visitors stick around.
A one-second difference in load time may be indiscernible to you as a web user. But a website audit will pick it up. There are several audit tools out there that will test your site for speed and then compare it to what Google considers optimal. In no time at all, you will know whether your site is fast enough.
SEO professionals, like those here at Webtek, have access to a variety of audit tools, including:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Ahrefs
- Moz
- SEMrush.
You can use the same tools to run your own website audits. But do you know how to use them? Do you understand the data they generate? If not, in-house audits probably aren’t your best bet. Paying for a professional to audit your website is a better choice.
Technical SEO Audits Should Be Frequent
We want to close this post by reminding you that a website audit is not a one-and-done thing. The internet is constantly changing. Search engines routinely update their algorithms. Even user habits evolve over time.
To keep up with it all, your site needs regular audits. We recommend it at least annually. If you can go semi-annually or quarterly, that’s even better. A regular technical SEO audit will keep your site on the cutting edge, thereby generating traffic that leads to more sales. If you find yourself lost, we offer technical SEO audits for our clients here at Webtek.
