A Guide To Conducting A Successful Website Audit

1. A Guide To Conducting A Successful Website Audit With the increasing importance of having a strong online presence, businesses must ensure that their website is up to par. This is where a website audit comes in. A website audit is a comprehensive analysis of a website’s performance, functionality, and efficiency. Businesses regularly hire website development companies to conduct full website audits on their outdated websites. It’s an essential process that helps businesses identify areas that need improvement and make necessary changes to enhance the user experience. In this post, we’ll discuss the different types of website audits, their benefits, and how you can perform a website audit.

2. Types Of Website Audits There are 4 primary types of website audits: technical, content, SEO, and security. Each audit focuses on a specific aspect of a website and provides insights into how it can be improved. 1. Technical Audit A Technical Audit is an analysis of your website’s technical performance. This type of audit focuses on the technical aspects of your website such as speed, responsiveness, accessibility, and the code. This audit is essential to ensure that your website runs smoothly without any technical hiccups that could confuse or deter potential visitors. Here are some key components of a Technical Audit: – Website Speed Website speed is one of the most important factors to consider when it comes to website performance. Slow loading times can negatively impact your website’s user experience and lead to high bounce rates, which eventually results in poor SERP rankings. To check your website’s speed, you can use a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix. These tools will provide you with a score and recommendations on how to improve your website’s speed. – Responsiveness Responsiveness is another critical component of a Technical Audit. In today’s world, more and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet. Your website must be responsive and optimized for all devices, including smartphones and tablets, as well as modern foldable screen resolutions. Besides checking the site on multiple devices, you can also use your browser’s web inspector and debugger mode and test your site on different possible resolutions offered by the browser. – Accessibility Website accessibility is essential for ensuring that everyone can use your website, regardless of their physical abilities. A website built without keeping wider accessibility in mind can lose out on a lot of potential visitors. To check your website’s accessibility, you can use a tool like WAVE Accessibility Checker. – Code Bloat Code bloat refers to excessive or unnecessary code on your website. This can negatively impact your website’s performance and lead to slower loading times. If your website (or certain webpages and/or functionalities) are too slow to load, you may need to check for and optimize

3. the code. – Plugin Bloat Similar to code bloat, plugin bloat refers to excessive or unnecessary plugins on your website. Excessive and outdated plugins can slow down your website. Similarly, too many plugins (especially of a similar kind) can lead to conflicts, which will result in a poor performance of the website. – Image Optimization Images are critical components of any website, but they can also be a major source of slow loading times. To ensure that your images are optimized, you can use a tool like Kraken.io. – Broken Links, 404 Page, Redirects Broken links can significantly hamper the user experience of a website, so make sure you get rid of them as much as possible. If people do have to encounter broken links, ensure your site has a well-designed 404 error page. Also, ensure redirects are properly set up so that users can be guided to where they need to be. To check for these issues, you can use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider. 2. Content Audit A Content Audit is an analysis of your website’s content. It focuses on the quality of your content and ensures that it is meeting the needs of your audience. Here are some key components of a Content Audit: – Readability Readability refers to how easy it is for your audience to read and understand your content. To check your website’s readability, you can use a tool like the Hemingway App. – SEO-Friendliness SEO-friendliness is essential for ensuring that your website’s content is optimized for search engines. To check your content’s SEO-friendliness, you can use a tool like Yoast SEO, Moz, or SEMrush. – Plagiarism Plagiarism is a serious issue that can negatively impact your website’s reputation and lead to legal issues. To check for plagiarism, you can use a tool like Copyscape.

4. – Establishing Thought Leadership You must understand that establishing thought leadership needs to be your ultimate aim when it comes to content. This is essential for building a loyal audience and increasing your website’s credibility. It is also the best way to earn high-quality backlinks. You should focus on creating high-quality, informative content that provides value to your audience. 3. SEO Audit An SEO audit is an essential step in improving your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines. SEO audits can be a long and extensive process. Here are some of the most important steps involved. – SEO-Friendly Site Architecture The first step in conducting an SEO audit is analyzing your website’s site architecture. SEO- friendly site architecture refers to a website structure that is easy to navigate, user-friendly, and search engine-friendly. A well-structured website makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website’s pages, resulting in better visibility and ranking. Firstly, you must ensure that your website has a clear hierarchy of pages and categories. Your website’s pages should be organized in a way that makes sense to users and search engines. This means creating a clear hierarchy of categories and subcategories that make it easy for users to navigate through your website. Secondly, you must ensure that your website’s URL structure is optimized for search engines. This means using relevant and meaningful keywords in your URL structure to help search engines understand the content of your pages. Additionally, you should ensure that your website’s URLs are short, simple, and easy to remember. – Creating and Submitting Sitemap to Google An XML sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a sitemap to Google is an essential step in improving your website’s visibility on search engines. A sitemap makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website’s pages, resulting in better visibility and ranking. To create a sitemap, you can use a sitemap generator tool or create one manually. Once you have created your sitemap, you must submit it to Google through Google Search Console. Submitting your sitemap to Google will help it to crawl all of your pages, which leads to a lower possibility of indexing issues as well.

5. – Crawling and Indexing Issues Crawling and indexing issues can have a significant impact on your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines. Crawling issues occur when search engines are unable to crawl your website’s pages. Indexing issues occur when search engines are either unable to index your website’s pages (because of a noindex tag), or deny indexing to a page because of low-quality or outdated content. Both issues can result in pages not appearing in search results at all. To identify crawling and indexing issues on your website, you can use tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog. Once you have identified the issues, you must take the necessary steps to fix them. This may involve fixing broken links, updating your website’s robots.txt file, or fixing issues with your website’s XML sitemap. – Canonical Issues Canonical issues occur when multiple versions of the same page exist on your website, resulting in duplicate content. Duplicate content can negatively impact your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines. To fix canonical issues, you must ensure that your website’s canonical tags are correctly implemented. The canonical tag is a piece of HTML code that tells search engines which version of the page is the original one. By using canonical tags, you can prevent search engines from indexing duplicate content and ensure that your website’s pages are properly indexed and ranked. – Structured Data Structured data is a form of markup that provides additional information about your website’s content to search engines. By implementing structured data, you can improve your website’s chances of getting a featured snippet on an SERP. This can lead to significantly higher website traffic. Structured data can be used to provide information about your business, its location and timings, products, services, reviews, and more. FAQ structured data also help significantly in getting featured snippets. This information can appear on search engine results pages, making it easier for users to find your website and understand its content. – Duplicate Content Issues Duplicate content issues occur when the same content appears on multiple pages of your website. Duplicate content on a site’s H1 and title tags is very common. These can negatively impact your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines. To fix duplicate content issues, you must ensure that your website’s content is unique and relevant.

6. You can use tools like Copyscape to identify duplicate content on your website. SEMrush and Ahrefs can also help you to easily find duplicate content in your site’s meta titles and descriptions. Once you have identified the issues, you must take the necessary steps to fix them. This may involve rewriting content, consolidating pages, or implementing canonical tags. – Optimizing Core Web Vitals Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the user experience of your website. These metrics include loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Optimizing your website’s Core Web Vitals is essential for improving your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify issues with your website’s Core Web Vitals. Once you have identified the issues, you can take the necessary steps to fix them. This may involve optimizing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript, or using a content delivery network (CDN). – Low Text-to-HTML Ratio A low text-to-HTML ratio occurs when your website’s HTML code contains more code than text. This can negatively impact your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines. To fix low text-to-HTML ratio issues, you must ensure that your website’s HTML code is optimized and streamlined. You can use HTML Minifier tools to optimize your website’s HTML code. Additionally, you should ensure that your website’s CSS and JavaScript files are minified and compressed to reduce their size. – Blocked Internal Resources in robots.txt An issue with blocked internal resources occurs when search engines are unable to crawl and index your website’s pages due to restrictions set in your website’s robots.txt file. To fix this issue, you must ensure that your website’s robots.txt file is properly configured. You can use tools like Google Search Console to identify issues with your website’s robots.txt file. Once you have identified the issues, you can take the necessary steps to fix them. This may involve removing unnecessary restrictions or adding new ones to block unwanted pages – Missing Alt Attributes Missing Alt attributes occur when images andvideos on your website do not have descriptive Alt tags. Without Alt attributes, search engines cannot read them, and hence they won’t show up on searches. Images and videos without alt tags won’t appear in Google’s image and video search either.

7. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to identify images on your website that do not have ALT tags. Once you have identified the issues, you can take the necessary steps to fix them. This may involve adding new Alt tags or optimizing existing ones. – Nofollow Attributes in Internal Links This issue occurs when internal links on your website have a rel=”nofollow” attribute. Search engines will be unable to follow these links to the other pages, which means no link juice shall be passed to these pages. To fix this issue, you must ensure that all internal links on your website are dofollow. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to identify internal links on your website that have a nofollow attribute. Once you have identified the issues, you can take the necessary steps to fix them. 4. Security Audit Security audits identify security vulnerabilities and prevent cyber-attacks. A security audit can help you understand the current security posture of your website or application. It can also help you identify potential weaknesses that could be exploited by hackers. – Update Scripts and Applications One of the most critical steps you can take to protect your website is to keep your scripts and applications up to date. Outdated plugins can be vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities to exploit. Make sure you regularly check for updates for all plugins and applications in use. This includes your content management system (CMS), eCommerce platform, and any other third-party plugins you use. – Protect the IP of Your Domain Cyber attackers often use an IP address of a domain for organizing DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. To protect your website from such DDoS and other related attacks, you need to implement a good firewall and a CDN (Content Delivery Network). You also need to keep your CMS and other plugins updated to the latest versions. Finally, monitor your website and server on a regular basis and take immediate action for any unusual activities noticed. – Update Passwords and Delete Abandoned User Accounts One of the easiest ways for hackers to gain access to your website or application is through weak passwords or abandoned user accounts. Make sure you regularly update your passwords and

8. delete any abandoned user accounts. Ensure that your passwords are strong and include a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols. Avoid using the same password for multiple accounts. Deleting abandoned user accounts can also help prevent unauthorized access to your website or application. Make sure you have a process in place to identify and delete abandoned user accounts regularly. – Add an SSL Adding an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to your website is another critical step to protecting your website from attacks. An SSL certificate encrypts the data that is transmitted between your website and your visitors’ browsers. Having an SSL certificate installed on your website can help prevent data breaches and ensure that your visitors’ data is secure. This is particularly important for eCommerce sites, where customers are expected to enter their private financial information. It can also help boost your website’s credibility and improve your search engine rankings. – Use SSH Finally, using SSH (Secure Shell) to access your website’s server is another critical step to protecting your online presence. SSH provides a secure way to access your website’s server and transfer files securely. Make sure you use SSH to access your website’s server instead of FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FTP is not secure and can be easily intercepted by hackers. Have a WordPress website? Read here about 8 WordPress maintenance tasks you must perform regularly. Tools For Website Audit As you have seen, there are numerous tools that can help in every step of a website audit. Some of the most popular and important tools are: Google Analytics Google Search Console Ahrefs Moz Yoast SEO Screaming Frog SEMrush

9. WAVE Accessibility Checker GTMetrix Conclusion A website audit is a crucial step in maintaining a strong online presence. By identifying areas that need improvement and making necessary changes, businesses can enhance the user experience, improve search engine rankings, and generate more traffic to their website. By following the steps outlined in this article and using the right tools, businesses can conduct a website audit and ensure that their website is performing at its best. However, we also understand that your website possibly has lots of pages, perhaps in the hundreds. And it may not be possible for you to conduct audits and fix issues with every single one of them. But website auditing isn’t optional, which means you must then choose the top pages that you want to focus on and get to those first. The other option is to contact us. At Webguru Infosystems, we only use the latest tools to scan entire websites and identify any and all issues. Our team of experts can also provide thorough future-proof solutions to any problems identified, be it content or security, or anything else. Contact us today for a spotless website. Resource: https://www.webguru-india.com/blog/website-audit-guide/ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… WebGuru Infosystems Y8, Block-EP, Sector V, Salt Lake, Kolkata-700091, India Website: https://www.webguru-india.com/ Email: enquiry@webguru-india.com Phone: +91-8420197208 Follow us on: