Mistakes You Should Avoid During A Website Audit
What are the mistakes you should avoid during a website audit? A good website audit is important for getting a holistic view of your site’s SEO health. The search engines take a range of factors into account when ranking websites, so it’s important to be up-to-date on all the changes. Fortunately, a good website audit can help you identify any key SEO mistakes that you may have made.
Conducting a website audit is an important step in getting a holistic view of your site’s SEO health. This process will allow you to see where you need improvement and make changes accordingly. It’s also important to commit to a process and not make changes on the fly or with “quick fixes.” By following these tips, you’ll be able to keep your site SEO healthy and improve your rankings on the SERPs.
What is a website audit?
A website audit is a process of evaluating a website for areas of improvement to increase traffic and improve the user experience. The audit will look at everything from the website’s design, to its content, to the way it is coded.
A website audit is a routine analysis of your website’s performance. The analysis considers SEO gaffes, technical issues, and design inconsistencies. Conducting a web audit helps to assess the technical and SEO issues affecting a website. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis).
List of mistakes to avoid during a website audit
1. Not paying attention to accessibility
One of the most important factors to consider when designing or auditing a website is accessibility. All web content should be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities and those using assistive technologies.
2. Failing to check the site’s URL structure and crawlability
Another common mistake is neglecting to ensure that search engine bots can navigate the website’s URL structure and crawl all of its content. This can lead to decreased visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
3. Forgetting to check the Text/Metafiles
A website audit should also include a check of the text/meta files for each page on the site. These files contain important information about each page, such as its title, description, keywords, etc., that help search engines determine how best to rank it.
4. Neglecting Off-page SEO tactics
SEO is not just about optimising your website’s content and code; it’s also about optimising your site for external factors like social media, backlinks, etc. A comprehensive website audit should take all of these into account.
5. Missing elements on home page
Your homepage should show people what your brand is about. It should tell them about your services and products without clicking through several pages. One of the primary drivers of visitors to a site is whether visitors will stay on your page. If you want your home to sell faster, you need to communicate effectively with your visitors.
6. SSL certificates
Although several sites had bought SSL certificates, they were not implemented correctly, resulting in Google deeming them unsafe sites. Identifying theft is a critical issue, and it must be addressed and implemented immediately. It can lead to identity theft and sometimes even lead bankruptcy.
7. Content development
A website’s content analysis is crucial to determining how well-organized and engaging the website is and how effectively it captures the reader’s attention.
Companies that don’t provide blogging opportunities for their employees tend to lose top talent.
Blogs are a critical component of search engine optimisation (SEO). They are an effective way of addressing keyword gaps. Blogs are great for SEO, but they’re also effective for increasing web engagement.
Create content that search engines will promote on web searches. Make sure your blog posts are at least 750 words. They should have key phrases strategically placed within them. If you want to know more about writing an SEO-friendly blog post, you may read more here.
8. Inbound links
One mistake many companies find themselves constantly finding in their website audit reports is that they never have enough incoming links. Even for very low-volume sites, it’s an absolute must-have strategy for SEO.
It’s disheartening to see how inbound links continue to be a top-ranking factor. Quality inbound links are generated with strong, engaging, and shareable content.
9. On-page SEO
Sometimes it’s not obvious what is going to be the best way to write about a particular topic. As a small business owner, you have a few things you can do to improve your ranking. If you put these ideas into action, you’ll see an improvement in your search rankings.
You can fix a broken on-page SEO by changing one tiny thing on every page on your website: its meta title, meta description, header tags, page URL, etc. Search engine optimisation and schema markup help website pages to be properly indexed by search engines.
Types of website audits
There are three main types of website audits:
1. Technical Audit
A technical audit reviews the website’s infrastructure and code to identify any potential problems that could affect the site’s performance or security.
2. Content Audit
A content audit reviews the website’s content to ensure that it meets the site’s goals and is properly organised and formatted.
3. SEO Audit
An SEO audit reviews the website’s search engine optimisation (SEO) settings and practices to ensure that the site is being effectively optimised for search engines.
Other useful SEO tips for your website audit
First, make sure to focus on quality content. This means writing well-researched, informative, and engaging articles for your audience. In addition, be sure to use keyword-rich titles and descriptions for your pages, as this will help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Schema markup is a code that helps search engines understand the content of your pages better. It can help improve your site’s visibility and ranking in SERPs when used correctly.
Useful steps for auditing your website
1. Start your website audit with the design
Website design is important in website audit because the layout, colours, fonts, images, and overall design of your website can impact how users interact with it. If your website looks outdated, confusing, or visually unappealing, users will likely abandon it.
2. Search for site duplicates during your website audit
You need to make sure that no website has the exact duplicate. Be unique and original.
1. Compare a similar website with yours. You can use a tool like SEMrush.
2. Check for Site Out-of-Date. If your site appears to be outdated, you may need to update the information or content. You can use a tool like Google Webmaster Tools to check the status of your site.
3. Analyse site speed
Why is it important to analyse site speed in a website audit? Site speed is an important consideration in website audits because it can affect the user experience, conversion rates, and SEO. Poor site speed can also increase abandonment rates and lower customer satisfaction. When users visit a website, they want to experience a fast and smooth browsing experience.
4. Analyse site traffic
The traffic to the site is relatively high. This can be attributed to the fact that the site is well-designed and easy to navigate. Additionally, the site offers a wide range of information, which may be appealing to potential customers. You can use different tools to analyse your site traffic to make the task easier and more automated.
5. Check the content quality during your website audit
This includes both the accuracy and the readability of the text. Each of these measures looks at different factors such as word length, sentence length, and complexity to determine how easy it is for someone to read your content. A content audit will help you identify any areas where you can improve the quality of your content. It will also show you how well your website performs compared to your competitors. This way, you can see what areas need more work before you make changes.
6. Conduct individual SEO content analysis
This is where an in-depth on-page optimisation audit can come in handy. A good on-page optimisation audit will help you determine how well each page is optimised for specific keywords and phrases and identify areas that may need improvement.
One popular approach is to use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool to identify relevant keywords for your site and then evaluate how well your site’s pages are optimised for those terms. You can also use online tools like PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest to measure how quickly your pages load and whether they’re meeting web accessibility standards.
7. Analyse the top pages for keywords
Why do we need to analyse top pages for keywords in a website audit? One of the most important steps in any website audit is to analyse the top pages for keywords. By understanding the keywords used most frequently on the site, you can narrow down your audit to the most important areas to focus on.
Who can help you with your website audit?
Having an effective online presence means having an impactful website. You’ll see precisely how to make sure you optimise the elements and conversion factors that are most important for your business.
It’s important to invest in building an effective online presence and to monitor your performance online. If you want to improve your website presence and avoid different mistakes during a website audit, we recommend you partner with Ubique Digital Solutions. UDS is a highly reliable solution agency that can help you with website audit, development and maintenance. Feel free to connect with our team of experts.
