Is Your Website Working for You? 7 Benefits of a Website Audit
The Effectiveness of Website Audits
For the average small or medium size business (SMB), a website audit report can sound pretty intimidating. It probably seems like a very technical examination of the website’s architecture, construction, and other key elements such as errors that may exist in its coding. These are in fact a part of the process of a website audit report. A complete and thorough website audit involves more than just going through the basics.
This is one of the tools that website effectiveness analysts such as 5 Star Brand use to analyze and measure the impact of the components of your online marketing strategy and the steps needed to improve its performance and overall effectiveness.
The following is a list of the top seven ways a website audit can improve the marketing of your business.
1. SEO Fundamentals
No website audit can be complete without the examination and analysis of keywords. These are essential elements of Search Engine Optimization or SEO and as such are utilized by various search engines. Keywords help to determine placement and ranking in the results displayed by search engines. Regardless of the type of business you conduct, most tasks such as distributing a video via YouTube, posting blogs, or starting a new website will require the use of keywords in order to maximize SEO.
Keywords are the tool that search engines use to communicate and quickly assess the information available on your website. Yet, according to BIA Kelsey up to 56% of small and medium sized business websites, do not utilize keyword information on the page. An audit can also reveal if the relevant information is available in other areas on your site.
A proper analysis is needed in order to come up with the most effective keywords to ensure top- level ranking and placement of your SMB website in search engine results. Keywords form the basics of SEO and as such are very important in any successful SEO strategy.
2. Maximize SEO results
Twenty six percent of small and medium sizes websites do not show up in searches done online, this is according to BIA Kelsey. This is the top reason why many SMB websites have to employ effective SEO strategy and acquire the professional expertise necessary in order to get their site and business noticed. The higher your ranking on search engine results, then the higher your visibility will be for to online users who are your prospects.
In order to be visible to search engines, they must use their bots and crawlers to locate and crawl the website’s pages. It is important to know if your URL structure allows bots to engage and communicate with your site. There can be coding errors that prevent this from happening. The structure may have its own faults that make effective communication and even locating your site difficult or impossible.
If your site is not SEO friendly with the necessary programs in place, an audit of the website will reveal this and save you valuable time and money in trying to make a faulty website SEO friendly.
3. Invite email and phone queries
If your website does not facilitate queries and comments then you are missing a vital opportunity to engage potential customers. Phone numbers, names, and addresses are critical information that must be consistently provided on your home page. A Digitalscape report done on SMBs shows that a whopping 60% of sites fail to provide contact information such as a phone number on their home page.
An unbelievable 74.7% have no link to their email or a way that customers can comment, ask questions, or request additional information. If clients don’t have any contact information or phone number then they simply cannot call or get in touch with you. An audit of your website will reveal all these shortcomings and provide valuable information on the correct placement of vital information to ensure maximum engagement with your potential clients.
4. Avoid the spammer and malware trap
Once your site has been infected with any type of malware, it will be only a matter of time and not very long before search engines will detect their presence and stop displaying your site in their search results. A red page that warns customers that they may acquire a virus on your site is a death blow to your website and business. The spammer malware trap can be avoided by utilizing a website audit.
5. Meet and exceed users speed expectations
Research done by Forrester and Akamai show that an average of 47% of online users assume that a web page should load in under two seconds. Any failure to meet the expected norm, results in disappointment and frustration for visitors to your site and your potential customers. These include the 52% of users that are qualified as high spenders online. A website audit can easily detect the problems that affect the speed at which your website loads.
6. Increase Internet Sales
The content Marketing Association states that 68% of purchasers online read product information, comments, and reviews on products or services. Custom Content Council found that up to 78% of users, associate companies that provide information on their brands, goods, or services as businesses that are customer focused and build sound relationships with their clients.
This shows that customers crave information. User Interface Engineering shows that most consumers cannot get the information or content they search for most of the time. In fact up to 60% of the time! You can use a website audit to make sure that the relevant information is always available to your potential customers.
7. Determine marketing priorities
The point of having a website and SEO is to contribute to the overall marketing strategy of your business. An audit by qualified website effectiveness analysts, such as 5 Star Brand, can ensure that your website fulfills these expectations. The website’s readiness for SEO must be examined and assessed before wasting time and resources to implement SEO strategies.
Any findings and recommendations will be listed in the order of their importance with priority tags, thereby eliminating confusion as to where to begin. The bottom line is that a website audit can ensure your website performs well in searches, engage users, and turn visitors into customers.
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We’ll give you free consulting on website audit so you’ll understand how our service can benefit not just your website but your marketing and your business in general. Call us now or send us a message.
