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In our last post, we took a look at how analytics can provide information about site performance. However, knowing what is happening becomes even more valuable when you gain insight as to why it is happening. For example, analytics may show a high bounce rate, and an audit may reveal the problem is due to slow load time. Likewise, low conversions on a landing page may be due to too many form fields.
This is precisely the type of stuff a website audit uncovers.
Elements To Look For In A Website Audit
Before we take a look at some of the individual elements available from a site audit, bear in mind that the information is best viewed from a big picture perspective. Audits are a great way to better understand the overall user experience (commonly referred to as UX) your audience has when interacting with your site. The better the UX, the longer users will remain on your site, and the more conversions you will see.
Below are some of the elements of a site audit that should be reviewed to glean insight around user experience and the performance of your site.
- Metadata – Metadata is essentially data that describes other data. Metadata is used by search engines’ web crawlers to help rank a page’s relevance against a query. While examples of metadata are numerous, when it comes to search engine optimization, some of the most common examples are title tags (the title of the webpage), meta description (a summary of the information found on the webpage) and image ALT tags (an image tag used to describe what’s pictured). Audits rate the relevance and use of metadata as it relates to SEO.
- Site content/word count/keywords – Website audits also review and rate site content, word count, and keywords. Site content includes the copy on your site, the words you identify as keywords and their use throughout the copy, as well as the overall word count. Audits score your site content against relevant queries.
- Technical errors (broken links, images/fonts/scripts not loading, etc) – Audits crawl your site to identify technical errors, including but not limited to broken links and images, fonts, or scripts that are not loading. These errors negatively impact the user experience.
- Desktop/mobile speed – Audits also identify the load time and performance speed of your site on desktop and mobile devices. Site speed is a critical performance indicator that can directly impact your bottom line. For every second that it takes to load your site, bounce rate increases and conversions decrease.
What To Do With Audit Results
Here are some of the audit issues discussed above, and how you can employ the results to improve website performance and conversions.
- Technical errors – The appropriate response here depends on the specific error – but in general, if it’s broken, fix it! If a link is broken or outdated, check the URL and ensure that it is pulling from the correct place. Additionally, ensure all assets are being loaded via SSL.
- Speed issues – Speed issues can be caused by a variety of factors. This site offers a fairly comprehensive checklist to help troubleshoot the loading speed of your website.
- Content issues – Search engines ultimately want to return search results that are helpful to the searcher. Audits that return low scores based on content indicate that crawlers may not rank your site high against other sites based on the same type of content. Improving your content scores may require keyword research and/or additional content to make your site more credible and thus rank higher.
- Metadata – Create unique tags and meta descriptions for each page based on keyword research.
Used in tandem, website analytics and audits create valuable opportunities for site owners to make improvements for a more effective, user-friendly site that results in higher conversions.
PixelPeople offers professional website auditing services using a mix of software and real people to audit your site. Contact us for a detailed audit report and to-do list for web developers, designers, and content writers.
