Auditing can sound like a scary concept, but in digital marketing, it is a vital, recurring need that keeps you informed on the performance of your marketing strategy. Regularly auditing not only your website, but also social media channels, ads effectiveness, and other pieces of your marketing mix can help you understand comprehensively what works, and what should change to give you the results you’re looking for out of these things you invest time (and often quite a bit of money) into. 

Today, we’re talking about website audits. Website audit reports are essentially a checkup for your website. And, just like regular checkups at a doctor’s office are recommended on a six-month to yearly basis, if you haven’t audited your website in a while (or ever!) it’s highly recommended that you do so. When we begin a website design project or implementation of large-scale SEO improvements for a client’s website, it’s one of the first places we start to get a solid understanding of what improvements need to be made to help our client reach their goals. 

Auditing your website can determine whether or not it is optimized to drive traffic, connect with the right audiences, generate leads and sales, and more. When Speak audits websites, we look at a number of factors. Let’s dive into the various types of audits you may want to perform or tap an expert to perform for you, and what each type of audit can illuminate for your organization. 

1. Lead Conversion Optimization

Conversion should be the main goal of any website – if your website isn’t bringing in leads and conversions, or if it isn’t bringing in the right kind of leads, it’s a strong indicator that there’s room for improvement! 

Sometimes a handful of minor changes is enough to better optimize your website for lead conversion, and sometimes, an audit reveals larger recommendations or the need for a redesign. When we audit for lead conversion optimization, we analyze a website’s conversion stats and opportunities for specific areas of improvement. We look at the traffic coming to your website and where that traffic is coming from.

Knowing who is coming to your website will help you better understand your audiences’ behaviors and will help you pinpoint where on the Internet your target audiences are interacting. We can set up tools that give us an in-depth understanding of your traffic – where they’re clicking, which buttons and calls-to-action they’re scrolling past, what content they’re engaging with, how long they’re spending on any given page, and how they use the navigation.

Google Analytics for Data Tracking

Google Analytics is a fantastic tool for getting the most up-to-date analytics for your website. Oh, and by the way – if you’re reading this before July 1, 2023 be aware that Google Analytics will soon be sunsetting their old tracking software, Universal Analytics, and replacing it with their new analytics property, GA4. It’s crucial that you get GA4 implemented on your website before UA goes away for good, so if you haven’t yet done so, stop what you’re doing right now and carve out some time to make the switch! 

We’re here to help. 

GA4 can be tricky to get set up correctly, but our team can help! We’ve helped dozens of clients implement GA4 on their website over the last many months, and we’d be happy to get it set up for your organization. Simply fill out our contact form and let us know you need help with GA4 implementation.  

2. Content Audit

The next big question we’ll assess in a comprehensive website audit is whether or not your website content is informative, not outdated, and how it can be improved. Your website’s content does far more than explain your products or services and tell your brand story. These things are important, but we also want to make sure that the content on your website is working to drive more visitors to your website, and then working to keep them there. 

Many websites house a lot of content. This is especially true if you have a blog or other form of regularly published content being added to your site. (Which, by the way, you absolutely should.) A regular content audit can help you identify which pieces of content people are engaging with more or less, which content needs to be updated or improved, or repurposed into other formats to open up the opportunity to drive new traffic with old content! 

When we perform content audits, we enlist our team of Content Specialists to conduct a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis means we identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The final objective of this report is to reveal what’s working and not working with your content strategy and system for content development, and help you adapt your content plan to help you reach your marketing goals. This report will also ensure the information on your website about your organization (your business address and contact information, for example) is correct and easily discoverable, and that content across all of your pages contain keywords and phrases that will boost your rankings in SERPs (Search engine results pages). Outdated, irrelevant, or repeated content can hurt conversions and damage your SEO ranking, so knowing how content is affecting your site is vital.

3. Competitive Analysis

Our strategists can conduct a competitive audit of your website and digital marketing efforts as well. We’ll assess what is working for other companies in your industry, area, or market and provide a comprehensive report of new tactics we recommend you incorporate into your own strategy. We dive into the marketing strategies, online presence, and overall performance of your competitors to produce a SWOT analysis you can compare against your own strategy, and help you identify what any opportunities your brand could be missing out on. 

4. Search Engine Optimization

We can also use an audit process to assess your search engine optimization (SEO) and identify strategies and adjustments that will help your site appear higher up in SERPs. 

An SEO audit may look at backlinks that point to your site from various places online, make recommendations for optimizing your website to rank for target keywords, and gauge how links and pages are helping or hurting your website’s overall visibility and Google-ability.

5. Design and Layout

The design of your website is about look and feel, yes, but it can also be a key component in how users interact with your pages, buttons, and content. When we conduct a web design audit, we dive into every page on your website and look for indicators that the design may be helping or hurting your site’s performance. Indicators may include: 

• Is the navigation easy to use and understand? 

• Are CTAs clear and visible? 

• Is the design ADA compliant and accessible for all users? 

• Is the copy too small, overly crowded, or difficult to read? 

• Are images and videos optimized for the web? 

• Are there design elements that are slowing your website down and hurting its performance? 

• Is your site optimized for mobile and other devices? 

• Does the design help or hinder the overall user experience? 

6. Forms and information capture

If you have forms on your website, we highly recommend auditing their performance on a regular basis as well. Forms are a small but mighty part of websites that, if not optimized for performance and user experience, can majorly impact your website’s ability to capture leads and information. 

Forms can include anything from lead generation forms to downloadable resource forms to general contact forms to payment forms on e-commerce sites. If your forms aren’t working how they should, you’re missing out on crucial information and data. 

7. Social Media

You may not think about external marketing efforts affecting your website traffic and performance, but every piece of your online strategy can contribute to the traffic being driven to your site. Your social media presence is no exception. If your social channels are not guiding traffic to your website, or if they’re driving spammy or non-targeted traffic to your site, it’s time to conduct a social media audit. 

When we perform social media audits, we look at all of your social media accounts to ensure they’re branded, that bios have necessary keywords and details, and that the content you post is optimized to engage the right people. 

This information can help you understand how you need to update your social media strategy and/or overall digital marketing strategy to drive more traffic to your newly optimized website. 

Ready for a website checkup? Speak can help. 

Whether you’re looking to audit a small piece of your online presence or conduct a full deep dive into your web marketing performance, we have a team of experts who can help. From SEO experts and content specialists to brand strategists to designers and developers, our team is ready to help you develop an action course to get your website optimized to drive leads and conversions and get you seen online. 

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