The website serves as the home for a business online. It stands to reason that every business owner wants their website to be its best. However, many do not check back into the website to fine tune it. At times, this causes clients to find alternative services. The solution is to do periodic website audits.
These audits are nothing like the dreaded IRS audits. Instead, it’s taking a checklist of items to look in on around the various parts of the website. These checklists can be short and sweet or extremely detailed. Which part of that spectrum an audit falls into often depends on the business.
As for timing, that will vary too. However, performing website audits at least every six months will catch a lot of opportunities to improve before they get out of hand. Businesses that rely heavily on their websites (i.e. the website is the way many people buy), that figure could be monthly or quarterly. It comes down to picking the schedule your business needs, not an arbitrary number.
Audits should look at all aspects of the website. Most people start with a look at their statistics. Writing down and tracking visitors, bounce rates, and actions taken is a big help when trying to figure out if something is working or not. After all, there’s rarely time to devote to something that isn’t working in business owner life. After statistics, it’s good to go through and look at the settings just to confirm they’re still accurate.
Once those two things are done, it’s time to check the artistic parts of SEO. This can include the SEO keywords, fields, types of content, and so on. The end goal with this part is to double check all the website components working for you behind the scenes and make sure you’re still following your vision. This serves as a check to ensure the website is still doing what it needs to do for the business to succeed.