Benefits of a Website Audit or an Online Health Check

As I’m sure you know, it takes a considerable amount of time and energy to create a successful online presence. And with the Digital Marketing taking over nowadays, it is vital to keep your digital assets in check.

A very possible scenario is that you work hard, trying to create the best content for your business, posting constantly on social media, and doing everything you can think of to boost your business. But the results just aren’t what they could be, despite your hard efforts, traffic to your website remains low.

It is easy to get confused and feel hopeless in this scenario, but not all is lost. By doing a website audit – a bit of a deep dive into your site’s analytics – and by using some SEO tools, we can help you determine where the problems you are facing come from.

• There could be technical issues in the way your website has been set up, affecting the SEO and the overall website health.
• Or it could be that your site does not have enough authority to rank high enough in which case you will need to work on your backlinks.
• Or perhaps you haven’t properly identified your target audience and are not using the correct platforms to communicate with them.

All of this is a part of the process of website optimization, wherever the gaps are in the system, an online health check will discover them. 

If you are using an agency to help with your health check, they will also provide some good advice on how to start working through and fixing these issues.

What to expect from the health check

Some agencies only focus on technical SEO aspects in their website audit reports. We find this to be only one part of a bigger puzzle and believe that a wider range of factors should be viewed. Which is the reason why we don’t call our investigation an SEO audit, but an Online Health Check. It paints a bigger picture of the overall situation and your company’s online presence as a whole.

The Goal

The aim of the health check/audit is to identify areas for potential improvement, no matter how small.  Online presence is all about 1% gains – so it will be quite detailed.

Remember – The audit will be about areas of improvement, and probably will not mention the things that you are doing well. Be prepared to learn about everything that is not currently working well.

The Process

During the audit process, a wide range of factors will be inspected. 

Most of these relate to improving your rankings, however, some agencies can also review things like user experience and the content journey. 

The aim should be to improve the whole performance of the website and its visibility on the web.

A standard website audit usually includes:

The below list is just an example scenario, depending on the agency you are working with, the areas inspected may vary a bit. This list is based on a health check by us – MMR – a creative agency based in South Melbourne. 

Some points may be touched on very briefly, just to identify that there are some issues in that area.  

For example – the UX feedback would probably be quite a surface level as this could be a full audit of its own. The purpose of this website audit is to highlight the main issues.

• Overall site health score 
• Site speed test results – desktop and mobile
• List of all high, medium, and low priority errors and warnings on the website. These are usually quite easy technical fixes.
• WordPress back end setup and plugins. 
• Traffic analytics, traffic sources, traffic flow, devices used, etc.
• Keyword audit 
• Competitor keywords overlap
• Domain score – Backlinks and page authority – referring domains. 
• Competitor analysis – including traffic comparison, keyword overlap, etc. 
• Quick social media analysis.
• Email marketing, if it’s a part of your strategy and how you collect data.
• Advice on target audience and tone of voice
• Advice on overall site structure and UX 

Next steps in the process.

Now that you have reviewed your website audit results and have been enlightened with everything that is not working, you can make a strategic plan of attack to improve all of these aspects.

You have a few different options for tackling this and it is totally up to you how you proceed with the challenge.

MMR for example usually provides you with the following options:

Option 1 – Let the agency handle it. This will require less input from yourself, but it will also cost more. Read more about working with agencies.

Option 2 – Working together with the agency. In this scenario, some things will be actioned by the agency and some things will be actioned by you and your team. The agency will provide you the guidelines for the tasks ahead. The ratio of who will do what is purely dependent on the agreement between you and your agency.

Option 3 – Do it yourself and use the agency for assistance in ad hoc bases. This would be charged on an hourly bases case by case, depending on what you require help with. 

You can always negotiate different terms, perhaps the agency can provide you with the guidelines, and then just check in with every quarter to assess your progress. 

If you think that this is something your business would benefit from, please feel free to get in touch, we are happy to answer all your questions.

Let’s start the discussion and see where it takes us.

Interested to take your business strategy to the next level? Learn more about Inbound Marketing.

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