A website audit is a crucial process for identifying areas for improvement and making sure that a site meets best practices for performance, usability, and other key aspects.

DIY site owners can conduct an effective website audit that improves site performance with minimal effort, maximizing productivity in the process.

Alternatively, site owners can choose to invest in tools or hire a third party to perform the audit on their behalf. Regardless of the approach, the goal should always be to deliver the best possible user experience (UX).

Here’s a step-by-step guide to perform a website audit. If there are any specific areas that the audit should focus on, fine-tune the steps to include them.

1. Define the audit’s goals

• Identify the purpose: Determine the primary objective of the website audit, e.g., SEO enhancement, performance optimization, or UX improvement.
• Select KPIs: Choose key performance indicators that will help measure success, such as traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, and page speed.

2. Crawl the website

• Use automated tools: Tools such as Screaming Frog, SEMrush, or Ahrefs can help analyze a site’s structure, including the navigation menu and existing sitemap, and expedite the process of identifying potentially broken links. Many of these services can be tailored to a site owner’s specific needs, but please note that the service might charge for this customization, which can affect a DIY site owner’s budget.
• Check for errors: A manual check for 404 errors, redirects, and duplicate content is always helpful.

3. Analyze SEO factors

• On-page SEO: Review each page and post’s titles, meta descriptions, and keyword usage. Note any discrepancies and make suggestions on how to improve them.
• Content quality: Evaluate the quality and relevance of the content to ensure it meets the audience’s needs.
• Backlink profile: Evaluate the site’s backlinks to determine their quality and identify any toxic links that should be updated or removed.

4. Evaluate performance

• Page speed: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, or GTmetrix to check loading times and performance scores.
• Mobile-ready style: These tools might also be able to check if the site is mobile-responsive. Over 64% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, according to AI platform Exploding Topics. Therefore, a site must function equally well on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop.

5. Check UX

• Navigation: Evaluate the ease of navigation on the site’s current layout. Are the critical sections in the navigation, i.e., if you’re a restaurant, do you have a copy of your restaurant menu on your site?
• Design and layout: Provide a clean, professional, and appealing design that aligns with branding.
• Accessibility: Verify that the site complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines might include alt text for images and proper heading structures.

6: Review data analytics

• Google Analytics: Analyze traffic sources, user behavior, and conversion paths to identify trends and pinpoint areas for improvement.
• User feedback: Collect feedback through surveys or user testing to gain insights into UX.

7: Assess technical aspects

• Site speed optimization: Identify large images, excessive scripts, or inefficient code that might slow down a site.
• SSL certificate: Ensure the site uses HTTPS for secure data transfer.
• XML sitemap and robots.txt: Verify that the sitemap is up to date and that the robots.txt file allows for proper indexing.

8. Compile findings

• Create a report: DIY site owners should summarize audit findings, including strengths, weaknesses, and actionable recommendations.
• Prioritize issues: Rank issues based on their potential impact and the effort required to address them.

9. Develop an action plan

• Set clear actions: Outline specific steps for improvements, assign responsibilities, and set deadlines.
• Monitor progress: Regularly track site performance and make adjustments as needed.

10. Schedule regular audits

• Keeping your site up to date requires ongoing monitoring. Schedule quarterly or biannual audits to make sure that the site remains optimized.

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You also have the option to hire Write On Hosting to conduct a site audit on your behalf.