What is a website audit and why is it important for achieving your marketing goals?
A website audit is a way to determine how well your website is performing based on criteria that impacts site performance. An audit helps greatly in identifying the areas where your site is working as well as the areas that may need improvement.
During a website audit, each web page is checked thoroughly to give you a better understanding of whether it’s optimized to achieve its goals. Different types of audits focus on different areas of marketing:
- SEO Website Audit – evaluates things that influence your site's performance on search engine results pages (SERPs), including keyword usage, content, metadata, page speed, user experience, and video optimization.
- SEO Link Audit – looks at the links pointing to your website to find opportunities and issues related to how you rank for target keywords.
- Lead Conversion Optimization Audit – analyzes how and where traffic is coming to your website to determine conversion opportunities and issues.
- Competitive Website Audit – tracks competitor websites to find opportunities that could benefit your online strategy.
- Social Media Audit – reviews your presence on social media to see if the content is consistent with your branding across all digital platforms and if your social media is effective in attracting traffic to your website.
What a Marketing Audit Does For Your Brand
If you’ve ever run a marketing campaign and it missed the mark, you probably want to know what went wrong. Was your messaging clear? Did you provide relevant value for your audience? Was the call-to-action compelling enough? Were website visitors bouncing rather than converting?
A marketing audit helps you to determine the areas of your marketing strategy that are delivering opportunities and leads and which areas could use a little tweak or a larger kind of refinement.
During a marketing website audit, you do a comprehensive review of your web traffic data and conversion rate to help fix any gaps in your marketing strategy. This type of audit could include aspects of all the other types to get the job done. In the end, you’ll likely be able to see what went haywire with that underperforming campaign and use the information you learned to make adjustments that enhance overall website performance.
5 Simple Steps for Getting Results from a Marketing Audit
- Collect Relevant Data
Gather the type of data that gives you an overview of your marketing health. You’ll likely need a high-level breakdown of where traffic to your site is coming from. You’ll also want to take a deep dive into how your landing pages are converting prospects into leads.
- Analyze Website Traffic Data
Interpret what your website traffic data is telling you about your marketing performance. Look at your current traffic, its consistency over time, and trends. Can you spot something that may have caused the traffic to improve or taper off recently?
Make note of where most of your website traffic comes from: organic search, social media, or referral. Experts say these three sources are directly related to your top-of-funnel marketing efforts. Relate your historical traffic data to what you may or may not have done differently during each time frame. Can you find a cause for any changes?
- Track Your Lead Conversion Rate
An important metric for your marketing is the percentage of site visitors who have turned into leads, otherwise known as your conversion rate. You want to interpret this data based on traffic leads over time. How is your rate trending?
To find out specific things that drove conversions over time, look at data from landing page performance. How did each landing page do? Analyze each one by views, submission rate, new contacts rate, and other measurables to find the stand-outs. Do you see a top performer? Any landing page losers? Calculate the average conversion rate for all your landing pages. Is it strong or weak?
- Determine Marketing Gaps
Do you need improvement with website traffic or in your lead conversions? Use your conversion rate to decide.
If you’re running on HubSpot, your average traffic-to-lead conversion rate benchmark is about 0.93% - which roughly translates into a one-visitor conversion for every 100 website visitors.
If your conversion rate is better than the average, your gap to work on is increasing website traffic.
If your conversion rate is lower than the average, your gap to work on is improving your conversion rate to increase the number of leads that come from your current traffic.
- Find Stop-Gap Measures
Once you identify the gaps in your marketing, you can create a strategy for improvement based on new goals and take action. Here are a few ideas.
To Increase Web Traffic
- Increase blogging frequency.
- Increase your social media promotion.
- Track and optimize for relevant long-tailed keywords.
To Improve Conversion Rates
- Add calls-to-action (CTAs) to your five most visited website pages.
- A/B test some of your landing pages to get more specific data on them.
- Optimize thank you pages to increase conversions.
11outof11 Knows Website Audits
When you’re ready to find out how well your site is performing with a website audit, connect with 11outof11. Request a complimentary call with an 11outof11 expert. Contact us to learn more.