Web Design
Search engine optimization (SEO) is critically important to elevate your website’s visibility to search engines. Nearly 70% of online experiences start with a search engine. If your website does not rank highly for the terms your customers search for, you will lose those search engine leads to your competitors.
But how do you measure the effectiveness of your SEO? More importantly, how do you identify places where your web design could be improved to rank higher in search results for your keywords?
SEO firms conduct website audits to analyze your web design’s SEO strengths and weaknesses. Some of the factors a website audit might measure include:
- Website performance: Modern customers have short attention spans. Website design can have a major impact on a website’s speed.
- Search engine friendliness: A search engine must be able to navigate your site to index it properly. Page errors, broken links, and other technical issues can cause your site to drop in the search engine rankings.
- Content optimization: The age and amount of content can be just as important as keyword optimization in SEO web design. Your website’s meta data also contributes to the optimization of your content even though it is only visible to search engines.
- Device compatibility: Optimizing your website for mobile devices makes it easier for mobile users to consume your content and purchase your goods or services.
Now that you know what a website audit is, here are three reasons to have your website audited before your next web design:
Determine How Much Work is Needed
If your website is not ranking highly in search engine results, you may not be able to tell if you need a completely new website or a few touchups to your existing website. A website audit can identify deficiencies in your existing website so your website design agency knows how much work your website needs.
This will help you plan around your website optimization project including:
- Budget
- Timeframe
- Product or service launches
- Rebranding
Identify Keyword Opportunities
Maybe your website design is generally good, but you have not optimized your website for the right keywords. A website audit can find problems such as:
- Your website does not use your keywords with the right density to be indexed by the search engine algorithms.
- Your website is optimized for the wrong keywords because you have chosen keywords that searches do not use or keywords that have too much competition.
- Your website has missed opportunities to optimize for local searches. For example, a search for “web design” and “web design Dallas” will produce very different search results.
Fix Your Conversion Rate
Maybe you get a lot of traffic, but you fail to convert leads into paying customers. A website audit can find possible explanations for a low conversion rate. Some examples of fixable problems include:
- Slow loading: Leads will tend to navigate away from slow-loading websites
- Overbroad keywords: Your website might be appearing in generic searches that draw a lot of leads, but not a lot of customers for your services. For example, the keywords “car repair” might get you a lot of leads in your local searches, but you might have trouble converting them into paying customers if you only perform transmission work.
- Poor design: If customers cannot navigate your website or the information they seek is not easily found, they may leave your website.
Website audits can help identify many problems that can be fixed or redesigned. These fixes can lead to much more focused and effective online marketing.
