We all know the time and effort involved in auditing a client’ssite. From optimizing SEO to testing user experience, there’s alot to get through, and the results for your clients are notalways immediate.Rather than being overwhelmed with juggling multiple websiteaudits at once, and before getting bogged down with thoselarger clients with content-heavy websites, it’s always worthtaking a step back and looking at the bigger picture of whatan audit involves.It’s also worth considering the value of website builders whenit comes to optimization and the heavy lifting they do in thebackground. Not only can they save you time, but they can alsosave you expense on subscription fees for SEO tools that arealready built-inEnter your text here...
The Lowdown On AuditingYour Clients’ Websites
In recent years, we’ve all been watching Google take furthersteps to prioritize page speed. Knowing its value for search,reviewing page speed scores is a good place to start for anyclient website audit. Using your website analytics tools of choice,identify the pages that are slow to load and that bring down theauthority of your client’s site.One of the first things your clients will check when the audit iscomplete is their site’s discoverability, so get optimizing for SEO.Missing optimization data is one of the most easily identifiableand fixable discoveries, including meta tags to canonicals andalt tags. Website audits also provide an opportunity to identifyand isolate technical-related SEO problems such as 404 errors(page not found) and non-indexed pages. Always test user experience when conducting any website audit.If users struggle with navigation, your client may have issues thataffect site performance, including load times and overall usability.Ask for feedback from team members after testing your client’ssite. Evaluate their user journey experience, how they consumeyour client’s content and their ability to see and respond to CTAs. Of course, your client will want to ensure that every visitor toits site can access all content and features, which is whereyour accessibility audit comes in. It helps you ensure that asite is usable for everyone, including those with disabilities. Werecommend that you familiarize yourself with the Web ContentAccessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), the shared global standardof web accessibility, and ensure your client sites follow them.Finally, considering that ranking well on search also relies on yourclient’s site having good quality, relevant content for users, let’sdelve into some detail on conducting a content audit.
The Content Side Of A Website Audit
Reviewing the existing content on a website is often the mostgrueling part of a wider audit. Whether it’s you or your clientconducting it, setting out simple steps to follow each time helpsmake it a much more seamless process. It means you or yourclient can spend more time assessing the results and filling in thegaps, inspiring a new content strategy that achieves results. Hereare six critical steps to follow or share with your client
Step 1: Locate all the content,and prioritize new work.
Depending on the brand’s history, review what content best
serves its key metrics within the past three to five years. Prioritize
those items to model any future content creation. Different
verticals will require different content needs, so make sure you
understand the types and themes of content that perform
best for that industry.
Step 2: Catalog by desired KPI and key topics.
Once you solidify the type of data you are collecting and why, use
your audit to improve the labeling and archiving process. Create
an audit spreadsheet with tabs that clearly label each data point
Step 3: Assess whether the content
needs updating
Save time and money by repurposing pieces of content that were
prescient or performed well and just need a few updates. Refresh
stylistic aspects if the brand voice has evolved
Step 4: Find out what is (and isn’t)
performing on search.
Improve SEO by updating out-of-date internal links, optimizingyour metadata and URLs, and tagging all content. Identify pieces that are overstuffed with keywords or too short and copy edit orextend them for better performance.
Step 5: Determine where new content is needed.
Check that all key topics are represented in the current contentmix. Fill in any gaps and structure the new content strategyaround themes that have in the past performed best organically.
Step 6: Recommend a plan for outdated content.
Remove any content that brings no traction but consider revisionof content that has potential. Capitalize on the SEO standing ofoutdated work by reusing high-performing URLs.
The Value Of Website Builders InSupporting Your Clients’ SEO Needs
Website and content audits can seem like major operations butif you include them as a part of a process you schedule two tothree times a year, this helps keep your clients’ sites healthy andinforms their marketing strategy.However, it’s not always a one-size-fits-all approach. The amountof traffic and the number of web pages of a client site willdetermine how you conduct them. It is recommended to carry out mini audits as regularly as you can, which can involvechecking your client site’s functionality and making surenavigation and click-through actions are working as they should.Website builders can remove much of the hassle of site audits,which makes them an attractive proposition not only for buildingyour client sites but also for managing and optimizing them.Conveniently, much of the auditing happens in the background.Take page speed and site performance as an example. With Wix,you can access both Google PageSpeed Insights and the WixSite Speed Dashboard from Wix Analytics in your Editor. Thesetools help you identify problems with page speed or otherrelevant Core Web Vitals Also, search engines are notorious for changing and updatingtheir algorithms without any prior warning. Website builderscan keep up with these trends on your behalf and update theirsolutions to reflect industry changes.Any website builder integrating SEO tools within its editor offersexcellent support in isolating technical-related SEO problems.Wix SEO allows you to bulk redirect out-of-date pages, performinstant Google indexing and easily customize SEO optimizations,including meta tags, which will boost your client’s chances ofbeing found on search.Wix also offers an SEO setup checklist that ensures you havecovered the SEO essentials before your client’s site is up andrunning. The checklist is a great place to begin your SEO journeywith a client and a strong foundation for any longer-term SEOoptimization and auditing plan you build. Add to that Wix’s recently announced partnership with technicalSEO SaaS company Deepcrawl, which sees the integration of itscustom-designed SEO tools into the Wix platform. The custom-built app automates weekly website crawls and detects issuesand errors such as broken pages, dead-end links, and contentthat doesn’t meet best-practice guidelines for SEO – and providesusers with actionable information on how to fix these issues.