Common Mistakes When You are Doing Website Audits
If companies do not pay attention to digital marketing, it becomes harder for them to be noticed, especially because many others are taking to the internet. That itself is a difficult task because of unreliable information available in abundance and infrequent website audits, causing a setback in the company's performance.
Website audits are vital to a successful and long-lasting run in the industry. We perform website audits to gather data and subsequently suggest changes accordingly. Some of the elements we focus on improving are on-page and off-page SEO, reputation, blogs, and conversion factors.
Here are 6 common mistakes we have found during our stint as website auditors that companies commit more often than not:
1. Missing Elements on Home Page
How your homepage looks is a representation of what you want your brand image to be. It is also a primary determinant of whether visitors will stay at your page or not. That is why it needs to be clear and effective in communicating with the visitors about your occupation within a time span of three to five seconds. One way of doing that is ditching a passive call to action with something more interactive. You could add cues like buy now or sign up for our newsletter as a way of gearing your visitors into action.
Even though the internet has become a staple for almost everyone on this planet, we have seen that companies still treat their websites as online brochures. Their focus is on products and services they have to offer instead of solutions they can present to a visitor with a dilemma.
2. SSL Certificates
During our audits, we found that although several sites had bought SSL certificates, they were not properly implemented which resulted in Google deeming them as unsafe sites. This is a critical issue that must be addressed and implemented as soon as possible because it can sometimes lead to identity theft.
3. Content Development
Content analysis is an essential component of a website audit because it is one of the major determinants to conversion rates. Blogging is a part of content development and is for the most part, unfortunately, undermined by many companies. Blogs are critical to search engine optimization because they are an effective way of addressing keyword gaps for search rankings. Not only for SEO, but blogs are also a catalyst for increased engagement on a website. To create content that search engines would promote on web searches, ensure that the minimum length of your blogs is at least 750 words that have keywords strategically placed throughout.
4. Reviews
One thing that makes a huge difference in the popularity and reliability of a website and subsequently the company is its online reputation. During these website audits, we noticed that often times there doesn't exist a proper review funnel to allow users to rate their experience on the website. In a time when having a steady stream of good reviews can make a huge difference in your online presence and engagement, a stage to rate user experience is important.
5. Inbound Links
One mistake we consistently found in companies during website audits was that they never had enough inbound links and even lesser companies had inbound link building strategy. This scenario is disheartening because inbound links continue to be a top-ranking factor. Quality inbound links are generated when you have strong, interesting, and shareable content.
6. On-page SEO
Often, SEO elements like internal links, H1 tags, alt attributes on images were either not thought out properly or they were completely missing. When it comes to ranking in web searches, there is a lot that is out of your hands. Thankfully on-page SEO is not one of them. Every page on your website should have a keyword phrase that is reinforced in meta title, description, header tags, page URLs, etc. Additionally, using schema markup helps pages of the website to be properly indexed by search engines.
Final Thoughts
To have a truly effective online presence, it becomes crucial for businesses to have an impactful website (with all its elements and conversion factors optimized). This means that there is a need to invest in developing an effective online presence as well as to keep tabs on your performance to have a competitive advantage.
