How to kick-back your competitors with a website audit.
Posted 7th April 2009 at 11:09 PM by Amanti Code
“Keeping your website competitive by tuning up its performance.
Where to begin on turning the heat up on competitors.”
Where to begin on turning the heat up on competitors.”
I’ll bet your site is probably much better than your competitors and that it offers something of unique value to your market. You feel it’s time to kick-back. Pondering the thought, you know you need to do something about it, but you ask… “Where do I begin?” Great first answer.
The main feature of this article is to provide a thorough analysis of how to conduct a website audit to maximize search engine optimisation efforts. This article aims to focus on the initial stages of how to improve a websites positioning in the search engine results.
Remember, a website exists as an extension of you or your clients overall brand image. A website therefore represents you or your client in both the virtual and real world, so it’s important to make a good first and lasting impression.
Before conducting any type of SEO strategy or implementing any type of SEO tactic, it’s important to first know why you are conducting a site audit and what the goals of auditing the site are. There are many reasons for conducting site audits, most of which fall into two major categories; (1) to achieve a new websites goal or (2) to monitor a websites performance against measurable targets. In addition, website audits can be grouped into three different types: (a) content, (b) functionality and, (c) design.
But before we embark on how to conduct a website audit, let’s quickly evaluate why website audits are important to your online presence.
·Traffic quantity: If you have a website or if you’re conducting a client website audit and find the website is receiving little to no traffic, you need to know why people are not visiting the site.
· Traffic quality: What percentage are new visits? And what percentage are return visits? Evaluate why some of your visitors are returning while others are not.
·Useability and accessibility: How can you enhance the users experience on your site and provide better pathways by redesigning your site architecture including internal linking structure. According to a Jupiter research study on site architecture, 16% of visitors leaving a site do so due to poorly labelled links. Having a well defined and organised linking structure will help you overcome this common problem.
·Content analysis: Comparing the deliverability of your website with your competitors. Also referred to as benchmarking. Drawing up a matrix contrasting content modules of competitors enables you to better distinguish your objectives and position yourself as an aggressive competitor.
·Key content: Derived from the content analysis above, includes identifying the key content areas you’re competitors have that you don’t have. Is your competitor’s key content relevant to your sites objectives?
·Audience profiles: It’s important to determine the profile types of visitors you or your client wants to attract.
Get the full website seo audit article at amanticode.com
As you may have become aware, website audits to improve search engine rankings can apply to almost every website trying to achieve a top search engine ranking. In fact SEO strategist Jessica Bowman at Search Engine Land it’s a wise investment for many types of companies suggesting website audits can help get SEO changes moving through the system.
Above are some of the major factors as to why it’s important to conduct a website audit. Essentially, a well organised and executed website audit can help identify and measure the key aspects of your websites current performance. It can also help to identify opportunities to improve traffic quantity and quality, useability and accessibility, rate of return visitors, conversions, and overall performance.
Now that we’ve established the ‘why’ let’s move on to the ‘how’, How to conduct a website audit to increase your website traffic, improve your websites search engine ranking and obtain a top search engine ranking. It’s important to understand website audits are typically comprised of the same elements. Each internet marketing campaign has different goals and different audience profiles it aims to target, including its own challenges to overcome. While there are, of course, many ways to conduct a website audit, we will outline here the major and most common components of a website audit model that can be implemented to virtually any website.
[1] First you want to begin with a Content Analysis. This involves searching your keywords in Google (or any other search engine you aim to rank highly for) and writing down the URLs of the top three ranked websites. If you wish, however, to conduct a more thorough analysis, you may want to select the top five ranked websites. Choosing to compare more websites will provide more raw data which maybe of benefit further in the audit process.
[2] This step involves drawing up a matrix where you compare, contrast, and cross analyse between your site and your competitors site based on very specific search engine ranking related criteria. Web content expert David Moore at iQcontent publications provides a comprehensive and detailed list of criteria divided into three main categories; Content, functionality, and design. Essentially, what you want to aim to do here is to assess the user experience and counter balance it with search engine ranking factors. The criteria to measure your site against include:
Content:
·Relevance
·Web-friendly format
·Accuracy
·Appropriate file formats and Meta data
·Customer service information
·Organisational and Offering information
·Legal
Functionality:
·Search
·Transactional
·Useability
Design:
·Navigation
·Information Architecture
·Graphic Design
·Accessibility
·Quick to download
·User orientation
Content
When analysing your websites content these are questions you may want to consider.
·Is the main purpose of the site immediately clear from the home page?
·Are the key messages immediately evident?
·Is there a call to action?
·Is the content well-written and free of misspelled words and errors?
·Is the content fresh?
·Is the content easy to scan? Is it easy to understand?
·Is the contact information easy to find, and does the site offer a number of ways to reach the organiza*tion? Is there an easy way to ask questions?
·Is there too much content? Not enough?
·Is there an easy way for the site owner to make changes?
·Does the source code contain search engine-friendly HTML titles, key words and descriptions?
·Do the photographs have corresponding captions?
·Is the site as well-written as its #1 or #2 competitors?
Draw up your matrix to include your website and your competitors websites on one axis and on the other axis the list of criteria set out above. Use the scoring method of 1-5, [1] being the lowest and [5] being the highest score for each criterion on each site. It’s important to take notes for each criterion for the look, feel, or any ideas that may come to you during the process. Once you’ve completed the analysis you should have a matrix filled with scoring data. Sum up the scores for each site and compare the criterion you gave top scores for your competitor sites and assess whether your site can benefit from such criterion improvements.
[3] If you have access to your server logs and know how to interpret the data, extract this information it will be useful to measure your sites progress and performance against. If you’re unfamiliar with server logs, don’t understand how to interpret the information, or have access to, then you can plug in your site to Google Analytics to view the data in a more user friendly format.
[4] Once you’ve identified what key content, functionality, and design areas require improvements the next step is to determine whether or not, based on the criteria, such adjustments to your site are aligned with your sites goals and objectives. The purpose of most sites is to attract visitors. Therefore it’s important to ensure your website is a visitor (customer) centric one.
[5] The next step in the audit process is to determine the priorities that should be assigned to implement the necessary changes and ensure your information is structured around the business units of the company, not the functional benefits you offer your clients.
[6] The final step in the audit process is to frequently monitor and measure the performance of your website. Some changes will be noticeable almost immediately; others may require a few weeks, however keep to a plan to ensure the audit process has redirected and improved your websites performance and is aligned with achieving your websites goals and objectives.
Total Comments 2
Comments
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Thanks for the great advice.
How much do you charge to do these audits?
JimPosted 8th April 2009 at 10:01 AM by Jimnopks
- Hi Jim,
Glad this article could be of help to you.
It really depends on what type of website you have and what your objectives for the site are.
If you are interested in our services, we offer Warrior members discounts.Posted 10th April 2009 at 07:04 AM by Amanti Code
