Your End-of-Year Website Audit Checklist
Regularly updating and maintaining your website is crucial to the success of your online presence. This includes not only refreshing your content but also examining the technical aspects of your site. One effective way to ensure your website is performing optimally is to conduct an end-of-year website audit.
A website audit involves a comprehensive evaluation of your site's performance, including its search engine optimization (SEO) ranking factors, user experience, and content quality. By conducting a website audit, you can identify any technical issues, such as broken links or indexing problems, that may be hindering your site's visibility on search engines.
Additionally, a website audit helps you determine whether your site is effectively reaching its target audience and accomplishing your business goals. It provides insights into your site's load times, mobile version, and design, ensuring that it delivers a seamless user experience across all devices.
Furthermore, a website audit allows you to assess the relevance and quality of your content. It helps identify content gaps, duplicate content, and opportunities for improvement. By addressing these issues, you can enhance your site's search rankings and attract more organic traffic.
What to Look for During Your Annual Website Audit
When conducting your annual website audit, it's important to thoroughly review various aspects of your site to ensure optimal performance and user experience. Here are eight key areas to focus on during the audit:
1. Review Sales Information
Set aside some time to assess your quarter one and quarter two sales data. Look back at the goals that you set at the beginning of the year. Are you nearing those goals? Have you exceeded those goals already? Or are you struggling to execute your plan? Identify areas of improvement and use those to set goals for the future.
This is also a great opportunity to update any product or service information on your website or blog posts. Be sure that you have published relevant content about your products and services to improve your sales capacity. Look at current sales trends and promotions to identify what is working and what is not.
2. Verify Holiday Hours and Information
As we near the end of the year, it is important to verify holiday hours and information so your customers and clients know when they can contact you or visit your location. Look on your website, Google Business Profile, and other similar business profile sites to ensure that your holiday information is correct for your business.
Additionally, if you do make any changes to your holiday hours, be sure to directly inform your customers of these changes. Send an email or make a brief phone call explaining any changes to hours during the holidays. At this time, you can also highlight any special promotions or offers your business is extending during the holidays.
3. Refresh Visuals and Media
As the year starts to draw to a close, now is the perfect time to revisit any images or graphics that you use to add appeal to your site. Add new, high-quality images and graphics to give your website and blog posts an appealing shine.
At this time, you might also wish to refresh your copy. Website copy needs to be regularly refreshed with new updates as Google relies on new copy to verify your site as credible. If it has been a while since you updated your website copy, then Google may already be docking your site because it sees your brand as inactive. When your copy is new and relevant, you get a boost for being trustworthy and credible. That is why regular copy updates are so important.
4. Check Contact Information and Forms
This is the perfect time to check your contact information and forms. Your website visitors will want to contact you as they eye their end-of-year surpluses. Make sure your contact page is up to your standards and that any information displayed there is accurate and easy to read. Be sure to also submit a test contact form to determine whether that feature on your site is functioning properly.
5. Optimize Website Content
Optimizing your website content, also the practice called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is an important part of your end-of-year checklist. You want to enter quarter one next year with a website that can stand up to the toughest of competitions. Be sure to review your meta tags, titles, and descriptions for relevance and accuracy to help customers find your web pages more easily.
Next, set aside some time to incorporate fresh keywords and phrases throughout your site content to tap into new markets and search terms. While you do this, check up on header tags and page formatting to further improve your site's SEO performance. There are many SEO tools available that even beginners can use such as Google Analytics. Make use of these audit tools to find better target keywords and make improvements on organic traffic. Also, take this time to update any external or internal links.
6. Assess Website Navigation and User Experience
The end of the year is the ideal time to assess your website's navigation and user experience. Look at your site's structure with a critical eye to ensure that it is organized and easy to navigate for customers. Optimize your menu and navigation for a seamless browsing experience that is easy for customers. Finish off your assessment by testing website responsiveness and mobile friendliness
7. Review Your Website Analytics
Next on your end-of-year website audit, take some time to analyze your website analytics. Review your website traffic and user behavior with your site's analytics tools to study how users come to your site and what they do when they get there. Look for areas of improvement where you can make the customer journey more efficient and then set goals for next year based on the insights you gained through this analysis.
8. Test Website Performance and Speed
The last step in your end-of-year website audit is to test your website performance and speed. Website speed is another important factor for determining whether a visitor stays and explores your site or clicks away.
Check your page loading times to ensure that they are up to industry standards. Anything above three seconds is too long and will drive users away (in general, the faster the speed, the less likely users are to click away).
Next, optimize your website speed and performance by removing redundant graphics or images. This will streamline your site and lead to a smoother user experience. At this same time, resolve broken links or error pages to check for any indexing issues you may have.
Free Website Audit from Legend Web Works
As a business owner, it is important to ensure that your digital assets thrive for a more efficient sales process. By thoroughly examining the areas above during your annual website audit, you can ensure that your site is up to date, optimized, and aligned with your business goals.
If you could use help analyzing your site for areas of improvement, reach out to the experts at Legend Web Works. Right now, we are offering free website audits for site owners who fill out this form.
Fill out the website audit form today for a better website for the next year and years to come!
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