Our free website audit is done manually and our deliverable is a personalized 5-10 minute video you can watch to discover the problems and action items we can take to improve it.
We look at your site from both a technical view and also a practical view:
- What do you want people to do when they come to your site?
- Does Google know what your website is about?
- Is your site optimized to rank for what you do?
It’s important to have a website which is user-friendly and which also gives search engines what they need to show it in search results.
We’ve got over twenty years developing websites that are affordable, rank well in Google, and drive revenue for your business.
Request your free website audit by completing the form on this page.
Goal Of Website Audit
The goal of your website is to drive business.
Whether you’re looking for lead generation, form fills, or phone calls, your website should generate revenue for you.
We go through our checklist manually to analyze what actionable steps will need to be taken in order to turn your website into a lead generating machine.
Website Audit Checklist
Below are some of the technical and user experience items we look at when we audit your website.
1. Call to action – Is there a clear call to action on your site? Is it clear what action you want people to take when they visit your website? If people get to your site and are confused, your site won’t convert visitors into customers. We help you do that.
2. Basic design – does your website look professional? Are your fonts consistent? Do the color schemes work? Are they appealing to the naked eye? Does your site flow? An unprofessional, outdated or site that looks like it was designed in 1998 is not going to result in new business.
3. Is your website readable by search engines? Believe it or not, a small percentage of the websites we audit have what is called a ‘noindex’ tag, which means the site isn’t crawlable by search engines. This means your site will never appear in Google, no matter what you do. This is Website 101, but some webmasters and developers forget to index a site after it’s launched.
4. How efficient is the website code? Length and complexity of code can bog a website down and cause it to load slowly. And since page speed is an important ranking factor in Google, your site can’t do it’s best if the code is too long. Too much code is almost always a byproduct of an older, outdated content management system (CMS). We use WordPress, Shopify and SquareSpace for most of our sites. These are CMS’s that are developed and kept current by hundreds of engineers. Their code is clean and concise and thus well-optimized right out of the box. They also include plugins to make design and functional upgrades easy. If you’re already running a WordPress site, we check to make sure your website is using all of the plugins and that you’re not using any plugins that are outdated.
5. Is your website secure? If your site doesn’t have an SSL certificate, users are going to see the announcement in their browser that the site isn’t secure. This can cause users to leave. Another serious consequence of an insecure site is what we call a “middle man attack.” This is where a hacker gains access to your site and grabs personal information of your customers as they’re attempting to make a purchase or fill out a form. And finally, we make sure there are no vulnerabilities in your site that would cause it to fall prey to a hacker. Hackers usually get into your site through outdated themes or plugins and when they do, your website is useless.
6. How is the website on-page optimization? Things like SEO titles, header tags, content length, keyword density and other content factors are what help your website be found for the services and products you sell. For example, if you’re a dentist in Nashville who provides Invisalign, you need a page on your website that targets this phrase. Many clients wonder why they’re not getting leads and it’s because their website is thin on content, doesn’t target the keywords that will help them get found and isn’t well optimized on page.
7. Is your website mobile-ready? Did you know Google will penalize you if your website is not mobile-ready? That’s because Google knows that sites that don’t properly scale to various mobile devices are not good for users. And since users won’t enjoy their on-site experience, those sites are ranked far lower – because Google’s job is to rank the sites users like the best at the top of search results. We ensure your site is coded to look great on phones, tablets and any other mobile devices.
These are just a handful of the items that jump right out when we do your free website audit.
Check out the video below to learn more.
Website Audits: Tool vs Manual
We do use tools such as AHREFs or SEMRush to quickly gather vital information about your website such as page word counts, header tags (H1, H2, H3), titles, indexing information, image compression and meta tags, and other information.
But our audit doesn’t stop there.
We then take a visual look at your site to pickup on the things the tool can’t see.
This is where our experience comes into play, having looked at hundreds of websites over the years.
We manually review and analyze your site to look for obvious things that would effect it’s ability to rank in Google, then convert once customers find it.
This is what sets us apart from all of the free, automated tools you see online.
Our process is not “push a button and produce a report.”
Our website audit process is “use tools together with our real world experience to give you a personalized video with actionable items that will help your website generate leads.”
Who Can Benefit From a Free Website Audit?
Anyone with a business website can take advantage of our free website audit.
Small business owners, especially, will gain insight from our experience and skill at helping hundreds of business owners rank better in Google.
Why Is Our Website Audit Free?
You might think there are strings attached, but there aren’t.
Anyone can request an audit and we’ll spend the time to review and analyze your site and produce a personalized video with our feedback.
Of course, we would love to be your digital partner and provide you with our affordable web design services.
But we don’t do a hard sell.
If you’re interested in working with us, great.
If not, the website audit video is yours to keep – you can take our advice or send it to your webmaster to make our recommended changes.
Website Audit Samples [With Videos]
#1 – CBD Products Website
Summary of what we learned from this CBD website audit:
- Home page has too much green
- Product images aren’t correctly aligned
- Font inconsistency, overuse of capitalization, inconsistent fonts, colors, and sizes
- “Mouse-over” turns buttons clear, not a strong call to action
- Cleaning up these design elements can create a more professional looking site and improve conversions
- # of referring domains are growing, this is good
- Google search traffic is flat and practically non-existent, this is not good
- Broken outbound links need to be cleaned up
- Health score of 24 out of 100 and 75% of pages have technical issues
- A manual search for the site shows it on page three
- A heat map would reveal people are confused when they come to the website
- If the site’s technical on-page items are cleaned up, the site will gain trust with Google and it’s likely that it’s traffic and rankings will increase.
#2 – Attorney Website Audit
What we learned:
- Use gradient colors for a more eye-popping look
- Be consistent with fonts and headings
- Align and group together header elements like site title and phone number for a clean look and place where users know where to go to take actions
- Google organic traffic has leveled off, could be caused by broken links
- Outbound links are excessive and Google might perceive them as spammy
- Way too many internal links
#3 – IT Services Website Audit
What We Learned/Action Items:
- Put call to action in hero/main section of website
- Include primary SEO keyword in main area of website
- If you do business in a certain geographic area, use those areas in your content
- Organize top navigation with least important items on the right
- Include smaller cities in your content if you do business in those areas
- Replace marketing jargon in titles, headings and descriptions with solid SEO-based keywords, so Google knows what your site is about
- Include keywords or keyword variations in all H1 and H2 tags
- Add alt tags to images
- Improve site rankings in Google by including keywords in content
- Claim and completely fill out your Google business page
- Subscribe to a directory aggregator to establish trust with your website with Google and gain inbound links
#4 – Custom Home Builder Website Audit
Action Items From Free Website Audit Video Above:
- Overall website design looks good, modern and professional
- SEO title and description do not target the keywords the builder wants to rank for
- H1 and H2 tags also do not include targeted keywords to rank in Google
- According to AHREFS, Google organic traffic is non-existent
- Low page speed, 23 out of 100. Page speed needs to be improved
- Website is not currently ranking for anything that will turn into actual new business
- Tweaking site content and SEO should help site rank and drive new customers
#5 – Church Website Audit
Action Items From This Free Website Audit:
- No logo
- Move away from Weebly, it’s a free web 2.0 resource that usually won’t rank well
- Streamline top navigation to focus on things people want and not what they don’t need
- Provide more information about your church and who you are
- Add a footer with important links
- Moving your site from Weebly to a domain such as yourchurch.com will do better in Google
Website Audit Wrapup
We have over twenty years performing website audits for small business owners.
We are internet entrepreneurs – we make a living by growing our own online businesses and those of our clients.
We do our audits manually, by actually looking at your website.
Our deliverable is a short video you can watch and we’ll provide actionable points you can do yourself or hire us to do for you as part of our affordable small business web design services.
We look forward to working with you.