Tools to be considered for Audit

Web analysis tools can be used to scrutinize various aspects of your site, in order to gather data for market research, and help to focus you on specific areas of the site.

These tools might show you anything from traffic to age demographic, and are invaluable as a part of any Admin’s arsenal, especially since there are so many revolutionary ways nowadays to measure your site statistics, besides the traditional traffic numbers.

The sites listed in this article are both free and paid-for; however offer a variety of different tools, some standard, and some proprietary.

ALEXA RANK

Alexa offers free tools on its site, and boasts a very powerful search function, guessing, as Google does, your search before you’ve finished typing it, search it’s database of sites. It will then rank your result by traffic and keywords. Alexa’s most notable feature is its ‘reputation’ score, which is simply the number of sites that link to yours, showing your site’s influence throughout the web it also ranks your site against all the others listed in Alexa.

WOORANK

The excellent Woorank provides an unparalleled service, with both its gorgeous interface, ease of use and sheer number of stats it gives you. The image below is a small snippet of the data it provided for this site. Woorank’s services are free once a week, however for a more in-depth analysis, along with unrestricted usage, you are required to purchase a plan, along with which you get bonuses such as a PDF document of your stats, and report customization. It shows you how your site looks on mobile devices, such as the iPad and iPhone, which is a useful bonus. What makes Woorank really special is its rating system, which it displays at the top of your stats page. Your rating is calculated from all your stats, and also a checklist of site elements that Woorank consider essential, although these may not be in the case of individual sites, so may skew the stats a little. It also reviews the SEO of each site, which is something that not many other sites include, which is very useful for site admins.

SEMRUSH

Are you interested in developing your successful online marketing strategy?

If you are not familiar with SEMrush, it’s time to get acquainted. If you’ve already given this software a try, you can discover more about it here.

Your first step in becoming a SEMrush master is learning exactly SEMrush can do and what makes us one of the leaders in digital competitive research. SEMrush is a digital marketer's goldmine, with tools for competitor analysis, keyword research, site auditing, advertising research and so much more!

SEMrush is made up of 4 main sections:

1. Domain Analytics

2. Keyword Analytics

3. Projects

4. My Reports

SIMILARWEB

SimilarWeb is a new player on the market (as far as I know) and is really great in providing competitive insights about website’s and overall digital presence of companies, in a beautiful way.  Not only does it look great on a desktop with easy navigation, it was wonderful on my iPad!  SimilarWeb can:

1. Discover the most important traffic activity and ranking insights for any website.

2. Find the biggest websites in your industry and region with this Top 100 ranking of websites by category and country.

3. Send your users reliable insights to discover, categorize, tag and rank the websites that matter to them through their API.

There is a paid version with more features coming soon as well as a Chrome plug-in for quicker insights as your browse around the internet.  Definitely worth checking out!

MYSITEAUDITOR

MySiteAuditor is one of my favourite SEO auditors for a variety of reasons. This tool is well suited for large SEO agencies. You can integrate the tool on your agency website and generate more leads. The auditing tool works well and it is in direct compatibility with Google’s ranking algorithm.

MARKETING GRADER

Marketing Grader is one of those tools that is easy to use. It was founded by the very famous company Hubspot, Inc. I always make a clear distinction between simple and complex tools. This tool is quite overwhelming with its complexity and given data. It is a web-based tool that shows you a summary of a website and an expandable report on each site point.

NIBBLER

Nibbler performs free reviews for a limited number of web pages. The paid versions offer branded reports, broken link checker, spell checker, etc. The tool exactly shows up what target keyword you use most in headings and titles. You can also figure out what other keywords can derive benefits from without knowing about them.

SITEANALYZER

Siteanalyzer is another free SEO audit tool that offers up to 20 free analysis per month or upgrades to the paid version to audit an unlimited number of websites. The tool tests your website’s effectiveness based on 50 parameters, instantly identifies problem areas to fix and shows up all SEO technical mistakes.

SITEALERTS.COM

Instant insights on any website. Referring Sites, Organic Keywords, Marketing Grade, Related Sites, Traffic Sources, Social Referrers, Technology.

SEOPTIMER:

Seoptimer is a free auditing tool that helps you instantly report critical errors on your website in seconds and recommend what you should do to improve your search rankings. You can easily download the Google Chrome extension for better site auditing analysis and work through your website pages one by one and make some crucial changes.

Tips to prepare for a successful audit

A website audit is an investment that everyone should make at least every three years.

This becomes a working document that establishes a baseline and helps you set and measure website performance goals. By understanding that is using your site and how they are using it, you can be more relevant to customers and prospects.

Audit goals and reporting criteria differ somewhat for each project, but there are some core fundamentals. Here are some of the most important website analysis types, with the associated questions they answer and the metrics you need to measure:

1. Overall visitor engagement

    How well are people engaging with the site?

·                 Average pages per visit

·                 Average session duration

·                 Bounce rate

·                 Percent new sessions

2.    Mobile versus desktop

     How does behaviour differ between mobile and desktop users?

·                   Month over month mobile growth as a percent of visitors

·                    Mobile bounce rate versus desktop bounce rate

·                    Top mobile entry and exit pages

·                    Top mobile devices

3.           New versus returning visitors

      What are the differences between new and returning visitors?

·                     Top pages by visitor type

·                      New versus returning visitor bounce rates

·                      New versus returning visitor average session duration

·                      New versus returning visitor top landing pages

·                      New versus returning visitor conversion rates

4.           Traffic source analysis

      Which channels are your biggest traffic sources?
      How does engagement compare between them

      Organic versus paid search and direct versus referral versus social traffic analysis

·                    Top referral sources

·                    Top social sources

·                     Campaign analysis, using universal tracking metrics (UTM)

·                      Keyword analysis, using Google Search Console

5.           Visitors by market

      Geographically, where are your website visitors coming from?

·                     Inside versus out of market analysis

·                     Engagement by city

·                     Engagement by state

·                    Engagement by country

  6.         Organic search analysis

     What percent of traffic is from search engines?
     What keywords are visitors searching before coming to your site?

·                  Organic search traffic as a percent of total traffic

·                  Engagement by organic search traffic

·                 Branded vs. non-branded keyword analysis

·                 Top organic search landing pages

·                 Top organic search exit pages

   7.      Visitor flow

          What are the common pathways visitors take to navigate through your    website? 

          Where are they entering?

          Which pages are they leaving from?

·                   Top pages flow chart

·                   Top landing pages

·                   Top exit pages

.       8.   Conversion analysis

     Who, why and how do visitors convert?

·         Contact us form bounce rate

·         Traffic sources as a percent that led to conversions

·         Reverse goal path analysis

·         Page funnel visualization

·         Shopping cart exit rate analysis

·         Multi-channel conversion funnel analysis

Building framework to audit

Broad Questions about the Website

·         Why does this website exist? (i.e. what is it hoping to accomplish? what does success mean?)

·        Who cares? (i.e. who are the people using and getting value from the products/services/information?)

·      What motivates, inspires and interests this audience (this is critical, because great content and great   inbound marketing stems from interesting the audience, not just giving them the task that will make your business succeed)

·    What's the client worried about? (the client might be your boss, the CEO, the business itself or an actual client)

User Experience Issues

·         Design

·         Usability

·         Stickiness

·         Conversion

Content Issues

·         Usefulness

·         Interest Alignment

·         Quality

·         Share ability

SEO Issues

·         Accessibility

·         Keyword (Research) and Targeting

·         Content Optimization (more than just keywords, see this post for more)

·         Link Authority

Social Issues

·         Social Value

·         Channels (which sites/mediums to pursue)

·         Incentives (why will your audience participate)

·         Social Optimization (getting placement, timing, engagement, etc.)