Are you running an online business or moving your brick-and-mortar business online? Are you confused about how to create a successful digital marketing strategy? If so, then you need to conduct a website performance audit.
Don’t worry if you don’t know what this is or how to do it, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about optimising your web presence and building your online brand today.
Why You Need to Analyse Your Website Performance
There are dozens of different technical aspects of your website that you could be checking regularly. However, at the end of the day, the number one performance metric you need to understand is whether or not your ideal target audience can use your website quickly and easily to accomplish what they want to and what you want them to.
So, how can you break this down and measure it? That’s what we’re going to discuss in this article. Some questions you can start with include:
- How quickly can your customers find what they need?
- How fast does each page load for them?
- Are you converting as many of your visitors as you could be?
Many technical SEO experts will spend weeks explaining to you that you need to optimise your canonical tags. And, while this is important, as a business owner your main concern is finding new prospects and converting those new leads into paying clients.
So, if your website is doing these three things as well as you would like, take some time to dive into the next section where we break it down for you.
How Is Your Website Performing?
You can check your website performance in three easy steps, we outline them below to guide you through the process.
1. Check Your Overall Site
Before you begin your deep-dive into your site and start worrying about coding or keywords, start by look at the big picture. Overall, how well does your website stand up to the competition?
When a visitor reaches your site, how long do they have to wait for the page to load? How quickly can they navigate throughout your pages to find what they’re looking for? Without these foundational building blocks, it doesn’t matter how great your content is if they can’t find it.
According to Google, if your visitor has to wait longer than three seconds for your page to load, they will bounce off. Likely they will end up on your competitor’s site and you’ve lost a sale. So, take the time to find out your page speed and work to improve this first.
The next most important metric to check is how easily your visitors can navigate your page. This step might be difficult if you’re too knowledgeable about your site, it might make more sense to get the opinion of a third party. An outside source can better spot the gaps in your navigational bars and links so you can better optimise your site for your visitors.
Once you’ve taken a look at the big picture of your website audit, it’s time to dive deeper into the content and conversion rates of each page on your site.
2. Check Your On-Page Content
A quality website will provide a stellar experience for your ideal audience. You can achieve this by publishing valuable content regularly. To increase your organic search results and provide the content your audience is searching for, you need to target the keywords your audience is searching for.
Search engine optimisation is an article on its own, however, in short, SEO can deliver you quality leads to your site. And the best part is that it’s free targeted traffic which will increase your conversions when your site is optimised properly.
So, the second aspect of on-page optimisation is to analyse your conversion numbers. Of the number of people visiting your site, how many are converting to your email list? If this number isn’t what you want to be then perhaps you’re ranking for the wrong keywords and you need to better analyse the user intent for your content.
3. Check Your Off-Page Content
The final step in your website performance audit is to assess your overall web presence. How does your brand rate around the web, or rather what is the perception of your brand by potential customers?
There are two distinct ways you can build your online presence in addition to your website. These include assessing your backlinks and your social media profiles. First, look at your backlink strategy and see how you can improve it.
Many will say that building backlinks is no longer a top SEO strategy. However, we would argue that blackhat link building is dead. And instead, smart business owners are building brand awareness through guest appearances on other websites, vlogs, and podcasts. This is still important to build your overall web presence online.
The last piece of the puzzle to optimise your entire website presence is to ensure your social media profiles are optimised. This includes ensuring that your profile is linked to your home page or landing, you include your top targeted keywords in your profile description, and you upload a professional headshot of yourself.
People want to follow brands they can trust. And by optimising your profile in this way you can build a brand your customers can trust. When you take the time to optimise your entire website presence with these three tips you can take your online marketing strategy to the next level and grow your business today.
Improve Your Website Performance With These Tips Today
Remember, there are dozens of metrics you can analyse when it comes to optimising your website performance. However, the most important metric is if your customers have a good experience while they’re on your site.
If not, the fastest site in the world won’t mean anything if they can’t find what they’re looking for. All of these pieces fill in the puzzle to optimising your website for better conversions, which is your end goal as a business owner.
If you’re still wondering if your website is performing the best it can be, then schedule your free audit today.
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