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.)

Website Audit

In website governance, a content audit is the process of evaluating content elements and information assets on some part or all of a website.

This 3 Step Website Audit Guide will help you do a full audit of all of your website pages. The audit can take several hours, but it’s well worth it to take the time and identify ways you can improve your website. Like great food, don’t try to rush the process.

Goal: Identify and improve website pages to generate qualified visitors, leads and customers.

Step 1: Identify Most Visited Website Pages

Go to the Analyze tab in HubSpot and click on Visits by Page. Change the date range to one year. At the bottom of the app there is an export to Excel” Button. Click on that button and to export the data to excel. Start with your 10 most visited pages and copy those page titles into the Website Audit Worksheet.

Step 2: Grade Each Website Page

You need to identify what pages require the most work, so you can start improving them. You will grade each website page using five categories: page content, design/eye-path, lead generation, search engine optimization, and social media.

You will grade the page on the five categories, giving each category a grade of 1 through 5, for a total of 25 possible points. Use the following criteria to determine the page’s grade for each category. Use the Website Audit Worksheet to track your page’s grade and take notes in the worksheet as you grade each page.

Page content

Design/eye-path:

Lead generation

Search engine optimization

Social media

Step 3: Improve Your Pages

Start improving the pages that got the worst grade. Remember to think about the goals of each page and use those goals to help you improve the page.

For example, if you want someone to request a trial on one of your product pages, then make sure trial call to action is above the fold, compelling and explains the value of the trial.

How to Use Six Google Analytics Reports to Complete a Website Content Audit

The six reports include the following:

1. Channels report

2. Landing Page report

3. New Vs Returning Visitor report

4. Frequency & Recency report

5. Site Search report

6. Behaviour Flow report

     Finding Actionable Insights

Today’s business leaders want more than a forensic analysis of what happened in the past. They want to know what will happen in the future, why it will happen, how they can prevent problems, and how they can leverage the insights contained in their data to their competitive advantage. This need for insight inspires and motivates major investments in tools and architecture that can help executives harness the power of big data. Advanced analytics and the ability to analyze all data in an organization’s systems can transform a business—but the process must be efficient, timely and accurate in order to be effective.

Involving the Entire organization:

Enterprises are increasingly looking to find actionable insights into their data. Many big data projects originate from the need to answer specific business questions. With the right big data analytics platforms in place, an enterprise can boost sales, increase efficiency, and improve operations, customer service and risk management

Notably, the business area getting the most attention relates to increasing efficiency and optimizing operations. Specifically, 62 percent of respondents said that they use big data analytics to improve speed and reduce complexity.

Resources to Master Google Analytics

Since you may be a novice or expert user, we’re going to provide both beginner and advanced user resources that everyone can take advantage of.

Beginner Resources

1.      The Absolute Beginner’s Guide: A great resource by MOZ, you’ll learn a little of everything in this post. From installation to filtering reports, this guide will teach you how to use analytics quickly and easily.

2.   A Beginner’s Guide to Google Analytics: Vertical Response published a great post that teaches you how to use analytics within just minutes.

3.   How to Use Google Analytics on Your WordPress Site: Since WordPress is the world’s most utilized content management system, it’s important to know how to install it right through your dashboard. You’ll learn tips and tricks to use your website’s data to its full potential.

4.  The Small Business Guide: A very in-depth resource, this guide is broken down into various sections or chapters that allow you to learn everything from installation to goal tracking and  even e-commerce tracking.

5.   How to Master SEO with Analytics: SEO is essential for your website’s rankings. Positionly will show you how your website can use this data to boost search engine optimization.

Generating a Data way of working:

Being data driven means that all decisions and processes are dictated by the data. If data points to sales being down because of brand perception, then specific actions can be taken to reverse that. If data analysis reveals that users of a current generation of mobile device are leaning toward a specific feature, then the next-generation device can make use of that knowledge.

Common Mistakes Analysts make

1. Not setting up goals or not setting up the right goals

2. Not knowing what they're comparing

3. Taking easy metrics for granted

4. Choosing the wrong graphs

Additional  Web Analytics Tools

Spring Metrics.

Spring Metrics has taken the analytics tool and made it simpler. You don’t have to be a professional data-miner to get the answers to your questions. You get real-time conversion analytics, top converting sources, keyword analytics, landing-page analysis, e-mail performance reports and simple point-and-click configuration.

Unlike Google Analytics, Spring Metrics tracks a visitor’s path through your website from the time he landed to the time he left. All of this is included in Spring Metrics’ Standard Plan for $49 a month. When you first sign up, you get to try it free for 14 days. The simplicity of this tool has a lot of website owners switching over from Google Analytics.

Woopra.

Woopra is another tool that offers real-time analytics tracking, whereas Google Analytics can take hours to update. It is a desktop application that feeds you live visitor stats, including where they live, what pages they are on now, where they’ve been on your site and their Web browser. You also have the ability to chat live with individual site visitors. This can be a great feature for your e-commerce site to interact with customers. Woopra offers a limited freebie plan as well as several paid options.

 Clicky.

Clicky also offers a free service if you have only one website and a Pro account for a monthly fee. You get real-time analytics, including Spy View, which lets you observe what current visitors are doing on your site. Clicky's dashboard is simple to use and presents all the information you want to see clearly. They also have a mobile version that makes it easy for you to check your stats anywhere.

 Kiss metrics.

Kiss metrics is another analytics tool that allows clients to track the movements of individual visitors throughout their websites. You can see how behaviours change over time, identify patterns and see the most typical and recent referrers, among other stats. It offers a “Timeline View” of visitor activity in an easy-to-understand visual format. You can try this service free for 30 days. Plans start at $149 a month, depending on how many events are tracked.

Crazy Egg.

Crazy Egg uses the power of Heat map technology to give you a visual picture of what site visitors are doing on your Web pages. It shows you where people are moving their mouse on the page and where they click. There is a link between where people put the mouse and where they are moving their eyes. So, this kind of tracking helps you see what areas are catching the most attention and interaction from users. There is a free one-month trial with this service, and prices start at $9 month for 10 Heat maps.