An annual website audit is a great way to keep your website up to date and relevant.
Is your website not performing as well as you hoped? Are you struggling to attract visitors and convert them into customers? Search engines like new and useful information, and your customers will appreciate it even more! Here is a list of 10 things you should check every year to make sure your website is always ready for visitors.
A website audit is like an annual check-up for your site.
It allows you to identify and fix any technical, content, or design issues that may be negatively impacting your performance on search engines and user engagement. With the right audit strategy, you can improve your website’s visibility, credibility, and ultimately, drive more traffic and conversions.
This audit is for WordPress websites. You should be able to do most of these tasks on your own. If you need any help, you can always reach out to our expert team.
Why annual website audits are important for your online presence
Annual website audits help identify weaknesses on your website like technical glitches, outdated content, or poor layout or content. We will look at ways to fix these issues quickly so you can see results as soon as possible.
Furthermore, a website audit can significantly enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Search engines like Google prioritize websites that are fast, secure, and user-friendly. By identifying and fixing any issues, you can optimize your site for better search rankings.
Better SEO means your website is more likely to show up in search engine results, which will drive traffic to your website. This will help more people to discover your products and/or services and hopefully will boost your profits!
Step 1: Backup your website
The golden rule, when working on your website, is to ALWAYS make a full backup of your site before you change anything.
Firstly, there are lots of changes you could make that might cause elements of your site to break, and you don’t want to lose what you already have.
Secondly, you must make sure that your backup system is WORKING before you do anything else on your website. Your backups should be automated (so you don’t need to worry about them), they should run weekly, and they should not be saved to your web server.
Save your backups to an external system like Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. We like to use UpdraftPlus, but they are many backup plugins out there for WordPress.
Once your backup is complete, you can move onto the next step of the audit.
Step 2: Verify software licenses and update website software
It’s essential to keep all your WordPress software update to avoid your site breaking or being hacked. We have a detailed explanation of how to update your website software, but here is the simplified process you must follow:
- Update one piece of software
- Clear website cache
- Test the website to check for conflicts
- Repeat these steps until all your software has been updated.
Our experts recommend updating your WordPress website software in this order:
- First, update the WordPress core.
- Then, update your plugins (one at a time).
- Finally, update your theme last.
During this step, make sure to also check all your premium licenses to verify that they are still active. If a premium (paid) license has expired, you won’t have access to software updates. Please renew any expired licenses and make sure that software is also up to date.
PRO TIP: Often a WordPress theme has required plugins that come with the theme. When you update the theme, these required plugins need to be updated too in order for the theme to work correctly. Often these ‘required plugin’ updates will correct any bugs on your site caused by the theme update.
Remember: This step might break your website, especially if you haven’t updated your software in a while. If a plugin update breaks your website and you still need its functionality, you must find a different plugin to replace it.
If these updates break your site so that it’s unusable, you will need to access your website server correctly to diagnose and fix the issue. If this happens to you, please contact us and we will help you.
Step 3: Remove unneeded or abandoned plugins and themes
Only keep plugins that your website is actively using. Unused or deactivated plugins and themes can be a great place for hackers gain access to your site.
If you are no longer using a plugin, delete it from your site. Similarly, only keep your active theme and its child theme if you are using one, and one default theme, and delete any others that aren’t being used.
PRO TIP: If you are using a child theme, make sure you don’t delete the parent theme.
Scan your site regularly for ‘abandoned plugins’. Abandoned plugins are particularly dangerous because their developers are no longer supporting or updating them. Wordfence can scan your site for abandoned plugins. If you find one, remove it ASAP and replace it with another plugin that can do the same job.
Step 4: Audit your website structure
Search engine optimization rules are changing all the time, so it’s important to keep performing SEO audits on your website. It’s extremely important to display what you do or sell in the main menu of your website.
Your website menu should use your target keywords (i.e. the search terms you want to be found for online), and they should be laid out as a hierarchy. (Put the most important keywords/pages in the main menu, and use drop downs to talk more about each of these sections.
Example: Your menu structure should look something like this:
- Home
- Main Product/Service 1
- Subcategory 1a
- Subcategory 1b
- Main Product/Service 2
- Subcategory 2a
- Subcategory 2b
- Blog
- Contact
This structure makes it much easier to understand what you do and what your website is about. The fact that these headings are part of your main menu make the information on your website much easier to find – for search engines AND for website visitors.
Step 5: Audit your basic website information
There is nothing more frustrating than visiting a website and finding their telephone number out of service! Check all your basic information to make sure that it is still correct.
Here are some ideas of what to check. It’s not an exhaustive list, but a place to start:
- Are your contact details correct everywhere? This includes phone numbers, email addresses, physical and/or postal addresses, and Google Maps.
- Are your social media links on your website, and do they work?
- Is your branding up to date? (There’s nothing worse than a website logo that doesn’t match your current logo…)
- Does your contact form work? (Please test this! We find broken contact forms on websites all the time.)
- Check your staff biographies. Has anyone left, or anyone new joined?
Step 6: Are your products and/or service pages all accurate?
If you have changed your product offering, or added new services to your organisation, have these been updated on your website? Do you now offer delivery, or have you changed your pricing?
Have you collected online reviews that you could add to your ecommerce product pages to give them a boost?
Do you have new user manuals that you could allow visitors to download, or you might have new video demonstrations of how your products work?
Maybe you are tired of customers asking the same question repeatedly, and could add a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ section to your product or service pages?
Search engines and users like new, relevant, and up to date content, so refresh these pages with your latest information. The more useful your website, the higher up the search rankings you’ll climb!
Step 7: Is your website legally compliant?
Do you have all the required policies clearly visible and accessible on your website? Laws change constantly and often there are new policies that you need to add to your website so that you comply. Depending on where you are in the world and what your local laws are, your website might need to display your Privacy Policy, your Terms and Conditions, your POPI compliance, your GDPR compliance, cookies acceptance, or others.
You might also need to add your own policies, especially if you’ve added new products or services to your website.
These might include (but aren’t limited to):
- Guarantees or warrantees
- Delivery and returns policies
- Payment plans and payment options
Step 8: Audit your website security
It’s crucial that your website provides a safe user experience so your customers can trust you with their personal information. You should also keep it secure to reduce the chance of it being hacked. Hacked websites can be delisted by search engines, and your site may never recover.
Wordfence is a great plugin for website security. Follow the setup instructions to get the most out of its functionality and scan your website for issues. We believe the paid version is worth the price.
There are other security elements you should check during your annual website audit:
- Your website MUST have a SSL certificate installed.
- Remove any spam users/subscribers.
- Check that you have working logins to your WordPress backend, your hosting control panel, and your FTP login.
- If you have given website access to anyone else, revoke it if they no longer require it. Do this by either deleting their login or changing the password of the login you gave them.
- Check that the main WordPress admin email is correct, as many automatic emails sent from your website go to this address. (i.e. If it’s still the address of a defunct web developer, make sure you change it back to your email address.)
Step 9: Audit your website speed and mobile responsiveness
Your website must be fast, and easily readable on all devices.
Use GTMetrix to check your website speed on various connection speeds and from different locations. Search engines and users alike want websites that load FAST. If your website is slow, check these elements:
- Optimize your images so they’re low-res and not too large. Large images take longer to download.
- Remove any extra plugins – too many plugins make websites slow.
- Too many animations, sliders, and carousels on a page will slow it down.
- Investigate your web hosting, because you usually get what you pay for. If you’re serious about boosting your online presence, invest in quality web hosting.
- Use as few fonts as possible – these can seriously impact page load time.
Make sure your website is easily readable on all devices. This includes desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and phones. Also check that it looks good on different browsers and different operating systems (like PC vs Mac).
Step 10: Implement a SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy
You are performing this annual website audit to improve your website and your search engine rankings, so now is the perfect time to start some SEO. It’s a big topic, so start small.
Here are some simple ideas to help you begin:
- Start a blog – write articles about topics that interest your target market.
- Connect your website to Google Search Console and examine any errors found there.
- Create a Google Business page and get it verified.
- Ask customers for reviews on your Google Business page.
- Add internal links to your website pages to point users to the most important pages on your website.
Track your results using an online SEO tool, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console. SEO is a long-term project so get going and work on it whenever you can.
An annual website audit can boost your website today
All websites need regular maintenance, and all organisations change often. Set aside a short time every year (or more often if you’re feeling up to it) to audit your website so you can catch issues before they’re a crisis.
This website audit is free because you can do it all yourself. Minor efforts can add up to big improvements. Make sure you are tracking your site using the tools mentioned above and check your progress as you go.
Businesses can no longer afford to ignore their website and online presence. It is the digital storefront of your business and impressions on your customers matter.
Your website is also constantly being scanned by search engines. If you’re keeping it up to date and useful, your organic traffic will build on itself and boost your online performance.
If this seems like a lot of work, please ask our expert team for help so you can focus on your core business.
