Wondering why your website doesn’t generate traffic like it use to, or why your Google search ranking for your keywords has dropped? Is your social media performing liked you had planned?
You may be thinking that you spent time and money to build an impressive website a few years ago, so everything should be great. The reality is that a lot has changed in that time and if you have not examined your website or your online brand carefully lately, you won’t be able to find and fix the issues associated with those changes.
Technology and marketing trends are changing all the time and your website needs to grow and adapt to survive in new environments and trends. What was standard a few years ago may not be true today. Some analytics or practices may not have even existed when your website was built.
Here, we are going to provide some steps you should follow to complete a total online presence audit. A comprehensive audit takes time, but is vital to your small business’s online success and to attract potential customers, so if you can’t dedicate any time to an audit, consider hiring an expert who can help.
SWOT Analysis
Your online presence audit should begin with an in-depth discussion of your goals for your website and overall business. This is commonly known as assessing your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT).
Can you describe your ideal customer? Do you know why some competitors perform better than you do for certain keywords in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page)? Or why certain pages of your site have high bounce rates?
These are all questions you need to know the answers to, and your audit will help you gain these crucial insights. Once completed, you should have an in-depth analysis into how your site runs, and what it offers your customers.
List All Your Platforms
One of the main goals of your audit is to look at your total digital presence. This requires you to make sure all your channels deliver a consistent message about your brand to your audience.
So the first step is to list in one document all the channels you use to promote your business. We recommend using a spreadsheet to keep track of all the channels. List all your platforms in the first column and create a column for the topics we will cover. Keep this spreadsheet for your future audits to make it easier.
Your channels might include:
- Website
- Campaign-specific landing pages
- Newsletter opt-in pages and forms
- Google My Business and other similar platforms (Bing Places for Business, Yelp, etc.)
- Social media channels
- Market places and apps (Uber, iTunes, Google Play, Booking.com…)
- Review sites (TripAdvisor, Yelp…)
Goals
Review what your goals for each of these platforms are. What are you trying to achieve with your website, social media, email marketing, and other digital channels?
Think about how each channel plays into your over business strategy. Maybe a channel is no longer need, if your business has changed.
Is the channel successful and how do you measure your success and progress?
Align Branding Across Platforms
Next, check that the key elements of your brand are identical across all the platforms.
Check at the very least the following things:
- Do you have the same profile photo on all platforms? Use your logo whenever possible and make sure it is up-to-date.
- Is your name spelled correctly and the same way everywhere? Stay loyal to the capital / small letters whenever you can but don’t stress about it if some platforms force you to make an exception.
- Are the contact details correct and up-to-date?
Website Audit
Your website is the core of your online presence and the main destination for your potential and existing customers. Even if you are on social media, your website helps your company get discovered online. Social Media helps you connect with your audience on a personal level.
On your website, your core message should come across before a visitor needs to scroll for more than 2-3 seconds.
You need to assess how well your website performs in terms of usability, design, content, functionality, and SEO. Access your website on your phone, on a tablet, laptop, and desktop, just like a customer would.
Some of the questions you should ask:
- Is your website fast and easy to navigate?
- Do the features and functionality of your website still work?
- Is it mobile-friendly?
- Does it have a clear and consistent design that reflects your brand?
- Does it have relevant content that engages your audience and answers their questions?
- Does it have clear and compelling calls to action that guide your visitors to the next step?
- Does it follow the best practices for SEO, such as using keywords, meta tags, headings, and links?
Audit your Google My Business Listing
Have you set up a Google My Business Listing (GMBL) for your business?
If not, get it set up now. Google My Business is a free tool that helps businesses manage their online presence and determines how they show up in organic search results. These listings have all of your important business information like your hours of operation, contact information, and website links, along with the ability for customers to leave reviews on your listing.
Google has a pretty detailed guide called Google’s guide to setting it up, on making sure your GMBL it set up correctly.
If your clients are mostly local, it is really important to make sure to check that the following information is set up and is correct.
- Is the category accurate? The categories are sometimes very generic, so select the category that best fits your business, then use the Description to be more specific about your category. If you’re a painter, for example, instead of simply saying “painter,” explain the type of painting services you provide. For example, commercial painter.
- Is the NAP accurate and consistent? Make certain your Name, Address, and Phone number are accurate and match what’s listed on your website as well as other online citations and directories.
- Do you have reviews? The more 5-star reviews you have, the more likely customers will trust your business and click through to your website.
- Have you uploaded photos, posts, or videos? Images of your products and services encourage prospective customers to want to learn about them. Adding images of your staff can also instill trust.
Make sure your business in not just listed in GMBL, but other online directories, like those that belong to your chamber of commerce and tourism associations. Directories like Yelp and Bing Places for Business are extremely important for brick-an-mortar businesses. These listings will increase your inbound links (backlinks), which help your local SEO organically.
Your website posts can also provide an avenue to promote your business locally. Include posts or content that spotlights area, local events, local happenings to show your target audience that you are involved and care about your community. It doesn’t hurt that it will also indicate to Google where you are located.
Competitor Analysis
Now it’s time to take a look at your competition. First step is to identify your main competitors and determine what makes them unique. How are they presenting themselves online and what services or products are they offering that differ from your business?
If your business offers the same services as your competitor, make sure they are included on your website, then confirm that your unique services or products are highlighted.
A benefit of an online competitor analysis is it can also highlight some weaknesses of your website, but it can also inspire new ideas on how to boost your rankings for crucial keywords.
This audit may be a bit more challenging to perform on your own. Many tools are limited without a paid subscription to perform an accurate analysis.
Social Media
Auditing your social media presence involves reviewing your business’s social presence and strategy. Strategy? Yes, you should have a plan to determine which social media platforms you want to manage and what you expect each of them to do for your business. You may be tempted to freestyle your social presence, but this can cause more work in the long run and with not enough return. Remember that social media is best used as a marketing and advertising tool.
Tracking what social media actually does for your business is important to determine what’s working and what’s not.
Your audit will ensure you know the following:
- Which social media accounts you have so you can keep them all updated regularly?
- Which social platforms your target audience interacts with most?
- How your social presence impacts your company’s objectives?
- How to engage your audience and provide quality customer care?
- Which accounts are contributing the most to your business’s overall marketing success?
We recommend conducting an audit at least once every quarter. Especially if you have accounts on all the major social media platforms.
SEO
A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) audit analyzes your visibility on search engines. It identifies errors that can prevent your site from ranking well and opportunities that can help you gain more online visibility. It’s important to understand that the technical performance of your web presence is a major factor in your ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). There are continuous changes and updates to algorithms and best practices that have an impact on search results.
Some of the tools you can start with are Google Search Console and Lighthouse, both of which are free.
An SEO audit usually covers areas like:
- Indexing and crawlability – What pages Google has indexed and stored in their database. Can Google craw your pages?
- User experience – Are pages secured with HTTPS? Does content display well on mobile devices? Basically, what is the online experience for your customers?
- Site architecture – Is your schema markup correct?
- Competitor benchmarking – Where you stand when compared to your competitors.
- Keyword research – What keywords are you targeting? What keywords do your competitors target?
- On-page SEO – Analyze the performance of your most important pages and find ways to improve them.
- Backlink profile – What domains have links to your website and are they quality links?
Your SEO audit is basically an overall “health check” for your website and identifies areas for improvement. If you find issues on your homepage, make sure to correct them as soon as possible.
Online Reputation Management
Online reputation management (ORM) is the managing and maintaining the public perception of a brand, business, or person online. You need to review how you manage your online reputation and how you handle positive and negative feedback.
Be sure to develop a plan that covers some of these questions.
- What is your reputation across Google, Yelp, and other relevant industry platforms?
- How do you monitor and respond to online reviews, ratings, and testimonials?
- How do you deal with complaints, criticisms, and crises?
Managing your reputation online has never been more important. It can help you increase customer trust and help when major problems arise.
An Ongoing Improvement Process
The key thing to remember is that there is never a “build it and leave it,” when it comes to developing and managing your online presence.
It may seem an overwhelming task at first, but your efforts will increase your website traffic and bring people to your channels. Every time you address a problem with your online presence, you will increase your brand’s value with your customers.
Even though there are plenty of helpful resources online, you might find it difficult to keep up with all the processes that impact your web presence. As a small business owner you need to focus your efforts on everyday tasks, but Shaw Web Designs can help you tackle the auditing process so you don’t have to it on your own. Learn more about our SEO Services and WordPress Web Care Plans.