How to audit your own website

SHOW NOTES: Episode 50

It’s Jennifer today and I am sharing with you how to audit your own website. Auditing your own website is going to help you identify any issues that could be preventing growth or visibility of your site. If you are wanting to grow your blog, auditing your website is so important. Today I am sharing the tools that you need, the steps that you need to take, and and the basic technical things you need to be aware of.

The tools that you need:

Google Analytics and Google Console should be set up. If you go through the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp, we walk you through getting this set up. You should do this from day one of blogging.
Google or PageSpeed Insights or a tool called GT metrics will allow you to look at page speed information.
Google schema markup tool is important especially if you have something like recipes on your site.
SEM Rush is a keyword research tool but also an auditing tool that you can use that can provide all kinds of reports about your website as well. Use this if you want to dig deeper.

The steps you need to take:

Take a step back and look at your blog from a different perspective – the eyes of a user. As you are looking at it from a perspective of someone who is visiting your site some questions you may want to ask:

Is navigation easy?
Is it clear where to click to find the information that I want?
Can they find your menus?
Can they find your categories easily, so that they can get to the information that they need?
Is it clear what you offer?
What type of content can you find?
Do you have your most valuable content front and center?
Do you have a good structure on your sidebar so that they can go to some of the other content?
Is the first thing they see your most valuable work?
Do you have relevant content linked?
Do all of your links work on your site?
Test how quickly your site loads (WiFi on, WiFi off, Mobile, Desktop).
Are your blog posts optimized? Do you have all of the important information included?
Which posts are getting organic traffic and which are not getting any traffic? (Figure out why if a post isn’t getting any traffic).

Another important thing to consider is: what are your competitors doing? Put your keyword phrase into Google and see what pulls up. Make sure that your content is relevant to the type of blog you have.

You can even go into Google Analytics and look at bounce rates to see how many people are staying on your blog or how many people clicked to another post. So it’s important to look at those things as well.

Basic technical things you need to be aware of:

Make sure that the them that you have installed is clean, well coded and fast.
Make sure that you are sizing your images properly. Make sure they’re sized for the web. Save as a less quality image (they will display high quality on the web). Compress those images as well. You can use a plugin to help you with this.
Use the best plugins and the minimal amount of plugins that you need to run your site.
Make sure you have a good hosting plan. Be on a self-hosted WordPress site and have a good hosting plan. We recommend Big Scoots.
Don’t load stuff on your site (like your Instagram feed).

More technical things to consider:

Have your SSL certificate set up.
Look in Google Search Console for errors and issues that might show up. You also need to check your security and manual actions to make sure you don’t have any errors listed there.
Use Google Mobile to make sure that you site is mobile friendly.
Look at your indexing in Google Console to make sure that Google has only indexed one version of your site, which is your Sitemap that you would submit when you first set up your site.
Auditing your website is so important whether you are a new blogger or an experienced blogger and I hope this episode helped you today!

Thanks for listening! Let us know what you thought of today’s episode on Instagram (@sparkmediaconcepts). We’d love to hear from you!

IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVERED:

Auditing your own website
The tools you need to audit your website
The steps you need to take
Technical things to consider when auditing

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Check out last week’s episode HERE.
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MORE ABOUT THE ULTIMATE BLOG PODCAST:

Welcome to The Ultimate Blog Podcast! This podcast is for you if you’ve ever wanted to learn blogging basics so that you can start your own blog or if you have been a blogger for years but are struggling to grow or need inspiration and community.

Every Tuesday we will be sharing a new episode where we will cover topics from the basics of starting a blog, monetizing and growing your site, to finding the inspiration you need to keep going. You will also find guest interviews with experts on different blogging topics as well as interviews with bloggers who’ve been in your shoes.

Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper are bloggers themselves who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story.

We’d love to connect with you on our other platforms so please visit us at www.sparkmediaconcepts.com or follow us on Instagram at @sparkmediaconcepts

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