Website audit – the term in itself is enough to fill you with unease. It can feel like a long old process, and one that many construction businesses choose to avoid. After all, who really wants to traipse through hundreds or even thousands of website pages?
So let’s get the bad news out the way…
Regular website audits are in fact crucial to the success of your construction products website. In order to position yourselves as authoritative, go-to experts within the industry, you need to be providing high-quality, relevant content that is easily found online by target prospects.
Whilst ensuring page copy is all up-to-date, a website audit will also involve identifying key factors such as broken links, 404 errors, missing internal links and site speed.
Remember – what was once deemed to be a high-quality page is probably not anymore, particularly with the constant Google algorithm updates that dictate (and punish) how you rank in online search results.
And the good news?
There are in fact a lot of tools to help speed up the website audit process for you, many of which have their own in-built reporting system.
We’ve outlined just a few of our favourites within this post…
1) Moz – Open Site explorer
Open Site Explorer is a tool from Moz that enables you to research backlinks, find link-building opportunities and discover potentially damaging links present on each website page. Within Open site explorer you can also identify which pages are the most popular with your construction audience; those with the highest search authority you can then ensure gain priority for making improvements and re-optimising the on-page content. The paid version also includes an in-depth reporting system.
2) SEMrush
Assessing the SEO of your content is a big part of a website audit, and SEMrush does a particularly good job of identifying which keywords you’re currently ranking for on each page. Within the full report, you can find information on page ranking and how each website page is currently performing against your competitors. Ideally, due to the detail that this platform provides, it’s worth reviewing your content first and aligning this to the optimisation questions SEMrush asks you to ensure you gain maximum benefit.
Not sure which keywords you should be ranking for? The platform also has a ‘keyword magic tool’ to help assist with your research.
And SEMrush doesn’t just stop at keyword reports – it also covers a whole range of analysis on video advertising, display advertising, PPC and brand monitoring.
3) Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a platform that crawls through your construction website and collates a report based on page titles, URLs and wordcount. From the report you can then check your site for any duplicate content, low word count or poorly written content. The status column will then allow you to review any pages with 404 or 301 errors, as well as any temporary or permanent redirects.
4) Google Analytics
We know just how much you can do with Google Analytics, and chances are you may already be implementing this as part of your monthly reports, but we thought it was worth including from a content perspective to see exactly which pages are bringing in the most traffic. By identifying which pages are most popular and researching why these pages are doing so well, you can then use this information to help create new and measurable marketing goals, based on what you want specific website pages and related content to achieve. Similarly, which pages are showing a high bounce rate or low traffic levels? What is attracting people to your website, and is your target audience visiting your construction website for the right reasons? Google Analytics also makes it easy to export data into a spreadsheet.
5) Google Search Console
Google Search Console can also help you to identify website errors, whilst including information such as website visitors, mobile device or desktop traffic, and which pages on your construction website are the most popular. Whilst Google analytics is more about who is visiting your website, what pages they’re finding useful, and where those visits are coming from, Google Search Console in contrast focuses on internal information such as malware problems on your website and who is specifically linking to you. By linking both accounts together, you can integrate data from both sources to create more in-depth, focused reports. Whilst the information available across both platforms are similar, the way it is interpreted and analysed is different, meaning you can maximise the efficiency of both platforms for a more thorough website audit review.
Do you use any great tools when auditing your content? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below 🙂
And for more great tips on how to best optimise website pages for search, download our eBook on effective lead generation websites here.
