If you’ve been checking out our Instagram recently, we’ve mentioned the phrase “Instagram Audit” many times.

If you don’t know what an audit is, think of it as the editor in chief of all your social media platforms (social, email, and website) who tells you what’s good, what could be better, and what needs to change all together. Except on this blog, we’re talking Website audits.

Website audits are awesome because there are SO. MANY. different types based off what you need.

Here are A FEW YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT:

Technical Audit: This is essentially your website proof read. Do the links work? How fast does your website/the pages on your website load? How well is your website designed and structured? Is it easy to navigate? Just your basic things you’d want in a good website.

Google Penalty Audit: Wondering why you’re showing up lower in searches on google? This type of audit makes sure there aren’t any algorithm problems or areas that could penalize you in terms of search engine ranking.

Competition Audit: Keep your friends close and your enemies website closer. This type of audit is a dive into your competitors website to see what’s working for them, how to improve your website and what’s working in your niche industry and what’s not.

Local SEO Audit: Trying to see how your market in your local area is doing with your website? A local SEO audit will check how well your reach is within your local community and how to improve it.

To wrap it up and put a bow on it, a website audit compares your website to the restrictions, rules, and strengths of what makes a navigable, successful website, and also shows you weak areas to fix.

So why do YOU need one?

A loaded question, we know (hang in there). Short answer: you lose nothing, and gain so much info. We’re talking LOTS of it. Here’s what you’ll get:

• Discover any 400-error pages (when you click on a link and the request to the server is broken or corrupted, which is a big yikes), broken links, pages that are not loading- basically anything that you as a consumer would leave a website for immediately to check out another one.

• Ensure that every page you have is 100% the best it can be for SEO. We’re talking key words, anchor texts, header tags, meta descriptions, everything.

• Prevent any broken tags or corrupted data that may be detrimental to a user experience. What we mean is whenever you use any website service for a domain, you’re given tools (website tags) to essentially measure performance, audience activity, increase enjoyment of use of the site, etc. However these can break, and so you need to prevent that by checking to see if every tag is working the way it should- hence, an audit. (Yea. We just said hence.)

• Privacy. To be exact, the privacy of the data of the people who are coming to your site. A website audit can make sure that your website isn’t unknowingly collecting sensitive data from your consumers. This can happen if you use a third party to make or help your site, and they use their own tags, that in turn make their own tags (this is called tag piggybacking- big no).

If we haven’t convinced you to do a website audit for yourself, we hope we’ve at least turned you on to the idea of it. And if we HAVE made you seriously consider it – then reach out to us! Sure, doing an audit yourself is possible, but we highly encourage you to go to the pros to make sure everything is done right – we’re sort of perfectionists around here, if you haven’t figured it out by now. As an agency, we want to help you help yourself to be the brand you want to be. So reach out to us, get that website audit, and as Cardi B poetically said: start making money moves.