Register your website with Google Analytics & Search Console to track website traffic, search intent, and conversion rates.
Build a Google Profile to maximize online local search visibility & track website visitor metrics.
Determine how much money each conversion is worth & align that with your website’s monthly conversion rate
Get a free website audit to get solutions that boost online visibility and conversions
According to Siteefy, there are over 1.2 billion websites in the world – and over 80% of them are collecting digital dust. The website hasn’t been looked at in months, the metrics are unclear or nonexistent, and you’re not sure if anyone even visits the website. If that sounds like you, then you need to keep reading this to avoid wasting more money.
Do a Website Audit
You won’t know how to fix your problems until you know what the problems are. So, before you start trying to implement changes, hire a professional (or use an online tool if you’re savvy), to conduct an audit on your website. Here’s what you want to focus on:
On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Focus on website content structure (H1, H2, H3, etc.), keyword density, content density, SEO titles and meta descriptions, and image alt text. This tells Google what your website is about and helps it understand the content organization. Your On-Page SEO is poor if you have too many H1 tags, low keyword density, very little content on the page, your SEO titles and meta descriptions are irrelevant or too long, and no alt-image text.
Technical SEO - Focus on sitemaps, robots.txt, canonical URL tags, structured data, and site indexing. This helps Google understand your website’s infrastructure so that it can crawl and index your website properly. Your technical SEO is poor if there is more than one canonical tag for your website, no sitemap submitted to Google, no structured data, your website has a “noindex” tag, and no structured data.
Off Page SEO – Focus on domain authority and number of quality backlinks. This tells Google how much confidence other websites have in your content (i.e., votes of confidence from other websites that are in or adjacent to your industry). Your Off Page SEO is poor if you have low or no domain authority or quality backlinks. Note, you can have lots of backlinks that are bad.
Website Performance – Focus on website loading speed, mobile-friendliness, content layout shifts, and website responsiveness to user inputs. This helps website visitors have a good experience while on your site and reduces their bounce rates. Your website performance is poor if your website takes several seconds to load, isn’t optimized for mobile screens, content frequently moves out of place, and the website takes too long to respond to user input.
This information gives you a good baseline for understanding how visible your website will be on Google without seeing any website traffic data (we’ll get into that later). A good practical exercise would be to search for your business online by looking up *Insert your industry* near me and see what comes up. If your business doesn’t show up, that’s evidence that something’s wrong.
UI/UX Audit
This refers to user interface and user experience (i.e., your website’s design and it’s ease of use). You can think of this like the layout of a store. The store layout, the color choices, product displays, and access to relevant information would make up the “UI/UX” of the store. Consequently, a good user interface and experience would increase the likelihood of someone buying something, whereas the opposite would make people leave without buying anything. Here’s what I usually look for when auditing UI/UX:
Branding Consistency – This is how well your brand is represented across the website, and consistent application of themes (i.e., colors, fonts, spacing, sizing, etc.) Every page should, in general, contain the same overall design aesthetic.
Content – Exactly what it sounds like, this is the “stuff” that’s on the website. Product/service descriptions, information about the company, photos and videos, and portfolios are vital to explain everything a website visitor needs to know. The goal of your content should be to encourage a conversion action (e.g., booking, purchase, etc.)
Navigation – This is how easy it is to maneuver around the website and find information. Your website should be telling people where to go and how to get there without them having to figure it out.
Call to Action (CTA) – This is the thing you want your website visitors to do. Whether it’s booking an appointment or buying a product, the website needs to have a clear call to action in any area where an action is the clear next step. Note – don’t place CTAs everywhere because it dilutes their effectiveness and it doesn’t give the visitor a chance to learn everything they need to know first.
Website Analytics
This is where the actual data comes in, and it’s how you know how well your website is doing. You can get this data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console if your website is registered. If it isn’t, do it right now. Here’s the link for Google Analytics and the link for Google Search Console. Note, that once your website is registered, you’ll need to wait about a month to start seeing actual data trends, since these tools only log your data from the date your website is registered.
If your website is registered with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, then here’s what you need to look for:
Google Analytics
For the overall website performance metrics, look at:
Active Users – The number of unique people that visit your website and engage with it
Engagement Rate – The ratio of website visitors that interact with your website versus those that don’t.
Key Events – The number of specific conversion actions that occur on your website (e.g., submitting a form, booking an appointment, buying a product, etc.).
For page-specific performance metrics, look at:
Average Engagement Time per Active User – The average length of time each active user spends on a web page.
Bounce Rate – The percentage of web page visitors that leave click off without interacting at all.
Key Events – Same as above but for a specific web page.
This will tell you how much traffic you’re getting, where you’re getting it from, and whether people are actually interacting with your website the way that you want them to.
Google Search Console
Search Console tells you all the pertinent information that you want to know right on the main dashboard in the Performance tab. But here’s the breakdown anyway:
Average Position – This tells you where your website ranks in search results. For example, if your position is 12, then that means your website is the 12th one that shows up in search results (ideally, you want to be in the top 5).
Click Through Rate (CTR) – This tells you the percentage of people that click on your website or webpage link based on the number of times it shows up in search results (aka impressions). For example, if your website/webpage shows up 300 times in search results and 30 people clicked on the link, you will have a CTR of 10% (10/300). That’s about 5 times the average by the way.
Total Clicks – This is simply the number of times people clicked on your website when it appears in search results.
At the bottom of the page on that same tab, you can find more information regarding search results, which will help you a lot:
Pages – This tells you how many impressions and clicks each of your web pages received
Queries – This tells you the keywords people used that made your website show up in search results. This is a massive indicator of search intent so pay attention to this.
Devices – This tells you what type of device website visitors used when looking at your website (i.e., phone, desktop, or laptop). This gives you good demographic data to help you figure out how best to optimize your website for appropriate screen sizes.
Google Profile
Google Business Profiles are a must-have for local search visibility. Like Google Analytics and Search Console, these profiles provide you with regular website visitor data that occurs through your profile, though the dashboard is much simpler to digest. If you don’t have one, here’s the link to get started.
Your Google Profile will track data such as calls, bookings, website clicks, and directions that occurred through your profile.
Conversion Value
This simply speaks to how much each conversion activity is worth. For example, say you have an online enrollment form that charges $50.00 per submission. This means that each conversion activity (i.e., submitting an enrollment form) is worth $50.00.
Let’s say over the last 30 days, your website’s enrollment page has had 500 impressions and a click-through rate of 2% (10 people). Assume all 10 of these people that clicked on the link also filled out the form. This means your website just made $500.00 in the last 30 days.
The reason this happens is because you have a website/webpage that is properly optimized for search and creates conversions if people click through. That proper setup now helps you generate monetary value. Identifying the problems and implementing the solutions made in this blog article will help you get to a point where your website will begin to generate value for your business.
If you want to take the first step in this process, Cutting Edge Solutions can provide you with a free visibility audit and consultation. Just click here to get started.
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