A while ago, an estate agent mentioned to me that her website wasn’t bringing in many enquiries. I was curious, so I took a look before offering any advice.
On the surface, everything looked fine. The design was good, the layout was clean and the pages loaded quickly. To an untrained eye, there was nothing wrong.
Then I looked at the code. There was no Google Search Console, no Google Analytics and no Google Tag Manager. As far as Google was concerned, her website barely existed, and she had no way of knowing who was visiting it.
What the Audit Found
Once I started digging, the problems stacked up:
- Google didn’t know about the site. There was no Search Console, no sitemap submitted and no way to confirm Google could crawl the pages.
- There was no tracking, so nobody could say how many people visited or what they did when they arrived.
- The on-page SEO was weak. The pages had no meta data and the images had no alt tags, so Googlebot had no description of them. I also checked the H1 tags and target keywords on each page.
- Visibility elsewhere was patchy. I checked whether Bing knew about the site, whether the directory listings were correct, and whether the business name, web address and phone number matched everywhere.
I documented everything, wrote a plan to fix it and presented it to her in plain language. The following month, her traffic was up 10%. It kept growing over the next quarter, and with it came more enquiries and more sales. The website hadn’t changed visually at all. It had simply been fixed underneath.
When a New Website Makes Things Worse
A drainage company I worked with launched a brand new website, and soon afterwards their enquiries dropped by 60%. They were so worried that they were considering layoffs, and nobody could work out what had gone wrong.
The new site looked good, so I compared it with the old one. The new site had about 50 fewer pages, and some of the missing pages were the ones that had been bringing in most of the traffic. The fix was to reinstate those pages and make sure they were up to date.
A redesign can look like an upgrade while quietly deleting the pages that were doing the work. If your traffic or enquiries fall after a rebuild, an audit is the first thing you need.
Signs Your Website Needs an Audit
You don’t need technical skills to spot the early warning signs. These checks take a few minutes.
Does It Load and Work on Every Device?
Open your website on a laptop and on a mobile phone. A website that won’t load is useless, so this is always the first thing I check, on my phone, iPad and laptop.
Does Your Contact Form Work?
Fill in your own contact form and check that the message arrives in your business inbox. This is the biggest surprise I give business owners. The site looks perfect, but enquiries are quietly disappearing. If your contact form doesn’t work, potential customers have no way to reach you. I recommend testing it at least once a week.
Does the Site Reflect Your Business Today?
If your website was built three or four years ago, your business has probably moved on. I often find that services are missing, or squeezed into a single line on an unrelated page. You want your services to sing, so make sure every one of them has its own place on the site.
Did Your Traffic Drop After a Redesign?
If your enquiries fell after a rebuild, pages may have been lost along the way, as happened with the drainage company.
Why Your Own Website Matters
A Facebook business page is a page on Facebook’s website. They control it and they make the rules. On your own website, you control what potential customers see. As James Schramko puts it, you want to own the racecourse.
What a Website Audit Involves
I start by checking that the site loads properly on every device. Then I work through the technical setup, the on-page SEO and how the business appears elsewhere online. Most of my audits produce a report of around 10 pages.
The First Steps to Fix
A long report isn’t much use if it overwhelms you. So after the findings, I give clients 10 steps to fix straight away. The steps differ from client to client, but these are usually the first four:
- Set up Google Analytics
- Set up Google Search Console
- Set up Google Tag Manager
- Google your business name and see what comes up
Every step comes with written instructions and a video. Where it helps, I ask clients to add our email address as a user, so we can step in if they get stuck.
When You Want Help
Some people find this confusing, and that’s fine. That’s why we offer a 2-hour session to talk everything through, along with a done-for-you service and a done-with-you service.
How Often Should You Audit Your Website?
My recommendation is simple:
- A full website audit every two years
- A monthly SEO audit, ideally when you publish new content
The Biggest Mistake I See
The biggest mistake business owners make is building the website and then leaving it. It’s good on launch day, but a website needs to be kept up to date and maintained.
Think of it like the gym. You don’t go once and expect to stay fit. It takes ongoing work, and if you’re too busy to do it yourself, that’s where we come in.
One Thing to Do Today
Look at your website as a customer would. Better still, hand it to your partner or a parent and ask them to complete a task, like filling in your contact form. If they struggle, you have your answer.
If you’re not sure where your website stands, get in touch and we’ll take a look.
