What is a Manual Website Audit

Performing a manual website audit is like giving your website a thorough check-up to make sure everything is working properly and looking good.

Instead of using special tools or software, you or someone else goes through your website page by page, looking for any issues or areas that need improvement. This includes checking for broken links, making sure all images load correctly, and ensuring that your content is easy to read and understand.

It’s kind of like proofreading an essay to catch any mistakes or errors. A manual website audit helps you identify any problems that might be hurting your website’s performance or user experience, so you can fix them and make your website better.

While it can take some time and effort, a manual website audit is an essential step in keeping your website running smoothly and attracting visitors.

Performing a manual website audit is an essential step in ensuring the health and success of your website. By thoroughly examining your website for various issues, you can identify and address any potential problems that may be affecting its performance.

In this article, we will explore some of the key things to look for when conducting a manual website audit.

Plagiarized Content

One of the first things to check for during a website audit is plagiarized content. Plagiarism can harm your website’s reputation and even lead to penalties from search engines.

Use plagiarism detection tools to identify any instances of copied content and take necessary actions to rectify the issue.

Thin Content

Thin content refers to pages that have minimal or low-quality content. These pages provide little value to users and can negatively impact your website’s search engine rankings.

Identify pages with thin content and consider either improving the content or removing the pages altogether.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can occur when the same content appears on multiple pages of your website. This can confuse search engines and affect your website’s visibility in search results.

Use tools to identify duplicate content and implement canonical tags or 301 redirects to consolidate the duplicate pages.

Badly Crafted Header Tags

Header tags, such as h1, h2, etc., play an important role in structuring your website’s content.

Having multiple h1 tags on a single page can confuse search engines and impact your website’s SEO. Ensure that your header tags are properly structured and follow best practices.

Duplicate Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Having duplicate page titles and meta descriptions across multiple pages can lead to confusion for search engines and users.

Each page should have unique and descriptive titles and meta descriptions that accurately represent the content on that page.

Excess or Unnecessary HTML or CSS

Excessive or unnecessary HTML or CSS code can slow down your website’s loading speed and affect user experience.

Review your website’s code and remove any unnecessary elements or optimize the code to improve performance.

Spammy or Over-Optimized URL Slugs

URL slugs that are spammy or over-optimized with keywords can negatively impact your website’s SEO. Ensure that your URL slugs are descriptive, concise, and relevant to the content on the page.

Poorly Built Website or Theme

A poorly built website or theme can hinder search engine bots from crawling and indexing your website effectively.

Ensure that your website is built using clean code and follows best practices to ensure optimal crawlability.

Robots.txt File Blocking Crucial Resources

Review your website’s robots.txt file to ensure that it is not blocking any crucial resources that should be accessible to search engine bots.

Incorrectly configured robots.txt files can prevent search engines from properly indexing your website.

Extra Pages Indexed but Not Findable

Check if there are any extra pages indexed by search engines that are not findable to users through navigation.

These pages may be outdated or irrelevant and should be either updated or removed from the index.

Too Many Ads

Having too many ads, especially above the fold, can negatively impact user experience and make your website appear spammy.

Review the placement and number of ads on your website and ensure they do not disrupt the user’s ability to access your content.

Conclusion

A manual website audit is a detailed examination of a website to identify any issues or areas for improvement.

Unlike automated audits performed by software tools, a manual audit involves human inspection and analysis of each page of the website.

This comprehensive review helps uncover technical issues, usability problems, and opportunities for optimization that may not be detected by automated tools alone.

A manual website audit is an essential step in maintaining the health and effectiveness of a website, as it allows for a thorough assessment of its performance, user experience, and overall quality.

While performing a manual website audit is crucial, there are also various tools available online that can help you identify potential issues that you may have missed.

One of the most reliable tools is Google’s Webmaster Tools, which provides insights and recommendations for improving your website’s performance.

By conducting a thorough manual website audit and addressing any identified issues, you can optimize your website for better search engine rankings, improved user experience, and increased organic traffic.