Introduction
Are you looking for a way to find out how your website performs? Do you want to know what changes you need to make to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and visibility?
This complete guide to analyze your website will give you the information you need. It will help you understand walk you through the process of using an SEO audit tool and a website SEO checker, and show you how to use competitive analysis and analytics software.
With this guide, you can get yourself options of a free website checker and learn how to use it in order to identify areas that need improvement on your site.
What Is Website Analysis?
Website Analysis, also known as Website Analytics, is the process of understanding how visitors interact with a website. By gathering data on user behavior and trends, it is possible to gain valuable insights into how visitors locate, navigate, and use websites.
Web analysis tools track important metrics like page views and page duration to measure the effectiveness of a website’s design and content.
It can also be used to identify areas that need improvement and make suggestions on how to boost engagement and conversions.
With the right data-driven approach, web analysis can give businesses an edge in the competitive digital world.
Reasons to Conduct a Website Analysis
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It is important to analyze your website in order to ensure it is meeting the needs of the defined audience.
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By analyzing your website, you can identify areas for improvement and make relevant changes to better engage visitors.
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An analysis of your website can also reveal potential factors that are blocking or preventing visitors from reaching your destination page.
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Analyzing a website can help inform content analysis decisions, allowing you to create engaging, personalized experiences for visitors.
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Careful examination of a website’s analytics can provide valuable insights into user behavior and preferences which can be used to improve its performance.
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Analyzing website data regularly can lead to higher levels of traffic as you optimize and tailor content toward the target audience.
The Benefits of A Website Audit
1. Helps in Competitor Analysis
- You can gain key insights into how your competitors are faring in search rankings and conversions.
- Taking the time to analyze their strategies can unlock opportunities for new sources of revenue, gives you the upper hand in your industry.
- You can easily compare your website to competitors and ensure you’re always ahead of the competition.
2. Helps to Improve Your SEO
- A website audit can help you optimize your SEO efforts and get the best results from your website.
- You can identify any areas where you may be missing out on opportunities to better target your audience and their needs.
- It will provide a comprehensive organizational tool for tracking all of your SEO report cards in one convenient place.
- By placing users first and search engines second, you can avoid chasing changes to ranking algorithms and ensure that you are applying the right practices to find success on SERPs.
3. Helps to Optimize Conversion Rates
- Website audits provide an invaluable opportunity to identify any weaknesses in your website’s technical infrastructure and framework.
- They allow you to assess your website’s search engine friendliness and user navigability.
- All of these elements play a significant role in ensuring that visitors can find the content they need on your site quickly and easily.
4. Helps to Optimize Your Website Performance
- Website audits provide an invaluable opportunity to identify any weaknesses in your website’s technical infrastructure and framework.
5. Helps Identify Issues Early
- Through an audit, you can identify common issues like broken links, hidden content, and long page load speed times that can be wreaking havoc on your website’s performance.
- Once these issues are identified, you can take steps to address them and unlock new opportunities to increase traffic and maximize conversions.
- To properly evaluate your website, it’s important to assess not just the content but also the website for common technical issues. With this information, you can make changes that will have a positive impact on your website’s success.
4 Types of Traditional Website Analysis
1. Search Engine Optimization
SEO can help you gain key insights into what people are searching for when they visit your website.
To analyze your website’s SEO, there are several tools and techniques you can use, such as backlink analysis, on-page SEO audits, and search engine ranking analysis.
- Backlink analysis helps you learn which web pages link to your site internally and externally compared to your competitors.
- On-page SEO audits focus on technical issues that could affect how well your website performs in search engines.
- Finally, search engine ranking analysis allow you to track where your website ranks for certain keywords in different search engines.
By understanding and implementing these tools and techniques, you’ll be able to optimize your website for the best possible results.
2. Traffic
Analyzing your website traffic helps you gain insights into the number of visitors, when they visit, and where they access your content from.
This includes their geographic location and device type. With this knowledge, you can confidently decide where to focus your efforts for maximum success!
3. User Experience
Understanding your website’s user experience is essential to providing visitors with the ideal visit. By utilizing behavior analytics tools such as heatmaps and session recordings, feedback and Voice of the Customer (VoC) tools like surveys and feedback widgets.
You can gain valuable insights into what works best for your users when they visit your website. This allows you to hone in on user preferences and behaviors to create a customized, enjoyable experience to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
4. Speed
Analyzing the loading speed of your website is an important part of optimizing the user and search engine experiences.
Slow-loading sites can cost you customers and rankings, so it’s essential to identify any factors that could be impacting speed, such as large images, complex code, and plugins.
Fortunately, there are many free tools available to help with this process. This includes Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, Pingdom, and WebPageTest.
Each of these offers insights into specific elements that may be slowing down your site on certain devices.
How to Run a Website Analysis
1. Set an Analysis Goal
Running website analyses can be a great way to discover and address potential issues or challenges your website is facing.
Analyzing your site can equip you with knowledge about its performance and competitive market, allowing you to take the necessary steps to optimize it for success.
Before running an analysis, identify what you want to get out of it by pinpointing any current problems that may need to be resolved.
This could include examining page loading speeds, accessibility on mobile devices, conversion rate optimization and more.
Taking the time to figure out why you are analyzing your website can help ensure your analysis is as effective and valuable as possible.
2. Create an Analysis Roadmap
Before embarking on your analysis project, it can be helpful to consider in advance your desired outcome and the steps necessary to achieve it.
Consider creating a comprehensive plan of action outlining every detail, from the initial search engine query to the completion of the conversion cycle.
By defining each user experience step in detail, you’ll have the data needed to assess your progress and make adjustments accordingly. Doing so will help ensure that your analysis leads to meaningful and sustainable success.
3. Collect Data
Gathering the right data is essential in order to get the most out of website analytics. By using the right tools, you can track and monitor your performance metrics and learn how to improve your website.
When doing so, make sure to focus on your goal and prioritize collecting information that directly relates to it. If you discover other data that needs attention, you can always plan additional analysis for another purpose or objective.
4. Review and Understand the Data
Taking a look at the data you’ve collected and your ultimate goal for the website can provide useful insight. Evaluate where the two plans overlap and diverge, as well as any steps that are not working as expected.
This analysis can help you strategically make changes that will support the users and ultimately benefit the organization.
5. Brainstorm Solutions to Improve Your Website
To update specific aspects of your website, consider making minor adjustments. For more complex revisions, brainstorm step-by-step instructions and assign them to the relevant teams or individuals.
Formulate a plan on how to best implement these changes in order to achieve maximum results. Set benchmarks and goals to measure the success of your website before, during, and after the revamp.
Gather feedback from customers, website visitors, and team members to ensure the desired outcome is achieved.
6. Continue to Make Changes and Optimize Your Website
To ensure that your changes are effective and make the most impact, incorporate routine analyses into your website maintenance.
This can help identify not just areas that need improvement but also highlight any other areas of your site that may benefit from undergoing the same development process.
By periodically reviewing all aspects of your website, you will have a more comprehensive understanding of its performance.
Why Is Website Analytics Important?
Website analysis is an important step in understanding how your online presence is performing.
- By studying the design layout, user experience, and analytics of your website, you can gain valuable insights that will help you optimize for success.
- Website analysis helps you uncover weaknesses, identify opportunities, and create a roadmap to meet your goals.
- Without analysis, it’s difficult to make informed decisions or measure progress.
- Through analysis, businesses can learn more about their customers, increase conversion rates, and maximize ROI.
- If you want your website to be successful, analysis is key.
Web Analytics Examples
1. Pageviews
A pageview (sometimes called a view) is counted when a page on your site is loaded or reloaded in a browser. So, if a visitor loads the same page twice, that would be counted as two pageviews.
Pageviews can give you an insight into how popular a page is. However, it’s also important to consider other metrics and use traffic analysis tools to get more context.
A high number of views for a post may not necessarily mean it’s popular—maybe there’s just a small group of visitors responsible for those views.
Similarly, high views may indicate that the page was confusing and required multiple revisits by the same user.
Understanding pageviews can help you make better decisions about what kind of content to provide on your website, improving the user experience and boosting engagement.
2. Unique Pageviews
Keep tabs on unique pageviews—the number of times a single page on your site has been viewed by individual users. This metric is essential for gauging how popular individual pages are and how much traffic they’re actually drawing in.
Unique pageviews discount instances when a user reloads or visits the same page in the same session. So you can have an accurate picture of how many visitors are viewing your website.
Make sure to stay informed of your unique pageviews and get a better understanding of your website’s user engagement today!
3. Sessions
You can use sessions to understand how users interact with your website. A session comprises all the interactions a user conducts on your website within a given timeframe.
By default, in Google Analytics and HubSpot’s traffic analytics tools, that timeframe is set at 30 minutes. Sessions end and new ones begin if:
a) there are 30 minutes of inactivity, and then the user becomes active again or
b) the clock strikes midnight or
c) A user arrives via one traffic source, leaves, and then comes back through a different source.
This means if a user is inactive on your site for more than 30 minutes but takes an action afterward, Google Analytics and HubSpot will count it as two separate sessions.
Keeping track of sessions can help you gauge your website’s performance and identify opportunities to improve.
4. New Visitors
A new user is an individual who accesses your site for the very first time. Acquiring new users is essential for a healthy website and should be done consistently over time to make up for those who may no longer be interested.
To track these visitors, web analytics tools use a unique identifier such as cookies, which are installed into the browser of the visitor.
It’s important to note that a single person can have several sessions or page views when visiting your site. Also, this metric might not always be entirely accurate since the same person visiting from different devices may be tracked separately.
To ensure proper accuracy, employ measures such as cross-device identification to identify new versus returning users.
5. Returning Visitors
It’s important to understand how you can best attract and retain visitors to your website. One of the key metrics for achieving this goal is measuring the ratio of new to returning visitors.
By examining this statistic, we can gain insight into how well we are enticing new guests and maintaining user loyalty.
New visitor metrics can be found in software like Google Analytics Audience reports; they provide us with an understanding of the fraction of net new visitors arriving on our webpage.
This proportion will depend heavily on several factors, such as industry type, promotional campaigns, and even the length of time your site has been operational.
When taking a look at the ratio of returning to new visitors, if the statistic falls in favor of those revisiting your page (exceeding 80%), then you should consider implementing strategies to attract more potential customers or create incentives to keep existing ones.
Of course, while analyzing this metric can be highly beneficial, it’s important to note that the information won’t necessarily provide a complete picture if cookies are used for tracking.
6. Traffic Sources
Gaining visibility in search engines is crucial for increasing your web traffic. Organic search is the primary source of this type of traffic, generated when people explore and click on non-paid search results.
To fully optimize organic search, you must understand exactly where your visitors are coming from.
Traffic analytics tools, like HubSpot, help measure various sources of website traffic, including organic search, referrals, social media, email marketing, paid search, and direct visits.
By studying and optimizing each source of traffic, you can ultimately improve the overall performance of your website. It all starts with mastering organic search to capture the most leads, customers, and conversions possible.
7. Bounce Rate
The bounce rate indicates the number of visitors that leave your website after viewing only one page. A low bounce rate (less than 40%) shows that visitors are engaging with your site and are likely to explore more pages.
Conversely, if the average page or site-wide bounce rate is high (over 70%), there might be something seriously wrong with the page in question. Common culprits include long loading times, broken external links, or low-quality content.
To reduce your bounce rate and keep visitors engaged, consider restructuring your page layout, experimenting with content length, or adding more interactive elements.
By improving the user experience, you can encourage visitors to stay longer and even return for more information or products. After all, engaged users are essential for success.
Web Site Analytics Best Practices
1. Choose the Metrics that Align with The Objectives of Your Business
Focusing on just one or two metrics won’t give you the full picture, but tracking every single metric can be overwhelming. Here’s what to do: Start by plotting out your business objectives.
What are the top goals you want to achieve? You could aim to lower your site’s bounce rate, attract more new visitors, or better retain existing ones.
Once you have a plan sorted, you can narrow down the right metrics to help track your progress. Consider factors for ranking a website.
It involves fixing broken links and images, tweaking the copy on your website, or optimizing for mobile audiences, which likely make up half of your traffic. With these steps in place, you’re well on your way to achieving success!
2. Make Use of Data for Driving Decision-Making
Understanding the data you’ve collected is an important part of assessing the success of your website. You can use this information to test and experiment, making changes that can lead to success.
For example, let’s say you’ve identified high-value content such as services and pricing pages from user feedback in your web design process, yet they lack significant traffic.
To help increase visibility, you may consider moving the navigation links for these pages to a more prominent area of the website or using SEO methods to rank higher in organic search results.
Keeping a pulse on the information available to you can significantly improve the success of your website.
3. Don’t Limit Your Focus to Traffic
Every website needs to know its traffic data. After all, understanding who’s visiting your website, where they’re coming from, and which pages are performing the best is essential for understanding how to improve.
But don’t be fooled, just because you have a high number of page views or visitors doesn’t mean success.
It’s important to look past metrics like page views or visits and identify key performance indicators that drive conversion, engagement, and loyalty.
For example, if new visitors make up a considerable proportion of your total traffic, ask yourself why — and how you can attract return visitors more successfully.
When it comes to the performance of your website, what matters most at the end of the day is how well you achieve your business objectives.
4. Always Pair Data with Insight
“This month, our website achieved 1 million unique page views and 400,000 new visitors.” That’s an impressive number, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Digging deeper into the data reveals that this month saw a 20% increase in unique pageviews compared to last month and a significant boost year-over-year.
These are powerful insights that help us better understand our website’s performance and take action to drive future improvements.
The next time you report on your website data, focus on more than just the numbers; look for meaningful insights as well. That will enable you to make smarter decisions about your website and improve its performance now and in the future.
5. Look at Your Data in The Context
Keeping track of your website’s analytics is an important part of website management. By analyzing data, you can gain invaluable insights into how customers are engaging with your content and learn which elements to focus on for optimization.
However, it’s not just the raw numbers that can tell you the whole story—you need to consider the bigger picture.
For example, sudden spikes in traffic can be caused by a variety of factors, from algorithm updates to malicious bot activity.
Bot traffic alone accounts for 25 percent of all internet traffic, and certain countries are more prone to this type of activity than others.
Additionally, seasons and holidays can affect traffic in both positive and negative ways; understanding these patterns can give you unparalleled influence over your website’s growth.
When looking at your data, take the time to think about it in context and ask yourself what larger forces could be impacting the numbers. Doing so will enable you to make informed decisions that drive your website toward success.
6. Share with Stakeholders and Get Their Feedback
Understanding the data and how it can be used to improve the user experience is an ever-evolving process.
As such, gathering feedback from stakeholders is essential in order to ensure that everyone remains on the same page and that nothing falls through the cracks.
By asking stakeholders informed questions and providing them with actionable insights, analysts can ensure that everyone is informed of the data’s full potential and that sound decisions are made based on this information.
Gathering these key insights will give analysts the power to pinpoint areas for improvement and act proactively to create positive change where it’s needed.
Best Paid and Free Website Analysis Tools to Use in 2023
What Are Web Analytics Tools?
Traditional marketing efforts are no longer enough to provide a full picture of how customers interact with your business.
To better understand user behavior and make informed decisions based on it, web analytics tools are invaluable. They provide an in-depth view of how customers find, navigate, and engage with your business online.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is renowned as the prime choice when it comes to web analytics. As a free platform with frequent improvements and updates, it’s all-inclusive enough to meet any need.
It also offers an abundance of data, so users can improve their websites with informed decisions backed by credible information.
There are various advantages of Google Analytics, like access to vast resources and experienced professionals. Users will always get support when they need it.
The only downside is that, due to its sheer size, personalized support is not available. So, it may require more setup and maintenance from the user. When it comes to web analytics tools, Google Analytics is the go-to choice for most.
2. MonsterInsights
Are you a WordPress and Google Analytics user? Look no further—MonsterInsights is the ultimate plugin for you.
It’s easy to connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics (Universal Analytics and GA4) and have all of the data that matters most accessible directly in your WordPress dashboard.
With MonsterInsights, all of your tracking needs are taken care of, from event tracking to eCommerce tracking, custom dimension tracking, outbound link tracking, and more.
For seamless and comprehensive analytics integration between WordPress and Google Analytics, MonsterInsights is an essential addition to your setup.
3. HubSpot
Boasting an array of helpful features, Hubspot includes a CRM and several “Hubs”—Marketing, Sales, Service, etc. It allows you to build a robust system that meets the specific needs of your organization.
One popular addition is the Marketing Hub, which allows users to not only access analytics but also utilize email campaigns, live chats, landing pages, and more to ensure maximum efficiency.
Best of all, HubSpot makes it easy for even novice users to customize powerful systems to fit their individual needs. Affordable and comprehensive, HubSpot gives your business the boost it needs to thrive!
4. Mixpanel
With Mixpanel, you can uncover insights about user behavior and make data-driven decisions to maximize conversions. Mixpanel’s intuitive analytics suite allows you to quickly find correlations between events and track user journeys over time.
Plus, with a few clicks of the mouse, you can easily build funnels and measure conversion rates. And when you’re ready to upgrade, pricing starts at just $20 per month.
Put the power of Mixpanel in your hands today and start getting meaningful insights from your data.
5. Google Optimize
Are you looking to get the most out of your website? With Google Optimize, you can easily run A/B split tests and experiments to see which versions of your website work best.
With statistical modeling and machine learning, Google Optimize makes it easy to find the settings that maximize user engagement and conversions on your site.
Plus, for MonsterInsights users, it’s simple and fast to integrate your Google Analytics account with Google Optimize.
Conclusion
Website analysis is an important part of making sure that your website is optimized. It involves looking at the traffic to your website, the pages on your website, and the people who visit it.
By performing a performance analysis, you can identify areas where you can improve your site. A free website analysis tool will help you to analyze various aspects of your website and make changes as needed to ensure that you are getting the most out of it.
By using this guide, you will be able to make informed decisions about how to best optimize your website and attract more visitors.
This guide provides a comprehensive look at how to analyze your website, from understanding how search engine optimization works to discovering what people are looking for when they visit your site.
Ultimately, with a complete web SEO analysis, you can create a better experience for those visiting your website and make sure that it continues to perform well in terms of traffic and conversions.
