A blog audit is an in-depth analysis of your blog’s design, functionality, and performance. It gives you a detailed look at what your visitors see when they visit your blog. From there, you can see where changes need to be made to improve search engine optimization (SEO) rankings and increase traffic.
When you keep track of user experience metrics, such as bounce rate, time on site, and pages per session, you know what needs improvement and where you can make those changes.
This blog audit will help you complete numerous tasks related to your blog. With so many different functions involved in a blog audit, we’ll break it up into three articles—a design audit checklist, a performance audit checklist, and an SEO audit checklist. Let’s get started with the first one here.
What is a blog audit?
A blog audit is a thorough examination of the design, functionality, and performance of a blog. It will give you a detailed look at what your visitors see when they visit your blog.
From there, you can see where changes need to be made to improve search engine optimization (SEO) rankings and increase traffic.
When you keep track of user experience metrics, such as bounce rate, time on site, and pages per session, you know what needs improvement and where you can make those changes.
Define your blog’s purpose
You’ll need to know your blog’s purpose before you can design it. You may think you know what your blog is about, but you need to make sure that’s the case.
Once you’ve determined what your blog is about, you can start designing it. Start by defining your blog’s purpose in one sentence. Be as specific and concise as possible. Here are some examples of blog purposes:
- Promoting a business or product: In this case, your blog’s purpose is to sell a product. Make sure to include information about the product in your blog posts.
- Educating readers on a topic: This type of blog is used to share knowledge with readers. You’re likely to find many people interested in reading your blog posts.
- Helping readers solve a problem: This blog is used to help readers solve a problem, such as bad health, a bad financial situation, or other problems that readers may be facing.
Review current design and functionality
In your blog audit, you’ll want to review the design and functionality of your current blog. This includes both the visual aspects of your blog and the interactive elements used to navigate the website.
Start by looking at the blog design. How many blog posts do you have? Are the blog posts well-organized? Are your blog post titles descriptive enough to entice people to click? If not, you may want to consider adding more blog posts with more eye-catching titles.
What is the layout of your blog? Is it easy to read? Is it easy to navigate? Is the design appropriate for your blog’s purpose? If not, you may want to switch to a different layout.
You can get some design inspiration by visiting other blogs in your industry and taking note of the design elements you like. You can also use design software such as Canva to create your blog design.
Review user experience metrics
Another key part of the blog audit is reviewing the user experience metrics of your current blog. This will give you a detailed look at how visitors are interacting with your blog.
You’ll want to review things like the number of visitors, pages per session, bounce rate, and average time spent on the blog.
– Number of visitors: You can use Google Analytics to see how many visitors you get each month. You can also see how that number has changed over time. You may decide to make design changes after reviewing these numbers.
– Pages per session: This metric measures how many pages a visitor sees before leaving your site. You’ll want this number to be as high as possible.
– Bounce rate: The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site without clicking on any pages.
– Average time spent on the blog: This metric measures how long visitors are spending on your blog.
Discover where potential problems may be
Once you’ve reviewed the metrics and design of your blog, you should be able to see where potential problems may be. Use this information to decide which aspects of your blog may need changing.
You can use these metrics to decide which elements of your blog may need change. For example, if your bounce rate is high, you may want to make changes to your blog post titles and content to make them more appealing.***
Make changes to improve SEO rankings
Once you’ve discovered the areas of your blog that could use some improvements, you can make the necessary changes.
This may include updating your blog post titles and content, improving your blog design, and optimizing your blog for mobile devices. Most of these changes can be made on your blog’s publishing platform, such as WordPress and Squarespace.
Conclusion
A blog audit is an important part of running a blog. It gives you insight into the design and functionality of your blog, as well as the user experience metrics.
You can use this information to decide what changes need to be made to improve your blog’s design and functionality. You can also use this information to decide how to optimize your blog for search engines to increase traffic. A blog audit can help you make your blog more effective and appealing to readers.
I’d like to know if you track different KPIs in your blog performance audit. Please comment and let me know if you do!
