After a website goes live and is running, the site must be thoroughly scrutinized for there might be going on lots of issues behind the scene. It is a must to operate the site audit to certify if everything is working smoothly. By the phrase “WordPress site audit”, it sounds a little bit complex thing to do as it involves a whopping amount of time and labor but at the end of the day efficiency of the site is what it counts. So here are simple steps you can follow to perform the site audit.
Content Audit
A content audit is nothing but to properly examine the existing content of the website so as to make sure if it’s doing exactly what it’s meant to do, be it congesting site with traffic, having right keywords or improving information exchange. The most significant aspect of any website is its content, that is to say, the content is what makes the website. A poor content results in a poor website so you have to check, improve and change where it is needed your content every now and then.
There must be the acknowledgment of the most visited pages of your site and what keywords are bringing in traffic. You may install jetpack plugin which provides site analysis, google analytics or other related plugins. Check your posts URL and make sure you’ve used pretty permalinks not number or rubbish texts. Furthermore, in the content, you must make sure if the content is grammarly impeccable and contains at least 300 words. Always check the content in the “visual” mode. After you know what type of contents are congesting the traffic, you no longer have to waste time on other unnecessary contents.
Search Engine Optimization
The process of receiving traffic from the free, authentic and natural search results on search engines is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The chief search engines such as google, yahoo, and bing explore through contents that are most relevant to the user’s query. So in order to make your website stand out in the search result, you must every once in awhile making sure your website is search engine optimized.
You need some tools to perform SEO audit on your website like google analytics, screaming frog or any other you like. The next thing is to check your site and inner pages if they’re accessible for visitors and search engines. Check only one sort of your site is available because there are various possible ways to access a website.
- http://yoursite.com
- http://www.yoursite.com
- https://yoursite.com
- https://www.yoursite.com
It is recommended to use HTTPS because it is beneficial as far as the SEO is concerned. Having said that, you have to install an SSL protocol. Furthermore, you must add alt tags and descriptions properly in images that you upload, HTML markup should be kept up to date, meta description, heading tags must be properly implemented, links shouldn’t be broken and duplicate content should be avoided. It is suggested to use the plugin WordPress SEO Yoast which will assist with the easy editing of description. There can also be added internal links in the content other than that of a header, footer and navigation menus.
Page Loading Speed
Website visitors have the least patience one can ever imagine. They will take off from your website if it will take more time to load than needed. Page loading speed will not only lose your visitors but also affect the SEO. So in order to increase the page loading speed, you need to perform following steps.
- Install W3 total cache which will boost your website’s performance through caching.
- Reduce the size of images. This can be done by installing various image compressing plugins available in wordpress.org plugin directory.
- Clean the database and optimize it using plugins like WP Optimize
- Put scripts at the bottom of the site so that it will be loaded after all the content is loaded and visitors won’t see a blank space while the scripts are loading.
- A strong and powerful hosting must be used like SiteGround
- Put CDN (Content Delivery Network) that has proxy servers located all over the world. It is one of the best methods to increase your website’s speed.
Besides content audit, SEO and page loading speed, you must execute the following steps as well:
- Make sure if your site’s URL is not blacklisted.
- Update plugins regularly and delete unused ones
- Update parent theme if you’re using a child and remove unused themes
- A strong password must be enforced, the backend must be hidden (wp-login.php, wp-admin, admin and login) in order to combat automated attacks.
- Never use admin as the username.
- Be on safe side always by keeping the backup.
- A table prefix is like a mini password so use a bit complex table prefix other than wp_ which is the default one.
- Block users who are trying to sneak around pages using 404 detections.
- Disable PHP execution in the uploads directory.
- File permission for all files should be 644, for all folders should be 755 and htaccess should be 444
- Disable editing files for themes and plugins.
- Conceal the version of WordPress so that hacker won’t be able to find out the exact loophole.
Finally, once you’ve performed all the steps ensure you will repeat the process twice a year to rejuvenate your website. It takes a lot of time and effort but the outcome is worth it. If you are confused and need any help when auditing comes to your mind, WP Review Team is right here.
