Website Auditing 101
If you want your Drupal website to maintain an optimal user experience, your website needs to undergo regular maintenance and updates. But sometimes issues can go unnoticed, especially if you are not a website professional. This is where a monthly or yearly website audit can be helpful.
A Drupal website audit will help uncover any current issues and provide you with a plan of action for updates to keep everything secure and performing well.
What is a Drupal Website Audit?
A Drupal website audit helps a business understand the current health of their website. Audits are recommended to keep your site up to date and performing well for your visitors. A website audit is kind of like a car inspection, you wouldn’t want to drive a vehicle that you know is unsafe or unreliable performance. Well the same goes with your website. Visitors don’t want to wait around for a slow loading or unsecure website.
We recommend having a digital expert perform a comprehensive website audit on your Drupal site at least once a year to uncover any major issues. Since every Drupal website is different, issues may go unnoticed if your staff tries to perform an audit in house. A comprehensive website audit will review major areas of the site and uncover any performance issues or security threats, as well as examine your Drupal code, configuration, and modules. Additionally, a digital expert can identify opportunity for updates that can help increase visitor traffic or content management, such as SEO enhancements or module updates to your Drupal platform.
Ways a Drupal Website Audit Will Help Your Company
Can Identity Factors Impacting Performance
Many factors have an impact on website performance, not just hosting. Things such as current design, layout, page structure, unoptimized images, excessive code, broken links, errors, bugs, and more have an impact on performance.
Having an expert conduct an investigation through a website audit will ensure nothing goes unnoticed and can quickly troubleshoot any issues. This can prevent small issues from becoming much larger ones down the road.
Can Provide Recommendations for Drupal Updates
Drupal is always adding new additions and enhancements to its platform to increase performance and provide customization to content management. It can be difficult to stay on top of the latest plugins, features, and modules available within the Drupal community. Having an expert that can perform an audit and give you the proper recommendations on which Drupal updates would best enhance your website is extremely helpful when making business decisions.
Can Assess the Overall Functionality and Content Structure
Since the Drupal platform allows for flexibility in how content can be structured, you may not know if your current website is optimized in the best way possible for a positive user experience. Having a Drupal expert come in to evaluate the functionality and current content through a website audit can be a great way to better understand best practices and ways to better structure your site.
A website audit can reveal if there are slow loading pages, too much site content, broken links, or poor content organization. Having an expert come in to audit your website is also helpful so that when you are ready to make some updates, they can be a go-to resource for making design enhancements or layout adjustments, as they will have a good understanding of your current site.
Can Increase Lead Generation Through Onsite SEO Updates and Recommendations
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a large role in generating website traffic, but many individuals don’t have the expertise to identify where they could better optimize their site for better results. Having your website audited for keyword optimization and search engine readability can be a great place to start if you want to improve your rankings. Additionally, an audit can reveal other areas of the site that have an impact on how search engines rank websites, such as responsive design, performance, and security.
Where to Focus Your Drupal Website Audits
Performance and Speed: Can provide suggestions for image optimization, improved hosting, broken links, or slow loading pages
Overall Functionality and Content: Can assess website navigation, content, site structure, and identify any outdated modules or plugins
Security and Coding: Can identify broken links, security upgrades, data loss or theft, or any unsecure areas of your site
Onsite SEO: Can analyze use of targeted keywords and optimize site for search engine readability
Updates and improvements may seem daunting, but having an expert perform an audit can be incredibly helpful for identifying and resolving any major issues and getting a detailed list of recommendations to better optimize your Drupal site.
Looking for a grade for your website? Alliance is a full service digital agency and experts in Drupal Website Maintenance. To request an audit for your Drupal website contact us.