And we're going to talk a little bit about the importance of getting an audit of your website. I think it's possible that people shy away from it. By not doing this. It doesn't mean that everything's gonna be all right. Ultimately, it's much better if a problem is found early and addressed.
It's a health check, isn't it? It's where are people finding us? Which of our pages are succeeding? Where are we not gaining ground? Where are we losing potential visitors? Really? You have to try and find somebody that you trust to take an honest look at your site and tell you not just what the problems are, but what the things you need to improve on are really. And nine times out of ten, what I will say is that if you're getting an audit done of your website and somebody's not coming back to you with solutions instead of problems, they're not saying, this is what's happened and this is what you need to do, then find somebody who will do that for you. Because at the end of the day, there's no point in working with people who aren't happy to be kind of up front about what you need to be doing.
Welcome to episode thirty of Digital Marketing From The Coalface. And I'm kind of smirking as I say that because I nearly always say it wrong. I know you've done it. Digital marketing from the podcast.
You've done it right a fair few times now.
Yeah. But I also did it wrong earlier today when we were when we were recording the podcast with Bruce, I don't know. Anyway, um, this is me, uh, and Alex say hello, Alex.
Afternoon. Evening, I suppose very afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Good.
Afternoon. Uh, so it's Dave and Alex, and we're going to talk a little bit about the importance of getting an audit of your website.
Yes. But by that, we don't mean go away and find some, uh, kind of scuzzy, second rate SEO agency to give you a free audit. Uh, we mean do it yourself, right? I think that's what.
I don't mean.
That. Though.
I know we talked about doing that, but you know what? I kind of think that people who listen to this are not that inclined to, to kind of download tools and set up free trials and try and run the audit and then try and interpret the audit. And yeah, I mean, we could maybe think about doing that if anybody wants us to talk them through how to do an audit of a website, then we could certainly do.
A I mean, that's what I was geared up to talk about. So, you know, oh, well.
Then just.
Go.
Just go back to sleep. I think what would be useful is just a quick chat about why it's a great idea to get an audit of your website. I think, I think it's possible that people shy away from it. Let's just look at some of the reasons that people might shy away from getting an audit.
And.
Ultimately why, I mean, the analogy I use when we were talking before we started recording was if you don't get a check up at the doctors if you don't get, you know, uh, well, once you're over the age of fifty.
I see.
Which you know nothing about. It's a long.
Decades.
I'm definitely over the age of fifty. The government sends you a little kit every two years.
Sounds frightening. Yeah.
And you have to send them a sample, which they analyse to see if you've got, uh, potentially got bowel cancer.
Right.
So if you decide I'm not going to do that, it doesn't mean that you haven't got something wrong. It doesn't mean that there might not be a problem. It just means that you you've just decided you don't want to know.
Sure.
And I think people are doing that with their website. And what I'm going to suggest is that by not doing this and, and certainly I think there's a there's a tendency for people to shy away from it that it doesn't mean that everything's going to be all right. And it's much better. Ultimately, as with the example about the sample and everything else, it's much, much better. If a problem is found early and addressed. Right. So we'll move away from things medical.
And.
We'll move away from things medical. So what might be some of the reasons that people don't get an audit done?
Well, I think the main one is that kind of feeling of vague helplessness, isn't it? Like you're going to go away and, and ask somebody what's wrong with your website? They're going to come back with this big list of things you barely understand. And then you're not going to be able to do anything about it, or they're going to tell you that they're the only people that can help you, and you're going to feel very trapped by that.
Yeah, I think that's a good point. I mean, certainly when we do website audits and we were supposed to do one this afternoon and the person didn't rock up. They booked a meeting and then didn't rock up. And but when we do them, um, we genuinely just want to uncover any problems, show them the good, show them the bad, show them the ugly. Talk about why we've said what we've said And zero pressure. We're not we're not actually ever going well. We never pressure anyone into doing anything with their digital marketing because they've got to go into it wanting to do it. But it's not our it's not our style as, as you know.
Well, it's like you've said many times before, isn't it? At the end of the day, digital marketing is hard work, but it's not hard. And ultimately the thing we're there to do is help people do the work that they don't have the time or the energy to do. But we're not there to tell you, you know, we're the only people in the world that can fix this. And I think just going back to your original point, that is the main problem that people have with audits, isn't it? It's like you're going to get this big list of technical stuff that you don't really get, and somebody's going to say, oh, well, we can fix this for you, but nobody else can. And that, yeah, that is, I think, the whole problem, isn't it? I mean, it's like going back to the doctor analogy. I mean, we're, we're okay because we're in the UK where, where healthcare is free, but in America, you go to the doctor and the doctor tells you, oh, you need me to carry out this procedure and it's going to cost you this much money. That is quite intimidating.
Yeah. And I think that that is that's a really good point. And it's and it's important that, um, that that we at least anyway communicate that that's not what we're coming from. But you know, whilst understanding that others do. Here's another, here's another reason I think that people shy away from it. So you have a website that looks great, and you've just spent twenty, thirty grand on this website. That looks great. What's the last thing you want to hear?
Right? Like you've bought an expensive sports car and there's no engine. Yeah.
That's right. So not too long ago, we got a fantastic new client and they had a very shiny new website. They did. And what did we uncover when we looked at.
It that it was just not ranking.
It was not ranking. It was badly built. It was it was utterly and completely and utterly not fit for purpose.
Because there's a big difference between good web design. As in it looks pretty, it's shiny, it's nice and good web design, as in it's built for the internet and it's going to rank well and is structured properly and can perform well in search and all of those things. So yeah, I think that's a really good point. Actually, a lot of people out there probably don't want to know that their kind of shiny.
That's human. That's, you know, it's like when you, you, you know, we always use car analogies when you buy a car, you know, hopefully you get it checked out, you buy it from a reputable garage or whatever. But certainly in the past when I've bought cars privately, I've bought them and I've kind of like cast my eye over them and done as best I can.
But you don't really.
Want to driven off. And, and I remember I bought a car. It's not a million years ago. I bought a car. I went and drove down, sorry. Got a train down to Newcastle, bought a car and convinced myself that it was okay. Although I had some doubts when I was looking at it and I bought it privately and on the way back I felt the clutch slipping. Yeah. And and and I really wanted to believe that I'd imagined it. I, I almost like tried to oh. Oh no, it didn't slip. I'm pretty sure it must have been some kind of weird freak thing that the clutch only slipped that one time, but no, it did. I mean, I finished up buying this car and then immediately having to spend a thousand quid sorting it out. And it's a horrible feeling. You feel like you've been ripped off. You feel stupid, You feel like, um, you feel like you've let yourself down.
Yeah. At the risk of kind of taking this just into like, analogy to city. Yeah. Um, I just bought a house, right. And going through exactly the same thing at the moment as.
As it's clutch slipping.
I mean, yeah, it's all over the place. No, you know that you've.
Got clutches, right.
You know, you're supposed to get somebody in to like check the boiler, check that, you know, your house isn't rotting from the inside out. Get someone to check over everything. But we've already bought it, right? And now I don't really want to confront all of those issues. So I just kind of like to pretend that everything's fine, you know, just don't look and it won't bother you.
We've all been there. We've all been. I mean, last year, Caron and I hired a car, drove from north east Scotland down to the Midlands. In fact. Was it? Yeah, it was actually, you know, the south of the Midlands. It was well into the Midlands.
The South.
The southern Midlands, the southern, the southern uplands. We hired a car and went down and bought a motorhome privately for quite a lot of money. And then and we, we pored over it And we and we looked at it and we like, oh, should we, shouldn't we? And and, and actually, if Caron had said, I'm not sure, I would have said, right, let's not buy it. And if I'd said, I'm not sure, I think Caron and we, but we kind of just, you know what we just said, to hell with it. And we did it and we brought it home and we, we cleaned it and we, you know, we put loads of TLC into it. But importantly, almost immediately we took it to the garage, right. And I dropped it off at the garage and I was thinking, right, I'm now waiting for that phone call.
Uh, Dave. Yeah.
Better come down and, and I got a phone call and the phone call said, great. It's a great van. Solid underneath. There's, there's no problems at all. It's in really good shape. And oh, the sigh of relief. Yeah. I was so pleased. We had taken a punt to get this thing and it was worth it. But if they'd turn around and said.
You'd have lots of.
Problems. Yeah, you'd rather know than when you're one hundred miles into your holiday and the damn thing breaks down or breaks in half because it was two motorhomes welded together.
I guess to bring the analogy full circle, when you've been using your dud website for two years, you've got no leads. Everybody's banging on your door and saying, what are you doing? Why is the website not working for digital marketing?
I don't want.
To talk about it. Almost like this is a podcast about digital marketing.
It's a podcast about about something so we can understand that human thing that you don't want to know just how bad your website is in case it's awful. And you've you've spent all this money on it, but honestly, it's, it's, it's going to be better. You're going to be better off knowing.
Bite the bullet, right? Just, just get it done.
And, you know, probably you'll have a gut feel, you'll probably suspect that things with the website are not quite right.
Yeah. Well, it comes down to things, doesn't it? Like if you, you know, if your previous website had thousands of pages and your new one's got five or, you know, you find that, you know, none of your pages are linked from a menu or stuff like that, then yeah. I mean, obviously, um, Yeah, just get it done. Really get a professional, I guess, to cast their eye over it and come back to you with a list of issues.
Yeah, one hundred percent. Absolutely. One hundred percent. So if we get to the point where you've accepted, you're going to need an audit or you you're prepared to get an audit, even if you've just got a brand new website or anything else that we've just spoken about. Um, where would we start? What's a great starting point for an audit? What? So what would you say.
When we're auditing somebody's website? You mean, um, so I guess there's a few places you can start, right? I guess one of the first places I'd normally start is analytics or Search Console or something, where you're kind of collecting data from a website, you're looking at where it's coming from, where it's going, how it's behaving on the site.
Okay, so I think I don't disagree. Um, so what happens if, for example, you haven't got the Google Search console data.
Well, then you've you've done ruined it, haven't you?
Know, what I would say is it's worth for the sake of waiting two or three days is to hook it up.
Yeah.
And you'll probably get a message that says, right, Google is now going to go away and, and get as much, get the data, get, find data, etc. and it might take a few days. It's worth actually pausing at that point and letting the Google Search console go and do its thing. It might be that the data's already there, but you haven't got access to it, in which case it's about gaining access to it. But if it hasn't been, if it's never been set up inside Google Search Console, then it's worth waiting. It's only a few days to get to get some meaningful data, and my reasoning is that we should start with hopefully some the good news. You know what is working? What? What traffic are we getting? What? What are people searching for and finishing up looking at our content, our website as a starting point?
Well, I was just about to say that, you know, if you're trying to collect data about, you know, what, what pages you're ranking on page fifty four or whatever, it takes a long time for Google Search Console to come up with that useful information. But if you're, like you say, looking for, you know, which pages are currently driving traffic to the site, where are we currently succeeding then? Yeah, fantastic. Because in a couple of days you'll have bags of useful data about that kind of thing. So yeah.
Yeah. So because my point is, I think when people think about getting their website audited, it's the stuff like, oh, you know, the images are too big and the HTML is a bit rubbish.
And, you know, to be fair to come to the defense of, you know, those kind of audits, they do have their place. They are quite useful sometimes, aren't they, to have a kind of laundry list of minute kind of tiny changes that you could make is, you know, useful. But broadly speaking, when you're getting a website audit, what you want to know is let's say it's a health check, isn't it? It's where people where are people finding us? Which of our pages are succeeding? Where are we not gaining ground? Where are we losing potential visitors? Really?
Yeah. I mean, if you if you start the audit by looking at Google Analytics or the Search console data, and that tells you that the site's getting three visitors a month, then Okay. Brakes on right there. There's no point spending any more time looking at that available Search console data, because basically your site's not getting any traffic. And it could well be that what the audit is now looking for are the technical reasons, the content related reasons, the on page search engine optimisation related reasons, the link profile reason, all of the stuff that would be stopping you getting any traffic. But mostly if you've got a site that's been around for a while, um, it's, it's, it's, I've just actually, something just occurred to me. So I will go off at a slight tangent if you've just had your website rebuilt. And we were saying that some people are reluctant maybe to get an audit done because they've just spent a load of money. Actually, that's a really good time to get an audit done by somebody other than the people who built your website, because if they haven't done things right, when they've redeveloped your website, you will see big changes. At that moment in time, you'll see a big drop in traffic drop in search drop, you know, across the board. And it's not it's not too late at that point to rescue it.
I'm thinking of famous examples where people use things like noindex tags incorrectly, right. And just tell search engines, please ignore all the content on this website. That's right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, so I guess, you know, just to go back to the medical analogy that you're making earlier, this is kind of like ask for a second opinion, right? Get a doctor to come and double check the other doctor's work. I mean, yeah, that makes sense. I think most people will appreciate the need for that.
I think so, and you know, when we do, um, when we do website audits, we are looking for the good stuff. We're genuinely not going in there to try and find crap stuff so that we can point the finger and say, haha, you know, the guys you picked to build your website are rubbish. Look what they did. I mean, I know that there are some, you know, it feels like idiots out there who would do that, but that's not where we're coming from. I mean, this is about people's businesses. It's about their livelihoods. It's important. If we find problems, we're only going to report them because we care. Even if it's not a client, that they fix it because we know that people rely on those websites working potentially in order to keep the business viable.
And nine times out of ten, what I will say is a slight aside is that if you're getting an audit done of your website and somebody's not coming back to you with solutions instead of problems, they're not saying, this is what's happened and this is what you need to do, then find somebody who will do that for you. Because at the end of the day, there's no point in working with people who aren't happy to be kind of upfront about what you need to be doing. That's right. Yeah.
So go on, go on, you go.
No, I was just gonna say so obviously kind of analytics and Search Console are a great kind of jumping off point to check the health of the website because. I see it's back to me.
No, not necessarily. I'm just I've got some thoughts on that because and you might have as well, my main because is when I think of a website audit, I'm not just thinking about the technical stuff. I'm not just thinking about finding the stuff that's technically wrong with the site. I'm talking about like finding out whether and what business value it's delivering into the organisation as a starting point. That's, that's my starting point because all the other stuff that we find out when we find out, it's not delivering any business value into the business.
Go off on a.
Tangent.
Find the.
Role and look for the reasons for that, so that the starting point has to be that for me. And I don't think a lot of others, other people necessarily do that. They're, you know, they're immediately into, oh, well, your meta descriptions are too long and your, and your this, that, and, you know.
Well, they're easy. I mean, the thing is, it's always very easy to nitpick, isn't it? And we both know, because we work in SEO, that there are a lot of tools out there where you can plug in a domain name and it will print you off a list of one hundred and one things that it's automatically found. That's wrong with a website. That's really easy to do. And I think that's how a lot of people use auditing. You know, it's just like, oh, here's a laundry list of the things you need help with. And sometimes people don't even review it. You know, it's just kind of like, bish bash, bosh. Here's the errors with your website. Off you go. I think auditing as a process should be more developed than that, shouldn't it? More holistic? It needs to look at the bigger picture. Ultimately. And even when we do get into the weeds and we're like, you know, recommending specific changes to a page, I think the important thing is we always take the time to explain to clients why we recommend those things and to, you know, say, this is how it's going to help you. It's not just a kind of, you know, Google says your meta description needs to be one hundred and fifty characters. So go away and write a longer one because that's not, you know, that's not helpful, is it?
No, I mean, that's a good point. I mean, if you know, the auditing tools will measure the quantity of your meta descriptions. Now, just, just for people listening, the meta description is usually, but not always the text that appears under the blue link in a search result. So it's important not because it's a ranking factor, but because it's a click through factor.
Yeah, it's your only chance to kind of convince people.
Meta description reads like and entices people to click. Even if you're not the number one search result, you might still get the traffic. If your meta description is saying something that resonates with the people looking at the search result.
Right. And this is, I think, as you were just kind of about to say, this is one of my big problems with the whole idea of kind of automated reporting, right? Because you audit a website or automated auditing, even you audit a website and you say, this meta description is too short, but what if it's a really pithy, really descriptive, really engaging meta description and loads of people are clicking on the page because of it. The automated tool says it's bad. A human would have said, actually, you know what? There's a real strength to this, right? Yeah.
Yeah. And that's, I think, the case right across the piece. I think the automated, the automated tools and, um, you know, tools like, you know, we interviewed Geoff on, on the podcast from, from cyborg. Fantastic tool. Yeah. Even Geoff would say, look, we can check to make sure that a page has got a page title and we can check how long the page title is, but we can't check whether it's a good page title or not. But what the automated tools will do will, they'll, they'll red flag things and that's fantastic. And you know, we're big fans of the cyborg software, so that will red flag it. But yeah, interpreting that is where the real skill lies.
Yeah. And it's the same with, you know, just like, you know, when we've often, I think when we've looked at traffic and, and that kind of thing, the next place we'll go is like content, right? We'll kind of review people's site content and see what kind of shape it's in. And that again, is another place where only a human can do that. Well, I think because you've got to sit down and actually engage with what's on the page and you know, it's all good and well, an automated tool saying, well, you need between five hundred and six hundred words to rank for a keyword and you need X amount of keywords. But in real life, we all know that actually what you want is content written for people. That's engaging. That's interesting. And really, the only people kind of qualified to say whether or not you've got that are people, I guess.
Yeah. That's right. So the chances are if you're, if you go ahead and get a website audit from a credible digital marketing agency, um, that you're going to get, you're not just going to get like a bunch of stuff that you don't really understand.
Yeah.
Any business owner is going to understand your your for example, your getting some traffic from search. But actually your site ranks for a bunch of stuff, but it's on page two, page three. So there's a lot of opportunity there. So you're actually in not bad shape. As you know, that's kind of the conversations we would want to have with people as opposed to, you know, just a lot of techno babble.
It's really interesting actually, because I think like when you just said that, then a little like light bulb kind of went off in my head because it is just about spotting opportunities. Really, that is the whole point of this exercise. And we started off this podcast by saying, you know, a lot of people are really reluctant to get audits because they're scared of it's like being back at school, isn't it? And being told, oh, actually, this is a grade C piece of homework and you just feel a bit shit about yourself. Um, the actual truth is, the reason you're going through this process is because you are trying to spot opportunities. It's a positive process and it ends in a really good place, because what you have at the end is a list of things you can do to kind of grow your website. And that is only a good thing.
That's right. Excuse me. So a website audit. What to do? A website audit is a great thing to do. And you should never be afraid of having it done. But I mean, I'm trying to get to the essence of, of, of making sure that after people have listened to this, that they don't hesitate, they go out and get it, but they get a proper website.
Not just an.
Automated, you know, bunch of nonsense.
It's tough, isn't it? You have to try and find somebody, I guess, that you trust to take an honest look at your site and tell you what the what, not just what the problems are, but what the things you need to improve on are really, and to give you a decent list of actions that you can actually go away and do. Because I think that's the other thing that really grates on me about a lot of audits. You can give somebody one hundred and fifty things to change about their website, and none of them are going to actually move the dial. It's about finding people who are willing to audit your site and actually say, this is where you should put your effort and energy. You know, it's your content's not as good as it could be. Focus on that or.
Yeah, for example, looking, looking at the the available data. Uh, if, if you're not securing good rankings, an audit might look at some examples of the rankings that you've got that are not great, so that you're not getting any traffic from them. And look at who is getting the traffic and look at what they're doing to get the traffic and say, well, you know, and because, you know, as an owner of a website, you might say, but we've got a page on our website that talks about this subject and you say, well, okay, but the audit has shown us that the pages that are ranking on page one for that subject are three times as long as yours, they've got video in there. They've they've got all kinds of stuff going on that you haven't got going on. So it doesn't make any sense. Um, or it rather it makes perfect sense that you're not getting that traffic, but this is why. So now you know why.
Well it's, it's, it's just connecting the dots isn't it? I mean, a lot of people sat listening to this will be well aware of the fact that they're not ranking for keywords. They should be. The question is always why? And like you say, just having that kind of visibility and insight into what other people are doing to rank for that search term and knowing that actually, you know, if I want to be in the one spot for that, all I have to do is these these things, this finite list of actions. I mean, I think that is a really empowering thing in a lot of ways, certainly a very powerful thing in terms of business growth, I think.
Yeah. And ultimately getting a website audit is a, is one of the things or part of the reason you're doing it is because you want to grow your business. It's not just to find out whether your website's any good or not.
Just grade my homework.
Yeah. That's right. It is, it is about that. And, and that's, that's what a credible, you know, decent agency are going to do for you or, or, you know, a decent freelancer, you know, just somebody. So, so I suppose if you, if you're thinking of getting it done, having a conversation with them and getting a feel for, you know, what kind of information if I get an audit done, what sort of information are you going. Are you going to give me? And the other thing as well, I think like one of the things we like to do is we like to do these things live. We like to jump on either face to face or Zoom call and bring the website up and take people through on that journey and let them see. Yeah. And so they can say, well, yeah, you're showing me that I.
Why does it matter?
Why does it matter? Why are you showing me that?
Well, we had this the other day, didn't we? Because I put together a spreadsheet for a client on it in the notes section next to one of their meta descriptions, I just put keyword cannibalisation and they were like, what on earth is that? Like, what are you talking about? And it prompted a really interesting discussion because it turns out the client was actually really interested. And once we'd explained it, it was like, oh, okay. So from now on, when I'm making content, I have to find a unique keyword for each page, and that's fantastic. But that conversation only really happened because everybody was willing to kind of engage with each other, talk about it. It's not just a don't do this. It's a here's why.
Mhm. Okay. Um, so in summary, uh, a website audit is a good thing to have, even if your website's new, you shouldn't be afraid of it. Because if you know, if you, if you don't get a website audit done, it doesn't magically make your website better. Your website is what it is. It's in the position it's in. It's in the condition it's in, irrespective of whether you get the audit done or not. So it's always a good idea to get it done. If you, if you want to grow your business and your website is expected to play a role in that endeavor. Um, anything else you need to add? I mean, it's, it's been quite a short kind of pithy.
Yeah, I mean, podcast, I mean, the main thing is just if you're listening to this and maybe you've been putting off getting an audit or thinking, oh God, you know, hopefully this has given you the kind of courage to, to go out and do it really.
And although we always say that this podcast isn't an advert for red evolution, we do do audits. Uh, another one that is another podcast. I listen to us by the guys at is it content ninjas? What are they called? Yeah, yeah, they do. They, that's one of the things they offer. Um, and I think again, probably if I was looking for an audit, I would want to only pick audits where you're going to actually sit and talk to somebody. That's about the only thing I would say. You want to sit down, usually over Zoom, I guess, and have a have a conversation with somebody and actually see the thing happening rather than just get some twenty five page report that's been churned out by a piece of software and you're expected to wade through it and make sense of it. Don't do that.
And don't be afraid to interrogate whoever you're talking to as well, because I think a lot of times, you know, especially when they're talking to kind of SEO professionals who are very good at rattling off jargon at speed, people are very kind of wary of asking questions that make themselves sound stupid. I think always the clients we prefer to work with are the ones that are happy to kind of stand up and say, actually, I don't have a clue what that means. Can you explain it for me? Yeah. For sure. You know?
Yeah. So yeah, make sure it's, you know, it's going to be something, it's going to be a conversation, not just an automated report. Don't be afraid to ask questions. If at the end of it, you're really none the wiser, then the chances are it's not you. It's actually the report. The audit is a bit rubbish.
Yeah, it's that old Einstein quote, isn't there, that if you if you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't really understand it. Yeah. I think that's you know, I think it goes for SEO for certain.
Okay. So this is the Digital Marketing From The Coalface podcast. It's Alex and Dave, um, have been discussing. We have been, I nearly spoke about us in the third person. That's a really, really weird thing to do. So I'm Dave, that's Alex. We've been talking about website audits and why they're a great idea. If you've got any subjects you want us to cover in the podcast, then just go on to the contact tab and send us a message. Um, if you want to come on the show, then please do, um, as you listen, you know, as you listen to the podcast regularly, you know, that we do have guests on, um, we even have returning guests now, which is great. Uh, and we love having people on the show. We love answering questions. We love helping people and we're here to, to do all that.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, bye for now. Bye.