Did you know there are over 810 million WordPress websites in our web space? Yes, that’s correct. And if you own any one of these WordPress websites, then you have landed on the right page. Like your finances and taxes, your WordPress website also requires a regular audit to check its overall performance and functionality. But the real question is – How do you audit your WordPress site?
Well, it’s not rocket science to take on periodic audits of your WordPress website. It’s just like maintaining a routine to keep up with your website and make sure everything is working as it should. From your website design to development, WordPress maintenance is a crucial part of your website.
So, if you have a website with a good amount of traffic, monthly visitors, and top search engine rankings, you must know how to audit your WordPress website and ensure it’s in good health! Today, we will cover ten easy steps to learn how to audit your WordPress site.
Let’s get started.
Understanding The Need For Auditing Your WordPress Site
Let’s try to put it in a simple way: Think of your WordPress website as a car. When you have a car, you might often feel the need to take it for servicing, maybe to clean it up, fix a broken tire, or repair a malfunctioning part of the engine. Of course, you can’t go on driving your car while still having all of these issues with your car. To make your journey smoother and keep your car in good shape, you need to get it serviced regularly.
Similarly, to get the best value for your WordPress website, you need to perform regular audits and keep it in the best shape. Whether it’s design, development, or SEO optimization, your website needs to be fully functional to derive the best results.
Like any software, your WordPress site can run into multiple technical hiccups as time passes. That’s where a site audit comes in handy—it helps you catch and fix issues before they turn into bigger headaches.
But that’s not all! A site audit also gives you a chance to see how well your website is performing from a marketing standpoint. You can also check your site’s loading speed, on-page/off-page SEO, where your forms are placed, and much more to ensure everything is running smoothly.
Related: ADA Compliance WordPress: Making Your Website Compliant
Auditing Is Not Only For Your Taxes
Your website needs regular auditing too! Consider our WordPress Maintenance services for regular auditing of your WordPress website.
How to Audit Your WordPress Website in 10 Easy Steps
Now, let’s get to the important part: how to audit your WordPress website. Below, we have compiled a list of steps that’ll help you audit your WordPress website easily.
Let’s see how:
Keep Your WordPress Updated
WordPress is a very well-maintained CMS platform. It updates and introduces newer versions to expand and enhance its capabilities. WordPress developers from all over the world work every day to build better platforms.
So, first things first, check your website for WordPress updates. Are there any new updates? Has your website been updated with the newest version and latest updates? Are all your WordPress plugins updated?
Make sure you do not have any outdated software and plugins present on your website when you are auditing for WordPress updates. Outdated software or plugins can lead to functionality issues and eventually turn into bigger software issues. So, always check your WordPress updates while doing a WordPress audit.
Check Your WordPress Performance
The whole point of conducting an audit is to enhance your WordPress website performance. So, it’s only wise to check your current WordPress performance and look for any hiccups. Your WordPress performance and site speed are crucial factors that affect user experience and engagement.
This is why website speed testing has become an important task to take over, ensuring your site is always up and running and performing speed optimization.
So, start by auditing your performance metrics. Check your site speed, loading speed, response time, conversion rate, bounce rate, etc. For reliable results, use tools like Google Page Speed Insights or GT Metrix.
If you have a fairly good performance score, like us, after a performance audit, then you are good to go and have nothing to worry about. However, if there are any low-performance scores, here are Tips to speed up WordPress site performance
Also, check out: Great Tools to Test WordPress Performance and Speed Effectively
Review WordPress Security
Reviewing your WordPress security must be your top priority during a WordPress audit. WordPress security is an uncompromising strategy for any website owner. Being the most popular CMS platform, WordPress is often the target of hacks, security threats, and malware.
It’s always smart to keep an eye on your site’s activity logs. By checking what users are doing on the backend, you can see if anyone is tweaking settings or accessing places they shouldn’t be.
Thus, it is important to create a WordPress security checklist and audit the WordPress website to secure your website data. You can use multiple WordPress security plugins and tools to check for security issues and fix your hacked WordPress site. Another perk of these plugins is that they track login events. This makes it easy to spot inactive users so you can remove their accounts for an extra layer of security.
Do not miss: Ultimate WordPress Security Guide
WordPress SEO Optimization
SEO is a significant aspect of your website. Without SEO, your WordPress website will lack organic reach, online visibility, and business revenue. So, it’s crucial to check your SEO performance and make sure it’s optimized well for search engines.
How can you perform an SEO audit? The first step is to crawl your website using an SEO audit tool like Screaming Frog. It will help you audit all your website URLs and check the website for broken links, missing meta tags, alt texts, or any other faults on important pages.
Another option is to use AIOSEO, the best SEO plugin, to keep your website’s SEO on-point. It helps you audit your website for SEO issues and audit your overall performance based on a set of crucial on-page optimization criteria.
Whatever tool or method you use, just make sure to use SEO audits to improve your site’s performance and functionality. You can also get professional help to enhance your SEO optimization with our Managed SEO plans.
Further reading: How to Do An In-depth SEO Audit?
Audit Your Web Hosting
Now, this may be over the top for some website owners, but your web hosting is a significant factor that determines your website performance. Many aspects of your website remain under the affect of your web hosting, including your speed, storage, security, maintenance, and support. A lot of things depend on how reliable and powerful your website hosting is.
Now, during your website audit, make sure to review your web hosting. Do you have enough storage for your website data? Is there any downtown during high-traffic times? Is your web host reliable? Is there a need to upgrade your website hosting to keep up with your growing website?
You must contemplate these things when auditing your website hosting to maintain your WordPress website performance.
Read: Shared Hosting Vs WordPress Hosting
Observe Website Analytics
While auditing your WordPress website, it’s important to monitor your website analytics. Now, what we mean by website analytics is how your website is performing on search engines and how users are using your website. It is to collect and analyze the website data and use it to further grow your numbers.
Your website might have a few pages or blog posts that get way more traction than others. But if you’re unsure which ones drive the most traffic, you could miss out on some great conversion opportunities.
This is why it’s important to observe your website analytics and keep track of your monthly visitors and conversion rates. This will help you make improvements and enhance your website for more organic leads and conversions.
To check your website analytics, you can use Google Analytics or Mosterinsights, which can help you understand your analytics data in a more simplified version. With the right insights from your WordPress site audit, you’ll be able to make smart, data-driven decisions like these.
Keep Reading: Key Metrics to Track the Impact of Your WordPress Optimization Efforts
Test WordPress Forms
Most WordPress sites today have website forms, such as contact forms, registration links, survey forms, etc., for gathering custom information and capturing leads. These forms are a part of modern website design and help collect user information systematically.
A common issue larger websites run into as they grow is losing track of all the forms scattered across their pages. This makes auditing a real challenge. Knowing exactly which pages have forms is crucial for a smooth audit, as it helps you easily find and test them.
You can use WP Forms, which has a built-in feature to scan your entire WordPress site and pinpoint the exact location of each active form. This way, you can locate every form directly from your WordPress dashboard, simplifying the whole process.
Read: Best Form Plugins For WordPress
Test Mobile Responsiveness
These days, more than half of your visitors are probably checking out your website on their phones. Many website developers focus on making a website that is responsive and user-friendly on all kinds of screens. That’s why it’s super important to ensure your site looks great and works smoothly multiples devices.
Google’s free Mobile-Friendly Test Tool is a quick and easy way to see if your site is mobile-friendly. If the results show that your site needs some work, it’s definitely worth improving its mobile experience.
Related: Responsive WordPress Web Design: The Key to Converting Mobile Visitors
Review WordPress Users’ Account
One of the important parts of auditing your site is taking proactive steps to reduce risks and keep your WordPress site secure for you and your users. Start by taking a look at the user roles accounts on your site. Just head over to Users > All Users and scroll through the list.
If you have a blog or business site, you should only see accounts you’ve added yourself or your own account. If you’re running an e-commerce, membership, or digital product site, it’s normal to have customer accounts.
However, If anything looks off or you spot suspicious accounts, go ahead and remove them right away to close any potential security gaps.
Check: How to Delete Invisible WordPress Admin Users
Test WordPress Site’s Functionality
WordPress is super flexible, so chances are that many of your pages have interactive elements like contact forms, buttons, and navigation menus. But when those features aren’t working properly, it can seriously impact the user experience.
Even the best-maintained WordPress sites can have broken features here and there, but if you stay on top of your audit process, you can catch these issues before they start affecting your visitors.
So, for the last step as part of your site audit, take the time to manually go through your pages and click on interactive elements to ensure they’re functioning correctly. While you’re at it, check the formatting, code, and other design principles to make sure everything looks and works as it should.
Wrapping Up
Keeping your WordPress site in good shape doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By following these easy steps, you’ll stay on top of potential issues and keep your site running smoothly. Whether it’s reviewing user accounts, optimizing performance, or testing functionality, each step helps you ensure a better experience for both you and your visitors.
Regular audits not only boost your site’s speed and security but also help improve search rankings and user engagement. It’s all about keeping things running smoothly and catching small issues before they turn into bigger headaches.
Make these steps a part of your routine, and you’ll be setting your WordPress site up for long-term success, keeping it secure, fast, and user-friendly.
