Questions to answer when auditing your digital presence

There can be no question that a digital presence is important for businesses in the 21st century. But simply having a website is only the beginning – you need to know how it’s performing and set goals that you can measure your progress towards. A vital piece of the puzzle is auditing your digital presence regularly, and this involves looking at certain questions and being honest about the answers to evaluate your success.

Identify your digital assets

Your digital assets can generally be defined under two primary headings:

• ‘On-page’ assets: this refers to your website, the domains and hosting you use and all paid/organic marketing efforts. Online authority comes into the equation here, along with broad SEO and local SEO.
• ‘Off-page’ assets: things like digital marketing activity that is handled outside of your website. This could mean things like social media networks, Google Business Profiles, email marketing. Your online reputation, your analytics and your planning are all involved – it’s the ‘thinking’ feature of your digital marketing efforts.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is a score that represents how your website ranks on search engines. It ranges from 1 to 100 and higher scores represent a greater chance of ranking highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). It is calculated by pulling data from specialist web indexes and includes dozens of key factors.

For many businesses, local SEO is a powerful way to attract customers. This connects on-page and off-page assets as you work to target keywords relating to your locality in all marketing efforts to win local customers. Google Business Profiles are one of the leading ways people discover local businesses, so your audit should definitely include these if they are relevant to your success.

Questions to ask regarding your on-page assets

This starts with your website, where you need to find answers to the following questions:

• Are you in control of your domain?
• Are you the owner of your website?
• Who is responsible for hosting your website?
• Do you have recent backups of your website?
• Is everything up-to-date on your website?
• Is the website achieving the goals you originally intended for it?

Next, you should look at your paid marketing efforts. Consider the following questions:

• Are you reviewing your paid ads accounts to identify where money is being wasted?
• Are you taking advantage of the latest Google tools?
• Do you ever look beyond Google to seek out other options and opportunities?

The final part of the on-page assets audit revolves around organic marketing:

• Have you developed and implemented an SEO strategy?
• Have your keywords been reviewed recently?
• Are you making the efforts to regularly add new content to your website?
• Are you undertaking work to obtain high-quality links back to your website?

Once you have been over all these questions, you will give yourself a good idea of where you are at with regard to your on-page assets. This helps evaluate the state of your digital presence and make decisions about setting goals for the future.

Questions to ask regarding your off-page assets

Auditing your off-page assets largely depends on precisely what channels and strategies you are using. For this guide, we will cover some common considerations and broad approaches to strategy that might be helpful for your business.

First up, let’s talk about social media:

• Are your social media channels consistently representing a strong and memorable brand image?
• Are you keeping an eye out for new social platforms as they grow?

Now, let’s think about the management of your online brand and reputation:

• Can you point to any buzz/conversation about your business online?
• Are you making use of online reviews?

One important consideration is the measurability of your off-page assets:

• How are you tracking online activity to measure progress?
• Do you regularly look at the traffic that comes to your website? What are the main sources of traffic and how long do visitors stay on your website?
• Are you taking advantage of social media insights to get an idea of what works and what does not?

Finally, here are some questions you should be asking to guide the development of your strategy:

• Where are you heading on your journey?
• What are your goals? Be specific
• Are your online objectives compatible with your broader business objectives?

Final thoughts

If you are yet to carry out the first audit of your online digital assets, the list of questions in this article may seem daunting. But you should feel reassured by the fact that going over this exercise is an effective way to make sense of your digital presence. You will be better equipped to understand what is working and what is not, giving you greater control over your own destiny.

Once you have found the answers to these questions, you are in a strong position to look to the future and bring about more positive results from your digital marketing efforts. It will provide you with a greater depth of information that can inform your decision-making in terms of where to invest and how to offer your customers the most effective online experience with your business.

Visit: Great gifts for tech geeks this Christmas

Categories