
Who is Your Ideal Audience?
What Are Your Marketing Goals?
Where to Get Started?
You’ll find a number of elements to look at when doing an audit. But, here’s what we suggest reviewing, as you start conducting your digital marketing footprint.
General Online Audit Factors
A large component of your audit will involve your website, assuming you have one. If you identify issues that need to be resolved with your website, it will be really difficult to correct them if you don’t have access to actually make changes. Additionally, you’ll want to be able to review your website’s performance. That’s where the factors below come into play.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google. This tool provides a ton of great information about your website and how well, or poorly, it’s performing.
Not sure how to check if you have Google Analytics installed? Google published a support page on this topic. It’s titled Check if a Web Page Uses Analytics.
You’ll end up in one of the following situations:
- You find it is installed. Great! This is ideal. Just make sure you’re able to access your Google Analytics account, so you can actually review the data that’s been collected.
- You have no idea if it’s installed. If that’s the case, talk to your web developer. If you can’t, let us know and we can help.
- You discover it isn’t installed. If this is your situation, simply ask your web developer to install the code. You can probably even do it yourself, as long as you have backend access to your website and don’t mind doing a little setup work. Check out this support page by Google if you want to do it yourself.
Google Search Console
Every now and then a website owner will have their website published. It goes live. But then they can’t find it on Google, even after more than a month has passed. This is likely because Google doesn’t know the website has been published. Google Search Console is the solution.
Once your website is live, you’ll want to go to Google Search Console to make sure Google knows about the website.
Not only does this tool make it so you can ensure your web pages are indexed by Google (Google knows about them) but it also gives you a lot of other insight on the performance of your website. This information is a little different from what you would find with Google Analytics.
If you go to Google Search Console, and log into your Google account, you should be able to view your website information, if the website has been set up within Google Search Console. If it hasn’t been, then you’ll need to get that done.
You’ll end up in one of the following situations:
- You can get into your Google Search Console account and you see your website in there. That’s great! Take a look at the info and see if there are any issues that need to be resolved.
- You’re confused and have no idea what to do or if your website’s set up. If that’s the case, no worries. This kind of stuff can be confusing if you’re not used to handling it. Just ask your web developer to help.
- You don’t have your website set up with Google Search Console. If you’re a technical person, you should be able to get your website added without much difficulty. If you aren’t very technical, it’ll probably be a lot easier just to ask your web developer to take care of the setup for you.
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Website CMS Admin Access
According to an article published by Barn2 Media Ltd, in May of 2021, 64.8% of all websites in the United States that use a CMS are on the WordPress platform. Chances are pretty strong that if you have a website, it’s on WordPress. And if you go to your website and add “wp-admin” to the end of it, you will likely be able to get to your login screen. Here’s an example of what that would look like: www.example.com/wp-admin/
If the example above works for your website, when you actually use your domain, rather than the “example.com” version, then see if you’re able to provide the username and password to that website. Hopefully you can, which would be great! If not, just ask whoever developed your website to give you the login info to your website. They should be able to give you exactly what you need.
You’ll end up in one of the following situations:
- You have access to the backend of your website and have the ability to make changes without needing to know complex coding. That’s great!
- You have no idea how to access the backend, but you know you’re supposed to have this ability. Just check with your web developer. They should be able to help you get this access.
- This type of access isn’t possible for you. It could be that your website doesn’t have a content management system (CMS). If that’s the case, you won’t be able to make edits unless you know how to do web coding. This isn’t a common skill for most business owners, so no worries if that’s your situation. If you don’t know coding, then you’ll just need to ask your developer to make edits for you, when they’re needed. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to reach out to whoever built your website and see if they can adjust your website so you can get CMS access.
Website SFTP or cPanel Access
You’ll end up in one of the following situations:
- You have SFTP or cPanel login information. That’s great!
- You have no idea if you have this type of login, nor do you know how to figure it out. Just check with your web developer. They should be able to help you get this access.
- This type of access isn’t accessible to you. This situation isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you try and edit the coding, without knowing what you’re doing, you could break your website. But, you should at least know the person who does have this access. If someone is going to work on your website and needs in-depth access, you’ll need to give them this information. Whoever developed your website will most likely already have this. However, if you no longer have access to the person who developed your website, then check with your hosting company. If that isn’t an option for you either, then you’ll definitely want to hire someone to help you get this figured out. Just make sure you know who has full backend access to your website files and can edit them if needed.
What Comes Next?
About

As the founder of Joshua Lyons Marketing, Josh Lyons primarily focuses on business development. He has studied and practiced marketing since 2008 and launched his first company (a marketing agency in Pensacola, Florida) in 2015. When he's not writing blog posts, recording podcasts or consulting, he enjoys spending time with family and friends. He loves listening to audiobooks and checking out different coffee shops. He also enjoys fire juggling, amigurumi, travel and swing dancing; which is how he met his wife.