The purpose of the audit is to provide you information about the web pages you manage, so you can decide whether you should keep, update or delete content. The same also applies to any documents that have been uploaded to the T4 Media Library.
Your audit report consists of 3 main tabs:
- Inventory
- Broken links
- Docs
Sheet 1: Inventory
This sheet will contain a list of all the pages in the relevant section of the website. This list of pages is generated using a tool called Screaming Frog which crawls the website and clicks on links. Pages that are hidden and are not linked to from any other pages are not included. When crawling the page, the tool collects lots of information about the content. The main information is included in the inventory along with information from the T4 content management system, Google Analytics and a manual review of the page.
Description of the fields in the inventory
- Address – The public web address (URL) of the page
- Location in T4 – Where that page is located in the T4 site structure
- Title – The title of the page (as shown in search results)
- Title length – the number of characters in the title
- Meta description – The description added to the page via the Description field in T4. This should be a brief summary of the page.
- Meta Description Length – the number of characters in the meta description.
- Meta Keywords – whether any keywords have been added to the page via the SEO key phrases field in T4.
- Meta Keywords Length – number of characters in the keywords
- H1-2 – Heading 1 of the page. This is the main title that shows on the web page.
- H1-2 Length – number of characters of the Heading 1.
- Word count – number of words in the main content of the page. You should try and avoid too many pages with over 1,000 words. Pages over 2,000 words should be reviewed.
- Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score – this is a score which indicates how easy to read the page is. This is based on the number of sentences, words and syllables in words. The higher the score, the easier the page is to read. At Imperial we should be aiming for scores of 60 or above for most pages. There is more information on this on the Readable website. You can use tools like Readable or Hemingway to test and improve the readability of your pages.
- Readability - This is based on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score. We should be aiming for at least Normal on most pages.
- Pageviews / Views - Total number of visits to that page in the six month period specified. If it states 'Not found', then this means that there is no Google Analytics data for that page. This may mean there have been no visits during the six month period.
- Unique pageviews (audits pre July 2023 only) - This is a count of pageviews from distinct sessions (30 minute period). So if someone visits the same page several times during that session, it only counts it the first time. It is a truer measure of overall interaction than total pageviews.
- Engagement rate (audits from July 2023 onwards) - the percentage of visitors who interacted with a piece of content, like clicking on the link, filling out a form, or spending a significant amount of time on the page. Engagement rates increase when your visitors engage well with your content.
- Time on page (audits pre July 2023 only) - An overall mean average of the time spent by all users of your website in seconds. This is one measure of how engaged people are with the page. Please note this figure can be skewed by bots.
- Average engagement time pers session (audits from July 2023 onwards) - the average length of time (in seconds) that your web page was in focus on a user’s screen
- Bounce rate - the percentage of people that land on that page and then leave the Imperial website. This is the opposite of engagement rate.
- Exit rate (audits pre July 2023 only) – the percentage of users where that page was the last one they visitedin the session (30 minute period).
- Date of last update – the last time the page was updated. This is based on reports provided by T4 every two months, so will not reflect very recent updates.
Note: this date information has been provided by T4 and is based on the content updates in the immediate section (page). It does not take into account any page content pulled in from elsewhere, for example accordion/slideshow/flexible content items. - Updated by – The name of the T4 editor who made the last update
- Recommended action:
- Keep as is – the page is up to date and has good traffic, so no further action is needed.
- Review/update – the page may have low traffic, not been updated in the last two years or content on the page needs to be improved.
- Delete/archive – the page has not been updated for several years and receives very few visits, so the recommended action is to delete or archive the page.
- Notes – any additional information pertaining to the recommended action or any other comments about the page.
Sheet 2: Broken links
This tab contains a list of current broken links on this section of the website.
- From – the page which contains the broken link
- To – The ‘broken’ URL the link points to
- Link text – the link text used for the link
- Link position – whether the link is in the main page Content or the Sidebar (Aside)
Sheet 3: Docs
This is a list of all the document files in the Media Library folders that relate to this section of the website. These reports are provided by T4 every two months. The date of the report is included at the top of the page.
- Media ID – The ID of the file in T4
- Version – the current version number of the file
- Name – The name given to the media item
- Last Modified Date – the date that the latest version was added
- Last Modified User – the username of the T4 editor who added the media item
- Media Type – the file type e.g. PDF, Microsoft Office etc.
- Media Category ID – the ID of the folder that contains the media item in T4
- Media Category (folder) – The location of the media item in the Media Library i.e. the folder
- Filename – the filename of the media item
- File size (Bytes) – the size of the file in bytes
- File size (Kbytes) – the size of the file in kilobytes (KB)
- Usage count – the number of times the media item is linked to in content across the website. If the Usage count number is 0, then this means that there is no content linking to that document. In these cases we would recommend that the media item is deleted.
- Edit media item in T4 – a link to view/edit that media item in T4
- Notes – comments added by the reviewer
Sheet 4: Overall comments
Your audit report may also contain an Overall comments sheet, which will include some general comments about the pages as well as some suggestions.