Something I’ve been thinking about for a little while now, especially with the rise in AI.
Now before I go ANY further, I want you to know that here at Willie Brown Creative, I despise the use of AI, and you won’t see anything that is apart of this platform being utilized by AI. I might do something that looks like AI, but it’s because it’s inspired by some of it, but it’ll never be done by it.
Anyway, back to the point at hand.
Something that is becoming huge in this industry now is the rise of companies wanting to provide people with website audits. And listen, having a website audit is not a bad thing, everyone needs their site audited to see if they’re getting the best bang for their back. Like there are things behind the scenes that you need to know.
But there are a lot of things with these new website audits that….well, you really don’t give a f**k about. Like, you look at some of these website audits and it’s like, “Why are you telling me this?” and more less, especially after doing your own research, “why are you telling me something, that’s not accurate?”
And the thing is, they’re not telling you. Lots of these companies are feeding these AI scrappers to scan your entire website and generate you a report that’s probably not even based off of your website.
Here is an example. There is a website that I’ve seen that is legitimately slower than pouring draino down the drain. You go to the website and nothing about it screams speed. But yet, their report had the nerve to say that the page speed performance was above about 90. And note, this is SUPPOSED to be from Google PageSpeed Insights. And it would also say that the PageSpeed best practices was almost at about 100. Seeing that report and knowing what this website was like, I called bulls**t and decided to look myself.
Went to not only Google PageSpeed Insights, but also went to GTMetrix and did a scan. Not only was the site speed below 40 on mobile, it was below 50 on desktop. And then on GTMetrix, it was at about a D.
But one thing this report really did well was call out how much AI usage was being used and got praised for it. Talked about the SEO scores, all of your trackers, your paid search, and so much other nonsense.
But my question is this. What about the audit about the things that actually matter in an audit.
When getting an audit, and this is in my honest opinion and what matters, you should be getting the following things checked.
- Is your website following privacy guidelines?
- Is your website protected from bots?
- Is your domain name healthy?
- Do you have the proper records in place?
- Are your files exposed?
And other items that you WON’T hear about from an audit being run by AI.
So be careful of those that try to get you to perform a website audit. One thing you need to realize is that not all website audits are created equal. You might not need a website functionality audit. You might actually need an SEO audit. But if you need an SEO audit, hire an ACTUAL SEO expert to do that audit. Not just someone that claims to know SEO, but throws your site into AI to give you updates about your website that doesn’t even match the content that you actually have just because you overlooked it. Hire an actual SEO person to handle that audit for you.
But if you need a website functionality audit, make sure you find someone that’ll give you exactly what you need.
Now here, I’m going to be offering a WordPress Health Audits for websites that will include items like I mentioned above including checking if your files are exposed, making sure your plugins/theme/core are up to date, if you have any vulnerabilities that you need to be on the lookout for and so forth. And then if there is anything, I can give you my recommendations or you can just work with me and I can help you resolve those issues. Either way, the plan is to make sure you see exactly what you need to see, nothing more, nothing less.
So yeah, that’s really about it right now.
As always. Thank me later, and I’ll see you on the next one!