Ultimate guide to website audit terminology

So. You’ve requested that Kafen8 or another source do a website audit or assessment on your website. But, as you read through the report, there’s a lot of unfamiliar terminology. Now what?

If you’ve received the website audit and need help understanding some of the terminology, or how to read certain metrics, you’re in the right place.

Check out Kafen8’s ultimate guide to understanding a website audit below to learn what each of these metrics mean to your website.

Kafen8 uses SEMRush for our website and SEO analytics. In case you’re not familiar with the tool, here’s a quick note on how SEMRush works: SEMRush is a tool used by marketers to measure many different metrics on your website and your competitors’ websites. When you measure metrics like traffic, keywords, and backlinks, you can establish a baseline and then improve by making frequent updates to your website and its content.

Let’s take a look at a sample Kafen8 Website Assessment using Nike.com as an example. Note that Nike is not a Kafen8 client - we use Nike as an example website that most will be familiar with.

Sample Kafen8 Website Assessment

Traffic: This is how many people are coming to your site on a monthly basis. 

Traffic Cost: This is how much it would cost if you paid for the same amount of traffic on the keywords your domain ranks for in organic search. 

Organic Search Summary: This gives you a summary of your website’s monthly traffic based on organic search results. Organic search results are results that appear when the query entered in a search engine relates to your website content, without the use of any advertisements.

SEMRush Rank: This is a custom domain ranking, and shows how visible your website is on the Internet. It is based on a combination of organic rankings and search traffic.

Keywords: These describe the content of your page. These also serve as the search term entered in a search engine.

Backlinks Summary: Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. This section is a summary of how many backlinks were included for your website.

Referring Domains: These are the websites that your backlinks are coming from. Each referring domain can have multiple backlinks to your website.

Referring IPs: This shows you have many IP addresses have backlinked to your website. The more IPs, and the wider their geographic distribution, the better for your website.

Traffic: Organic vs Paid: This shows you what sources your traffic is coming from. Organic traffic comes from unpaid search results on search engines, while paid traffic is a result of people clicking advertisements on a search engine results page.

Visits: The number of times a visitor browses your website by loading at least one page. Each visit is counted, no matter how many times the same visitor browses your website. A visit ends after a period of inactivity.

Unique Visitors: The number of unique visits to your website in a given month. No matter how many time a visitor visits your website, they are only counted as a single unique visitor.

Pages/Visit: The average number of pages a visitor views during a single session on your website

Average Visit Duration: This is the average amount of time that is spent by a visitor on your website during a single session.

Bounce Rate: This is a Google Analytics metric. It is based on the total visitors to your website and refers to the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing one page of the site instead of continuing to view other pages.

Traffic Sources: Direct: This is traffic where there is no referring source. This is traffic that comes to your website through your URL being entered directly into a browser search bar, saved bookmarks, or links from outside your browser (including links from PDF and Microsoft Word documents).

Traffic Sources: Referral: This is when traffic is directed to your website from a hyperlink on another website, as long as it is not a social media website or search engine.

Traffic Sources: Search: This is traffic to your website that comes directly from search engines like Google.

Traffic Sources: Social: This is traffic that is directed to your website from social media websites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Traffic Sources: Paid: This is traffic that is directed to your website from paid advertisements on Google Ads. This includes both pay-per-click ads on Google search results and Google Shopping ads on search engine results pages.

Top Keywords: These are the top keywords that result in organic traffic to your website.

Keyword Position Distribution: This shows how many organic keywords have your website ranked for positions 1-3, 4-10, etc. on search engines.

Organic Search: Top Competitors: Identifies the main websites your site is competing with for organic search traffic

Organic Search: Competitive Position Map: Graphically displays how your website is performing against competitors. The more keywords your website ranks for in organic searches, the more to the right it is on the Competitive Position Map.

Organic Branded Search: An organic search that includes your brand name – or variations of it –  as part of the query. This would be unique to your website. 

Branded vs. Non-Branded: Shows you the percentage of total traffic from branded and non-branded searches. Non-branded searches are those that do not include your unique brand name as part of the query.

Organic Branded Search: An organic search that includes your brand name – or variations of it –  as part of the query. This would be unique to your website.

Branded vs. Non-Branded: Shows you the percentage of total traffic from branded and non-branded searches. Non-branded searches are those that do not include your unique brand name as part of the query.

Organic Search: Branded Traffic Trend: This graphically displays the changes in traffic from branded searches over the past 12 months.

Organic Search Keywords Chart: Graphically displays how many organic keywords have your website ranked for positions 1-3, 4-10, etc. on search engines. Also shows the change over time.

Organic Search: Positions 1-100: Top 100 keywords that directed organic search traffic to your website. Also shows the position of your website on the search engine for that keyword. The higher up a keyword on this list, the more organic traffic it brought to your site.c

New vs. Lost Organic Keywords: New organic keywords are the new keywords that, when used in a search engine, show your website within the top 100 organic results in a given time period. Lost organic keywords are the keywords that no longer result in your website ranking among the top 100 in the same time period.

Position Changes: New Organic Keywords 1-100: Shows the top 100 new organic keywords over a given time period. Also shows the position of your website on the search engine for that keyword.

Position Changes: Lost Organic Keywords 1-100: Shows the top 100 lost organic keywords over a given time period. Also shows the position of your website on the search engine for that keyword.

Improved vs Declined Organic Keywords: Improved keywords are the organic keywords that continue to show your website ranking in the top 100 search positions for, but have moved up in ranking over a period of time. Declined keywords are the organic keywords that continue to show your website ranking in the top 100 search positions for, but have moved down in ranking over a period of time.

Position Changes: Declined Organic Keywords: Shows the top 100 declined organic keywords over a given time period. Also shows the new position and position difference for that keyword.

Organic Search: Top Competitors 1-100: A comprehensive list of the top 100 websites your site is competing with for organic search traffic.

WHEW! That’s a lot of website audit terminology.

Now that you understand what all of this website audit terminology means, start thinking about how you can analyze your website data and build a content strategy.

Got questions about something we didn’t cover? Or about your specific report? Just reach out!

Disclaimer: The SEMRush link in this post is an affiliate link. If you click through and pay for a service, I’ll be compensated at no cost to you. I only recommend services I use myself.