MWA Website Audit
musconetcong.org

Page Titles Needs Improvement

Page titles follow the pattern [Page Name] | MWA. The abbreviation "MWA" is the biggest weakness — search engines and users who don't already know the organization won't understand what it stands for. The homepage title leads with "Water Quality" instead of the brand name, wasting the most valuable SEO real estate on the site. Inner pages like "Education | MWA" are too generic with no location or distinguishing keywords.

Meta Descriptions Critical Gap

The homepage and Donate page have meta descriptions, but Mission & History, Education, and most inner pages return MISSING. This appears to affect the majority of the site's ~80 pages. Missing meta descriptions mean Google auto-generates snippets from body text, which are rarely as compelling as crafted ones.

Heading Hierarchy (H1) Needs Review

Footer elements (address, email, "Board Only," "Report it here!") are incorrectly marked as H2 headings, polluting the semantic structure of every page. Each page should have exactly one H1 matching its primary topic, with all subsequent headings following a logical H2 → H3 hierarchy.

Schema / Structured Data Partial

The homepage has three schema blocks: LocalBusiness, WebSite, and ItemList (for videos) — a solid start. However, inner pages have no schema. Events pages could use Event schema, education programs Course schema, and the donation page NonProfit schema.

Canonical Tags Good

Every page reviewed has a properly set canonical URL pointing to itself, preventing duplicate content issues.

Robots.txt Good

Well-structured. Allows all crawlers, disallows lightbox parameters, blocks PetalBot, adds crawl delays for aggressive bots, and correctly references the sitemap.

XML Sitemap Concerns

Proper sitemapindex with 10 sub-sitemaps. However, the pages sitemap includes Wix draft duplicates that should be noindexed or removed: /copy-of-lectures, /copy-of-in-the-classroom, /copy-of-2050-vision-plan, /copy-of-wild-scenic-designation, /copy-of-business-sponsorship, /about-mwa-old.

Alt Text on Images Partial

Most branded images have alt text, but several content images on Education and program pages are missing alt text. The Princeton Hydro sponsor link in the footer has no alt text or link text, making it invisible to screen readers and search engines.

HTTPS / Mixed Content Issue Found

Multiple internal links use http:// instead of https://. The floating "DONATE NOW" button links to http://www.musconetcong.org/give (non-HTTPS). Instagram and some partner links also use HTTP.

Open Graph / Social Sharing Incomplete

Homepage has og:title, og:description, and og:image. Inner pages are missing og:description. No og:type, og:url, or Twitter Card markup anywhere on the site.

Page Speed Acceptable

Homepage: DOM ready ~253ms, full load ~1,892ms. Reasonable for a Wix site with a full-width hero slider. The hero slider loads multiple large images on initial paint, which is a common performance drain.

Platform Wix

The site is built on Wix, which explains many structural limitations. Wix generates JavaScript-heavy rendering which can challenge crawlers. URL structure is clean and human-readable.

URL Structure Issues Found

URLs are clean, lowercase, and hyphenated. However, /musconetcong-river-management-counc appears truncated (missing the final "il"). Several orphaned or legacy pages exist in the sitemap but not in the navigation: /copy-of-lectures, /about-mwa-old, /seber, /greatwatersnj, /in-classroom, /zoning-analysis, /riegelsville, /westportal, /gruendyke, /hughesville, /finesville, /warren-glen.

Internal Linking Thin

Pages are linked primarily through the navigation menu rather than in-content contextual links. Richer in-content linking between related pages would improve crawl depth and topical authority.

Donation Flow Conflict Found

The nav links to /giving, but the floating "DONATE NOW" button links to /give (HTTP). Two different donation entry points with different URLs and protocols creates confusion and splits link equity.

Footer Architecture Poor

The footer is very dense and disorganized — sponsor logos, social icons, a mission statement, a "Board Only" link, a shad reporting link, a Linktree link, trust seals, and partner logos all competing with no visual hierarchy. Critically, several footer elements are incorrectly marked as H2 headings (address, email, "Board Only," "Report it here!"), polluting the semantic structure of every page.

Primary Navigation Functional but Confusing

9 top-level items: About, Instream Newsletter, Water Quality, Education, Advocacy, Restoration, Events, Involvement, Donate.

• "Instream Newsletter" does not belong in primary nav. It links off-site to Constant Contact. It should be a CTA button or in a utility bar.
• The "About" link goes to the homepage (/), not an About page — counterintuitive for users.
• Water Quality and Advocacy have no direct page linked from the nav button; only the dropdown works. This is a UX problem on mobile.
• "Donate" is also served by a persistent floating button, with inconsistent URLs between the two.

Missing Navigation Elements Missing

No breadcrumb navigation on any page. No site search bar visible anywhere in the navigation (though the platform supports it). No current-page active state indicator in the nav. These are all standard UX patterns that are absent.

Accessibility Partial

A "Skip to Main Content" button is present (good baseline). Navigation toggle aria labels are correctly implemented. However, several external links (sponsor logos, social icons) have only image alt text as accessible names, and the footer's icon-only links lack surrounding text context.