A content audit is collecting and analysing data on the website like blog posts or landing pages. It keeps an inventory and provides insight into which content should be created, re-written, updated or deleted.
Value of Content Audit
Content auditing is the most neglected concept in SEO. But, it’s important to audit at least annually to outperform your competitors and be at the top on the search result page.
Running a content audit is beneficial for traffic and improves the readers' experience. It helps to identify the areas that aren't optimized properly, which website content writing services needs to be updated and new SEO opportunities to implement on the website.
Benefits of Content Audits
Content audit helps bring the content up-to-date, improve the rank of web pages and make it easy to navigate your website and error free. Benefits of content audits:
Figure out what works for you: Content audit helps identify which content, topic and formats are getting the best outcome. By doing so, you can invest your money and time into creating content that pays off.
Types of working that’s not working: Businesses that do content marketing ends up with some content that doesn’t hit. Content auditing helps to ensure you don’t waste your time and write content that doesn’t appeal to the readers. It helps to remove clutter from the website.
Find opportunities for repurposing: Many businesses produce content from scratch. You have a chance to tweak the old content to fit into new formats. Identify such content and create a plan for repurposing.
Update the old content: A blog from 5 years ago could have useful information and outdated things that make the content look less authoritative. Just like repurposing, updating the content make better use of what you already have with less effort.
Clean and organise the website: Your website might have pages that no audience visits, probably because they aren't interested or difficult to find. Content audit helps identify which content you should remove and how to make the rest accessible.
How to Run the Content Audit
Here are some tips for conducting a content audit successfully:
Think Your Goals
If you are clear about your goals, you will know how to do the audit. The content audit identifies engaging content and includes information on conversion rate and SEO. One important goal you must consider is which pages need to be SEO-optimized.
Identify the company goals to ensure the content audit is useful for bookkeeping and update strategies with improved tactics. Once it’s done, collect your content.
Collect All Pieces Of Content
What type of content will you audit? The audits are for blog posts, publications, product descriptions and multimedia. First, decide and collect all the content. To do this, collect the web page URL you will audit. Get it all into a spreadsheet, and organise and build different fields. This spreadsheet should depend on your goals and include categories for:
Metrics you will track related to each piece of content like page views, social shares, conversions, and downloads.
The goal of the content should be to create awareness, email signups, click on other content etc.
Primary topic covered
Content format
The audience it was meant for
Target keyword
Feedback from the readers
CTA included
Analyse The Data
Look at the data carefully. While analysing the data, there are a few things you should take a note of:
What are the things audience is interested in that are not covered?
Which content is not getting the number you want?
If you have an old piece of content, can it be updated or reworked to maintain optimisation
Content that has performed well
Based on the result, organise it on the spreadsheet.
Make A Decision
Based on the analysis, you know what to focus on. Think about the posts to update, delete, re-write or restructure. Make an additional column on the spreadsheet that will help you know the action to take on the particular URL. You will know whether to keep it, delete, re-write or update that blog.
Key Metrics
Here are the key metrics you want to track for content data audit
Bounce rate- if your website gets a high bounce rate, it needs attention. It means that you have misunderstood the user's intent.
Organic traffic- Traffic is the key reason you optimise the website. If your content is not generating enough traffic, it indicates you need to tweak your content strategy. Probably the topic is not covered properly, or the wrong keyword has been placed.
Backlinks- Quality backlinks act as a confidence for the pages. Backlinks take time to grow, so audit them regularly. Wrong links can degrade the page authority so audit them regularly to get valuable insights.
Page per session- The number of pages a visitor explores is important. The more they explore, the better their chance of getting converted.
Conversion- The conversion goal metric helps to check if the content created for conversion achieves the desired result.
Unique visitors- These visitors came to your website for the first time. New visitor means you have the chance to get views. However, more views mean better ROI.
Traffic sources- Measuring the traffic source determines which ones are giving qualified traffic. You can increase the number of content regularly to get new customers.
Average time spent- You want to create content that grabs the reader's attention. The more time they spend on your website, the more likely they are to get converted. But, if a reader spends less time, it shows that the content is not appealing to the reader.
Wrap Up
Content auditing should be an ongoing process as it helps you stay at the top of organic search results. Your website content should not be outdated or stagnant. It should be audited whenever you add a new service or product to your website.
With content getting prominence in the SEO with constant updates, it’s clear that content audit plays a vital role in the content strategy. Stay ahead of the competition, rank high in the SERPs and increase engagement. It is a powerful tool for fine-tuning content marketing and SEO strategies for better results.
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