In the world of content marketing, a content audit is essential for evaluating the effectiveness, relevancy, and overall performance of your existing content. If you want to build a solid content strategy, understanding where you currently stand is the first step—and that’s exactly what a content audit is for.
Here, we’ll explore what a content audit is, why it’s beneficial, and how to conduct one step-by-step.
How to Conduct a Content Audit - What is it?
A content audit is a systematic evaluation of all content on your website or platform.
The goal is to assess which content is performing well, which is outdated or underperforming, and how each piece of content aligns with your business goals and audience needs. The audit examines metrics like traffic, engagement, SEO performance, and conversion rates, providing insights to guide your content strategy.
Why Conduct a Content Audit?
Conducting a content audit has multiple benefits:
Identifies Gaps in Content: Discover what content is missing or outdated and what new topics could be beneficial.
Improves SEO: By updating or optimising underperforming content, you can boost organic search rankings.
Increases Content Quality: Eliminate irrelevant or outdated posts and enhance high-performing content to create a better user experience.
Informs Content Strategy: The insights from a content audit can reveal trends and patterns, helping you refine your strategy.
Whether you’re revamping your website, updating your SEO strategy, or preparing to launch a new campaign, a content audit offers valuable direction.
Step 1: Set Clear Goals for Your Content Audit
Before diving in, set specific goals for your audit. Goals might include:
Identifying content gaps to enhance topic coverage
Improving organic traffic by updating outdated content
Enhancing conversion rates by optimising existing pages
The clearer your goals, the more focused and effective your audit will be.
Step 2: Create an Inventory of All Content
Compile a complete list of all your content. This includes:
Blog posts and articles
Landing pages
Product descriptions
Videos, infographics, and multimedia content
If your website is small, manually listing your content may do the job. However, larger websites with hundreds of pages will benefit from a tool, such as Screaming Frog or SEMrush, which can crawl your site and generate a content list. Export this list to a spreadsheet for easy tracking and analysis.
Step 3: Collect Data for Each Content Piece
Now that you have an inventory, it’s time to gather performance data for each piece.
The data you’ll want to collect may include:
Traffic: Use Google Analytics to see how many visitors each page gets.
SEO Metrics: Check keyword rankings, backlinks, and organic search performance using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz.
Engagement: Look at metrics such as bounce rate, average time on page, and social shares.
Conversion Metrics: For pages with conversion goals, track conversions and conversion rates.
Content Age: Note the publish date or last update date.
Organise this information in your spreadsheet to get a comprehensive view of how each content piece performs.
Step 4: Analyse Content Performance
Now it’s time to analyse the data. Here’s a breakdown of what to look for:
High Performers: Identify content that’s bringing in high traffic, engagement, or conversions. These pieces are valuable and should be kept up-to-date.
Underperformers: Look for content that receives little traffic or has high bounce rates. Identify the reasons, such as outdated information, lack of SEO optimisation, or poor user experience.
Outdated Content: Content that is no longer relevant can affect the overall quality of your site. Outdated articles should either be updated or removed, depending on their potential for improvement.
Content Gaps: Based on your findings, determine if there are any missing topics or areas where additional content could provide value to your audience.
Step 5: Make Actionable Decisions for Each Content Piece
Once you’ve evaluated your content, categorize each piece based on actions needed.
Common actions include:
Keep: High-performing content that’s already doing well. It may only need minor tweaks or updates.
Update: Content that’s still relevant but could benefit from fresh information, new keywords, or updated statistics.
Repurpose: Valuable content that could be transformed into different formats, such as turning a blog post into a video or infographic.
Consolidate: For redundant or similar posts, consider merging them into one comprehensive, updated piece.
Delete: Low-value content that is outdated, irrelevant, or doesn’t align with your brand anymore. Be cautious and redirect URLs if necessary to avoid 404 errors.
This step involves decision-making that aligns with your content goals. Each piece should have a clearly defined action based on its performance and value.
Step 6: Optimise Your Content for SEO and Readability
For content pieces marked as “update” or “keep,” apply optimisations where necessary:
Refresh Keywords: Re-evaluate your keywords based on current search trends and integrate additional relevant keywords if needed.
Improve Readability: Ensure your content is easy to read by breaking up text with headers, using bullet points, and adding visuals where appropriate.
Add Internal Links: Guide users to related content on your site to enhance SEO and improve user engagement.
Check Meta Descriptions and Title Tags: Ensure each piece has a compelling, SEO-friendly title tag and meta description.
Update CTAs: If the content’s purpose is conversion-focused, make sure your calls-to-action (CTAs) are clear, relevant, and compelling.
Step 7: Document Your Findings and Insights
Create a summary report of your content audit, outlining the key findings and recommended actions.
Highlight any patterns or trends that emerged, such as:
Types of content that perform best
Popular topics among your audience
SEO trends based on high-performing keywords
Documenting your findings is essential for sharing insights with your team, guiding your future content strategy, and establishing benchmarks for future audits.
Step 8: Set a Schedule for Regular Content Audits
A one-time audit is helpful, but regular audits will help keep your content fresh, relevant, and optimised. Depending on the volume of content you produce, aim to conduct a content audit at least once or twice a year.
Tools to Use for Your Content Audit
Here are a few useful tools that can help streamline the audit process:
Google Analytics: For tracking traffic, engagement, and user behaviour.
Google Search Console: For analysing organic search performance.
Screaming Frog: To crawl your site and generate an inventory of pages.
SEMrush/Ahrefs/Moz: For detailed SEO metrics like backlinks, keyword rankings, and more.
Excel or Google Sheets: For organising your content inventory and performance data.
Final Thoughts
A content audit is a valuable process that offers deep insights into your content’s performance, relevancy, and optimisation potential. By following the steps outlined here, you’ll be able to identify areas for improvement, maximise your SEO impact, and refine your content strategy with data-driven decisions.
Conducting a content audit may take some time and effort, but the rewards—a more optimized, relevant, and engaging website—are well worth it. Regular audits will keep your content strategy aligned with business goals, allowing you to meet and exceed audience expectations with valuable content that drives results.
Related Posts
