To achieve your business goals, having high-performing content is essential. You need to know whether your existing content is effective in driving the desired results.
Evaluating the success of your content can be challenging, but a website content audit can make this process easier.
A website content audit helps you assess the quality and performance of your content. This will allow you to understand which pieces are working well and which need improvement. Additionally, a well-crafted meta description can significantly impact the effectiveness of a webpage in attracting clicks and improving search visibility.
By revisiting and analysing your content, you can optimise it to better align with your goals. Including keywords in the page title is crucial for enhancing search engine results page (SERP) rankings.
Key Takeaways
A content audit helps you evaluate your existing content.
It identifies high-performing content and areas for improvement.
A step-by-step guide makes conducting audits straightforward.
Content audit process
A content audit is a comprehensive process that involves systematically evaluating all the content on a website or other digital platforms. The primary goal is to assess the performance, relevance, accuracy, and overall quality of the content. This process typically begins with inventorying all existing content, including web pages, blog posts, videos, and other media. Next, the content is analyzed based on various metrics such as traffic, engagement, SEO performance, and alignment with business goals. This analysis helps identify strengths, weaknesses, gaps, and opportunities for improvement. The findings from a content audit can inform strategic decisions about content updates, deletions, or new content creation, ensuring the digital presence remains effective, relevant, and aligned with the target audience’s needs.
Landing pages
Landing pages are crucial elements in any digital marketing strategy, and their importance becomes particularly evident during a content audit. At Edge Digital, we emphasize the role of landing pages in driving conversions and capturing leads. During a content audit, evaluating the performance of landing pages is a top priority because these pages often serve as the first point of interaction for potential customers. Analyzing metrics such as bounce rates, conversion rates, and time spent on page provides insights into how well these landing pages are engaging visitors and converting them into leads or customers. A well-optimized landing page can significantly improve user experience and drive higher conversion rates, which is why identifying underperforming pages and pinpointing areas for improvement is essential.
Furthermore, a content audit can reveal opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of landing pages by ensuring they are aligned with current marketing campaigns and audience needs. For instance, outdated content or inconsistent messaging can detract from the overall user experience and diminish trust. At Edge Digital, we understand that landing pages must be continuously refined to reflect the latest trends, keywords, and user intent. By linking landing pages to relevant, high-quality content and ensuring seamless navigation, businesses can create a more cohesive and compelling user journey. This alignment not only boosts SEO performance but also enhances the likelihood of achieving marketing objectives. Ultimately, a thorough content audit helps in maintaining the relevance and effectiveness of landing pages, ensuring they remain powerful tools for conversion and engagement in the digital landscape.
What Is a Content Audit and Why Is It Important for Your Content Strategy?
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A content audit process involves analysing your website’s content to evaluate its performance and how well it supports your business goals. When you identify content that achieves your desired outcomes, you can create more of that type.
Conversely, underperforming content may need updates, consolidation, or removal.
Your site’s content strategy benefits greatly from regular audits. By reviewing your content, you can:
Identify new topics for future content creation
Make sure all content aligns with your brand voice and style guidelines
Find ways to boost user engagement
Generate ideas to increase conversions
For instance, we recently audited our blog and enhanced many articles. As a result, our blog’s organic traffic has reached new heights, showcasing the positive impact of a detailed content audit.
Performing a content audit also reveals gaps in your current content, helping you uncover opportunities for optimisation and expansion.
By auditing your content, you can improve your content marketing strategy, ensuring every piece works towards your business objectives.
By understanding what works and what doesn’t, you can shape your SEO content and strategies more effectively.
This process allows you to leverage high-performing content, refine your content strategy, and ultimately improve your site’s overall performance.
How to Do a Content Audit (Step by Step)
Ensuring that your content is properly optimized during the audit process is crucial for improving SEO performance and boosting traffic.
1. Set Your Objective
Firstly, you need to establish a clear objective. This helps determine how you’ll assess content performance and recognise success after changes.
Some common goals include:
Boosting SEO: Check your current content’s performance in organic search and find opportunities to improve rankings and attract more organic traffic.
Enhancing Engagement: Understand how users interact with your content and identify ways to increase engagement.
Improving Conversion Rates: Evaluate how well your content drives users towards desired actions, like lead generation or purchases, and optimise it accordingly.
Making your goal specific is crucial. For example, aiming for an average ranking position of 3 across all pieces and increasing organic traffic to over 200,000 visits per month.
2. Collect a List of Relevant Content Pages Using Google Analytics
Next, gather all the important content pages on your site, including blog posts, white papers, and landing pages.
This step ensures you don’t miss any crucial pages during the audit. Leaving out key pages could result in missed optimisation opportunities.
For small websites, manually collecting links is feasible. For larger sites, use a tool like Site Audit to automate the process.
To start, open the tool, enter your website URL, and click Start Audit.
Configure:
Allow/disallow URLs: Specify subsections of your site, like /blog/ or /resources/, where your content resides.
Domain and limit of pages: Set a threshold to capture all content pages.
Click Start Site Audit. Once the tool completes its task, export the list of pages and paste the URLs into your content audit template.
Exclude recently published pages if your goal is to improve SEO, as new pages might not have established themselves in search results yet.
3. Assess Current Performance
With a list of your web pages ready, it’s time to measure their current performance.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic indicates how much unpaid traffic your pages have received from search engines like Google. High organic traffic often translates to more conversions.
Use Google Analytics:
Log in to Google Analytics and select your site.
Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
Set the date range to the last full month.
Filter for particular pages by adding a Page path and screen class filter and pasting in the URL slug.
Log the traffic for each page in your audit template’s “Organic Traffic” column. Add the totals for a combined figure noted in the “Total Organic Traffic” column.
Keyword Rankings
Check where your pages currently rank for their primary keyword. Use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool:
Open the tool, enter your domain, and Set up tracking.
Adjust tracking preferences: search engine, device, location, and language.
Input primary keywords and Start Tracking.
Record ranking positions in the “Current Ranking” column of your audit template. Calculate the average ranking for an overall view.
Backlinks
Backlinks from other websites are crucial for ranking. Get backlink data using Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool:
Open the tool, enter a content section, and click Analyse.
Navigate to Indexed pages for a list of content pieces and their backlinks.
Add numbers in the “Backlinks” column. Sum the total backlinks and note it in the “Total Backlinks” column.
4. Implement a Plan of Action
After gathering performance data, the next step is to act on your findings.
Audit for Quality
Identify low-performing pages that either need improvement or should be deleted. Check for issues in content quality, outdated information, or lack of depth.
Optimise On-Page SEO
Focus on improving on-page SEO elements such as:
Page titles: Ensure they include relevant keywords to enhance SERP rankings.
Meta descriptions: Craft compelling meta descriptions to enhance content quality and overall page optimization.
Headings
Images
Internal links
Ensure these elements include target keywords and provide a good user experience.
Revamp Content
For pages with potential, consider updating or expanding the content. Add relevant keywords, improve readability, and include multimedia elements like videos and images.
Promote Content
Promote high-quality content across your social media channels. Engage in link-building efforts to gain more backlinks.
5. Evaluate Your Results
After implementing changes, it’s crucial to monitor the results to gauge success.
Organic Traffic
Recheck organic traffic using Google Analytics. Compare the new data with your initial numbers to see if there’s an increase.
Keyword Rankings
Use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool again to see if there’s improvement in keyword rankings.
Engagement Metrics
Look at metrics such as bounce rate, time on page, and social shares to assess user engagement.
Keep track of these metrics in your content audit spreadsheet to measure progress toward your goal.
Comprehensive Content Audit Template
To start with your SEO content audit, use a template to streamline the process.
You can get an editable copy by clicking the Use Template button at the top right corner. This will let you record key information in your Google Drive.
The template has columns to track important data points, and you can customise it according to your goals.
Include metrics from tools like Google Analytics and note any required moves or redirects in your content audit checklist.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Frequently Should You Perform a Content Audit?
It’s important to conduct regular content audits to keep your material relevant and engaging.
The frequency will depend on the size of your website and how often you publish new content.
For smaller sites with occasional updates, an annual review might be sufficient. Larger sites that frequently add new content should consider auditing every six months or even quarterly.
According to a State of Content Marketing report, about one-third of marketers perform content audits at least twice a year. Many also update their content on an as-needed basis when it becomes outdated.
How to Secure Stakeholder Approval for a Content Audit Project?
To gain stakeholder support for a content audit, start by clearly outlining the benefits, such as improved metrics like traffic, engagement, and conversions.
Work closely with your stakeholders to set a clear objective for the audit. Then, detail the specific steps you’ll take, the criteria for content evaluation, who will be involved, and the projected costs versus potential returns.
This transparent and strategic approach will help you secure the necessary buy-in from stakeholders.
Recommended Tools for Conducting a Content Audit
When auditing your website’s content, several tools can help gather and analyse the necessary data.
For SEO-focused audits, consider these essential tools:
Google Analytics: Provides insights into your content’s organic traffic.
Excel or Google Sheets: Useful for organising and analysing data effectively.
Site Audit: Helps list your relevant content pages and identify issues.
Position Tracking, On-Page SEO Checker, and Backlink Analytics: Offer insights into other valuable SEO information.
Tools like SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and Google Search Console can further enhance your audit by offering detailed performance data and identifying opportunities for improvement
What steps are involved in performing a comprehensive content audit?
Inventory: Start by compiling a list of all pieces of content on your site.
Analyse Data: Evaluate performance metrics like traffic, engagement, and conversions.
Assess Quality: Review each item for accuracy, relevance, and consistency.
Identify Gaps: Look for missing topics or underperforming content that needs improvement.
Action Plan: Develop strategies for updating, repurposing, or removing content.
What tools can assist in the process of auditing content effectively?
Google Analytics: Tracks traffic, user behaviour, and performance metrics.
SEMrush: Offers insights on keyword performance and SEO optimisation.
Screaming Frog: Crawls your site to map out all URLs and meta information.
ContentKing: Provides real-time monitoring and insights for ongoing optimisation.
In what ways should content be categorised during an audit for maximum clarity and organisation?
You can categorise content using several criteria:
Type: Blog posts, videos, infographics, etc.
Topic: Group by specific themes or subjects.
Performance: High, medium, or low engagement and conversion rates.
Word count: Evaluate content effectiveness and quality without focusing too much on metrics like word count.
Action Required: Update, optimise, consolidate, or delete.
What are the primary objectives of conducting a content audit?
The main goals include:
Improving SEO: Enhance search engine rankings and visibility.
User Experience: Ensure content is relevant and helpful to the audience.
Content Quality: Maintain accuracy, up-to-dateness, and relevance.
Efficiency: Streamline content to reduce redundancy and improve focus.
How do you integrate UX considerations into a content audit?
To incorporate UX elements:
Navigation: Check if users can easily find and access different content sections.
Readability: Ensure content is easy to read and understand.
Design: Look at the aesthetics and layout, making sure they’re appealing.
Loading Speed: Improve the speed to keep users engaged.
At what stage should you begin a content audit and what preliminary actions are necessary?
Start a content audit:
Before a Major Redesign: This ensures you retain valuable content and improve overall quality.
Periodically: Regular checks help maintain content relevance and performance.
Initial Steps: First, determine audit goals. Then, gather required tools and prepare a content inventory.
