The practice of examining and rating the current content of a website or blog is known as content audit. In terms of content quality, quantity, relevancy, consistency, and performance, a content audit helps to highlight opportunities for improvement.
A content audit can help you find obsolete, irrelevant, erroneous, or low-performing content. Understanding the content gaps and creating content improvement initiatives are both aided by this method.
The following actions can be taken to uncover ways you can improve your content and its impact on your business growth:
- Identify all existing material and the goal for each piece of content.
- Evaluate the content’s quality and relevance.
- Identify the stuff that needs to be changed or deleted.
- Verify the content’s accuracy and coherence.
- Create a strategy for adding new content or updating current material.
- Consistently review and assess the content.
- Make the content SEO- and accessibility-friendly.
- Disseminate the content and evaluate the outcomes.
These are the stages for content improvement that apply to any website or blog. The identification of content that needs to be updated or removed is made easier when you perform a structured content audit.
A content audit aids in planning the creation of new content as well as the optimization of already existing material. Any website or blog that wants to improve its content and engage more users should conduct a content audit at least twice per year.
Table of Contents
What is a Content Audit?
A content audit is a review of the text, pictures, videos, audio, and other content types that make up the content assets that are already available on your site. Content you and your team created recently and well into the past (if past content still remains on your site).
It involves analyzing the function, volume, and caliber of material as well as how it affects the user experience and the performance of your website both technically and in relation to achieving business goals.
After you conduct an audit, you can use your findings to fill up any content gaps, make sure your content is current, and make sure it appeals to your target audience.
Additionally, it will help to identify whether information is search engine optimized, whether any gaps need to be filled, and whether any content needs to be updated or eliminated.
It can help to guarantee that your content is accomplishing its goals, and it serves as a crucial stage in the process of developing a content strategy. You can perform an audit either manually or using technology (or a mix of both).
Benefits of Conducting a Content Audit:
One of the best ways to examine, evaluate, and optimize the material on a website or blog is to conduct a content audit. An evaluation of the content’s strengths and areas for improvement can assist you to uncover each piece’s flaws and develop a strategy for enhancing its usefulness.
The user experience can be enhanced, material can be optimized for search engine rankings, and a more cohesive content strategy can be developed, among other significant advantages of doing a content audit.
Businesses can learn more about the performance of their content and identify the adjustments that need to be made to improve performance by implementing changes based on the findings of your audit.
Additionally, content audits give a thorough overview of the information on a website, enabling companies to make wiser choices about the content they create.
Keep in mind, as you work through your content audit, you’ll want to jot down each of the notes you find about each piece of content within an audit spreadsheet.
Here’s a great example of a spreadsheet you can download specifically for Website content. Be sure to use this one or a sheet like it to track each piece of content so you can make improvements.
Click to download your spreadsheet (originally appeared on WordStream)
Identifying Gaps in Content
An important component of content marketing is locating content gaps. Finding chances to provide material that your audience would find valuable entails doing this. It entails investigating the interests, concerns, and content that your audience is currently exposed to, as well as the themes that catch their attention.
Searching for holes in the content that aren’t being filled right now is another aspect of this step on the content audit process. Topics pertaining to a certain sector, field, good, service, or event may fall under this category.
Once the holes have been found, you can produce content to fill them, providing your audience with the knowledge they require and boosting the exposure to and performance of your website.
Developing your content marketing plan and assisting your audience in finding the solutions they seek out both require identifying content gaps to ensure the highest levels of effectiveness.
Analyzing Content Performance
Analyzing content performance involves determining how well each piece of content accomplishes its goals. It entails evaluating the performance of content as it stands now in relation to objectives like raised engagement and raised conversions.
Marketers may increase the effectiveness of their content and pinpoint areas for improvement with the help of the data gathered through content performance analysis.
This kind of study can be quite helpful in evaluating both the effectiveness of a content strategy as a whole and the success of particular pieces of content.
Marketers may develop content that is more likely to resonate with their audience by using content performance analysis to help them learn important details about the interests and preferences of their target audience.
At the end of the day, content performance analysis can assist marketers in producing content.
Image: Example of tracking content performance using Goals in Google Analytics
Prioritizing Content Improvement Actions
Any content marketing strategy must include improving any flawed content uncovered by your audit. It can be difficult to decide which content improvement initiatives should receive priority attention.
To identify the areas that require the greatest attention, it can be useful to examine content from many perspectives.
Start by considering the content’s goal and duration. Is the information intended to prompt quick action or to inform a longer-term choice?
After that, check the information to make sure it is accurate, current, and relevant. Does it reflect current trends? Does it offer accurate information? Is it consistent with the overarching plan?
The user experience should also be taken into account. Does the text captivate and inform the reader? Is it simple to read and understand? Prioritizing content enhancement initiatives should be done in a methodical manner.
Creating an Action Plan
An excellent method to keep organized and make sure that things are finished on time is to create an action plan. Defining the intended result is the first stage in developing an action plan. This may be done for a project, professional objective, or personal objective.
The next stage is to divide the intended outcome into more manageable, smaller goals when it has been determined what is desired. The specifics of each objective should be listed, along with any tools or personnel required to reach it.
Third, it is important to define a timeline after the goals have been set in order to make sure they are achieved.
Last but not least, to make sure that each target is being accomplished on schedule, the action plan should be reviewed and checked frequently. Regular evaluations will be beneficial.
Implementing Content Changes
It takes a concerted effort from teams and departments to implement content updates. Existing web pages, articles, and other content may be updated, new web pages or content may be created, or entire areas of a website may be refreshed.
Teams must coordinate efforts among departments and explain objectives and schedules in order to achieve a successful content update. Teams from the design, development, marketing, and content sectors may be included.
It’s crucial to have a thorough strategy that is organized and well-documented for executing content modifications. This may include a project schedule, a list of content resources, and an approval procedure.
Teams also need to make sure that the information is structured both for people and search engines, and that it is optimized for search engine rankings. All changes should then be evaluated to ensure that they work with various browsers and devices.
Measuring Results
Any successful company or organization places a strong emphasis on measuring performance. You can do this to keep tabs on your progress, spot problem areas, and make necessary corrections to get the results you want.
Goal- and objective-setting is the first step in the results-measuring process. Metrics for tracking progress towards the goal should be developed once they have been determined.
Customer happiness, employee morale, sales, and website traffic are a few examples of such indications of organizational goals. When it comes to your content, you’ll want to traffic metrics like traffic, bounce rate, shares, sales, downloads, and other conversions.
The outcomes of the data analysis are utilized to determine the impact of the changes you made resulting from your content audit. After collecting the data and making updates, it’s critical to make sure those updates are having the positive impact you expect.
For any necessary adjustments to be made, the results should then be shared with the stakeholders. Results measurement is a continuous process that can assist organizations in achieving their goals when used in conjunction with the appropriate tactics and tools to boost the impact of your content marketing.
Conclusion:
A vital first step in improving content is a content audit. The audit will help you find and rank the most crucial content elements for improvement.
You may also use the audit to find and fill in any content gaps, make sure the information presented in your content is current and accurate, and make sure the content is in line with your overall business goals.
Your clients will have a better experience with your website and content if you take the time to do a content audit and make the necessary modifications.
As a result, you can raise client satisfaction levels overall and engagement and conversion rates. In the end, a content audit is a crucial and required step for enhancing content and making sure your website is providing the best user experience for your clients.
Francie M. Washington is the manager and Head of Growth of Incrementors, a company that assists clients in expanding their online businesses by bringing in more customers, Incrementors is an Award-Winning Digital Marketing Agency lead, and sales. Online marketing solutions that are specifically adapted to the demands of the clients are the Incrementors’ area of expertise.
2 Responses
A good content audit gives you great confidence Francie. I update and republish one post daily on my blog because doing a basic audit in January of 2023 revealed that I needed to beef things up quite a bit.
My content was solid enough but required an upgrade in terms of depth and also to get rid of some dated or bloated posts. Or in some cases, I needed to delete references no longer accurate.
Of course, I only reached this point of needed to upgrade and following through via an honest, genuine audit taking stock of where my blog was at the time.
As for your tips, following through strongly with implementation is the only way to make things happen. After auditing you need to follow through to improve your blog.
Ryan
It’s amazing how even the top posts can become outdated so quickly. Keeping them fresh can be hugely valuable, and conducting an audit can really help you uncover areas with opportunities for improvement that can take your blog to the next level.