Content Auditing!
Your website is your bread and butter and you have worked tirelessly on creating, building, and promoting your baby. All of your catchy Call To Actions and brilliant content has been driving readers to your website. Goals were drawn up and targets were hit. Things have started to settle down a bit and traffic sometimes feels like it’s closer to a trickle. Strategies that worked beautifully all along are no longer generating the same amount of activity. You are probably wondering what more can be done or what needs to be changed.
It’s time to AUDIT!
Let’s introduce the content audit! The word “audit” often sends waves of emotions through anyone on the receiving end. However, conducting a content audit on your website annually is necessary to ensure that your content marketing strategy is still on the right track. Gathering crucial insights through an audit can prevent posts from looking outdated, old, and totally irrelevant.
A content audit is a process that involves scrutinizing all content on your website and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the material. This quantitative analysis will help you optimize your marketing efforts going forward and ensures that you are providing material that readers want and need.
Content audits generate important information regarding SEO strategies and content marketing.
SEO
You will be able to identify weak spots in your website’s search engine optimization as most traffic is triggered through organic searches. Gathering and comparing the data (keywords, word count, images, meta description, page bounce rate, etc.) of every single piece of content with your current page rankings allows you to understand what improvements need to be made.
Content marketing - Analyzing the metrics of your page will definitely shed some light on the status of your content marketing efforts. Metrics may include page lengths, social shares, conversion data, time spent on the site. Focus on metrics that are important to you and connect with your goals.
The first step after narrowing down the metrics that you want to look at is to create a spreadsheet of all your content assets. There are many tools on the market that can help you generate a complete URL list or you can manually enter all of them on a spreadsheet. Next, you will label the columns by the metrics that you will be focusing on. Analytic tools, including Google Analytics, provide metric data information that you can then enter on your spreadsheet. Create an additional column labeled as Score for evaluation purposes later on. The last step will be to evaluate the data and scan for trends.
Spend some time on creating a grading system for your content from A (fantastic performance) to F (poor performance). Content that performed well or poorly in multiple metrics may receive an A or C. The grade will then be recorded under the score column.
The magnitude of audits varies depending on the needs and goals of your business. Condensed versions that weigh in on only a few metrics require less time to complete and can provide insights that allow you to periodically assess which content has the best performance. You will be able to effectively tweak your strategies for upcoming activities and posts. However, condensed audits should not replace yearly comprehensive audits. Having a comprehensive inventory of your existing content assets in both your website and other marketing channels will help you save time and money, grow your brand, and improve your ROI in the long run.