Today, no online business can thrive without a content strategy.
If the content has been a part of your marketing efforts for a while, say a year or more, well, first of all – way to go!
Second, it is time to audit it.
Why and how, you ask?
This article will help you learn about content audit and reap its rewards.
What is a content audit?
A content audit is a process of taking stock of your content and analyzing it to ensure your business goals are on track.
Great! But why audit your content?
Every day, over 7.6 million blog posts are published online: the more new content, the more intense competition on search pages.
Plus, market trends and audience needs are changing faster than ever. Your content remains at the crossroads of going stale.
Hence, upgrading your content and overall content strategy is a necessity.
A content audit can essentially help you:
- Find gaps in your content marketing strategy
- Understand your audience’s behavior
- Discover the strengths and weaknesses of your existing content
- Identify opportunities to repurpose and scale your content
- Improve SEO performance
If you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of content pieces, you likely will feel overwhelmed at the sight of this humungous task.
Yes, it might be tedious, but the results will be worth it.
Let’s look in-depth into the content auditing process and make it simpler for you.
How to go about a content audit?
While there is no hard and fast rule on how to approach a content audit, a well-thought-out process comes in handy.
Here’s how to do it step-by-step.
1. Identify your goal
A goal is a compass that sets the necessary momentum, aligns your focus, and shows you the way – no matter what you’re doing.
Likewise, identifying the goal of your content audit is the first step that leads you in the right direction.
Do you want to improve your SEO? Are you looking to capture qualified leads?
A clear and specific goal is the way to get started and avoid getting lost in the infinite sea of possibilities.
2. Identify the content types that need an audit
Blogs, videos, e-books, podcasts, webinars, and infographics are some of the most popular content formats businesses work with (often all of these).
Each content type serves a different purpose and a different target audience. Should you audit all these at once?
It’s best to pick one content type first. It will save you a lot of confusion and overwhelm.
Say you wish to improve the SEO performance of your website; you might want to audit your blogs.
3. Define the audit parameters
Once you’ve identified the goal and decided on the content type for the audit, the next step is to define the parameters that will give you the insights you’re looking for.
There are three types of data to consider:
1. Informational data
These are the objective facts related to the content pieces, such as:
- Title
- Date published
- URL
- Category/topic
- Meta details (Meta titles, meta description, title tags)
- Target keywords
- Word count
- Summary
- Funnel position (whether it serves at the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, or bottom of the funnel)
2. Quantitative data
These are the metrics, the KPIs, that will give accurate insights into the performance of your content pieces. Often, you can gather these data points from your analytics and SEO tools, social media insights, and so on.
Some of these crucial metrics include:
- SERP position
- Page views
- Bounce rate
- Keyword volume
- Time spent on page
- Number of conversions/conversion rate
- Page load speed
- Internal links
- Backlinks
- Social shares
3. Qualitative data
These are the data points that will help you scrutinize the quality of your content and ensure brand consistency.
Some of the valuable qualitative aspects of the audit include:
- Language
- Readability
- Grammar, spellcheck
- Accuracy and relevance of the information
- Images
- Broken images or links
- Comments
4. Inventory the content
After identifying the data points, it’s time to create an inventory of the content and organize the data against your parameters.
The best way to do it is with a spreadsheet.
You may start by including data points to later identify the action items. Or, if you already know the actions you want to take as per your content audit goals, you can align the data according to the action items. Or, you may go for a format that’s a mix of both.
You may color code, add checklists, specify data ranges, or create dropdowns to organize the data and make it more accessible and clear.
WordStream’s Content Audit Templates will guide you in the right direction.
5. Do the needful
Once you’ve got the inventory in place, you can get down to the real work – analyzing the data and identifying what needs to be done for each content piece.
The content may need an upgrade. It may be good the way it is.
There may be instances where the content piece is better done away with. Don’t be hesitant to get rid of what’s obsolete or serves no purpose. It will pave the way for better content that brings in far better outcomes.
In a case where you find there’s no need to change your course of action, you can take it as an opportunity to reinforce your current strategy and experiment.
Conclusion
A content audit is an essential practice to stay on top of your goals and outcomes from your content.
A regular audit can help you pinpoint the gaps and opportunities in your content, opening doors for improvement and better results.
Along with a clear goal, an effective audit relies on the data related to each of your content pieces to draw accurate insights and identify action points.
Further, a tactful organization of the data can help you simplify the process and track the changes.
I hope this post helped you get a hold of content auditing and how you can use it to boost your content strategy and its outcomes.
Stay tuned to Contentphilic for more insights into the world of content.
