Content audit sounds like such a heavy term. Many marketers might agree with it.
Most people may think that once content is published, much of its journey is complete. But that is far from true. The essence of content is not restricted to the right research, decent vocabulary, and conveyance of the desired message.
From a business standpoint, a piece of content is a tool to meet the business objectives. This is where the idea of content audit factors in.
Publishing marks the beginning of a content’s journey instead of the end. You do not want the content to be buried six feet under shortly after it’s published.
The only way to prevent this burial is through a content audit.
What Is A Content Audit?
Known as a process that allows systematic review of a site’s content, a content audit helps in understanding the success or loopholes of the published content. Here, the notion of success is with respect to meeting the goals of the business.
But that is just the definition; content audit is much more.
- A content audit can help you nitpick the gaps in your content. Upon identifying such gaps, you can make the right adjustments to your content to align with the needs of the intended audience.
- Once you are up-to-date about the status quo of your content, you can make a robust content strategy to overcome the shortcomings identified.
- The core idea of a content audit is to reframe your content style efficiently to meet the needs of your audience.
If carried out properly, a content audit can endow you with all the details you need to make the most out of content marketing.
Want to know what is the right way of going about this? Below is the blueprint!
Step 1 – Have A Crystal Clear Goal
The reason you are doing a content audit in the first place is to meet your business objectives.
Since the content audit is a time-taking affair, it is best to narrow down what goals and metrics shall be the best to define your business objectives.
You can set defined goals based on:
Improving SEO For Content
The way your content ranks on the SERPs is crucial to driving traffic. Look at the rankings of your content, then look at best-ranked web pages employing the same keywords.
See what they did differently. Based on this information, update your content or remove it, if needed.
Here you can take an idea for internal linking, image optimization, word count, and keywords.
Higher Audience Engagement
The traffic on your content may depend highly on your ranking, but the time on page relies quite a lot on the quality of your content.
By looking at what the best rankers are doing, you can take notes on the most engaging type of content. This would also give you insight into the topics that your audience finds more appealing.
Better User Experience
The pages that offer a better user experience may engage the audience more and increase lead generation and conversion.
You can look at your content’s web page user experience and compare it with that of better ranking pages. Once you identify any gaps, you can work on those.
While working on those, analyze which stage of the customer journey your intended audience is and then repurpose your content accordingly.
The Right Key Metrics
To track the success of your content, measurability is the foremost option. Many metrics help in tracking success, but some do it better than others.
Fix the metrics you identify as the most important and work your content around those.
Once you repurpose your goals, you can easily move ahead with your content audit, keeping that distinct goal in mind.
Step 2 – Build A Content URL Inventory And Perform Content Cataloging
It is likely that your web page would not host only a single type of content. So, before you commence with your audit, lay down a roadmap of the distinct types of content you would audit.
Review content differently for different formats, like pdf files, video content, text content, games, audio, etc.
Within the text content, you can review separately for blog posts, reading material, landing pages, etc.
Once you have segregated your content, start with formulating a URL bank of each type. This is a good way to go about the audit because you use separate metrics to track different types of content.
For this, collect the URLs of the websites you wish to analyze and then make a folder out of the same. Track the performance across set metrics for analysis.
You can also go for a sitemap-generating app to automatically get all the URLs of similar content in one place along with the right metrics.
Once all your URLs are in one place, catalog your content through the same tool or Excel. To create a content catalog, have defined categories in mind. These categories can be – the buyer journey stage, type of content, format, and volume of content.
This content catalog is your database, on which you can further conduct an in-depth analysis.
Step 3 – Analyze The Data
While successful data collection is a demanding process itself, data analysis is equally strenuous.
Once you have the data compiled from distinct sources, you can start analyzing it against the metrics specified by you.
Let us see what content KPIs give what insights about the data:
- Unique page visits – Looking at the number of unique page visits would tell you about the number of individuals who visited your website.
- Time spent on page – By analyzing the time spent on the page, you can gather how interesting your website is to the visitor.
- Bounce rate – This content KPI will tell the viewers that left your website after seeing one page.
- Likes, shares, and comments – These would give you an idea about the level of engagement brought in by your content.
You can use tools to form graphs and charts for data visualization. You can also use data analysis tools to look at the finest details from within the data. Bringing in someone familiar with data analysis is preferred.
Step 4 – Coming Up With a Content Strategy
Once you have analyzed all the data, a big chunk of the work is done. Based on the results of data analysis, start working on a content strategy that addresses all the issues identified.
Here, the idea is to transform the status quo such that goals are met but with minimum edits to the existing content.
Put all the best performing content in a single place and identify what went right with them. Try to replicate that. Use your insights from the content of your competitors. Pick out the best of both worlds to make a flawless content strategy.
Now, The Audit Is Done
Isn’t that content auditing made easy? In these four uncomplicated steps, you can audit your content without stressing about it. You can discard the content that seems irredeemable and work on the ones that need improvement.
Make sure the new content that you publish stays in line with your goals and business objectives. If you require content to be published then you can always connect team Apna Writer for it. We provide professional content writing services under different verticals.
Finally, we wish you happy auditing!
