Why Your Website Needs A Content Audit (6-Step Action Plan)

October 19, 2022

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What if I told you that most of the content you write is never liked, shared, or found on Google then you need an expert review. Well, 91% of published content gets no traffic from Google. For online businesses, that’s a waste of valuable time and words.

But there’s a simple process that will help you sift through all that pointless content and repurpose what’s valuable. This process is called a ‘Content Audit’, and that’s how it’s done.

Define your marketing goals

Before you begin, sit down with your team and discuss what content means to your business and why it matters and how it works. Any content you create needs a goal, whether it’s for lead generation, brand awareness, conversion, etc.

Above all, your content needs to shine in the eyes of your audience and to do that, it’s best to understand how a website content audit brings your team together and improves your content marketing strategy.

Here are some benefits of a content audit:

Improve SEO

Not all content is imperishable. Some content created years ago may not be relevant to your readers today. Removing old content gives you a better chance of engaging your audience.

Your SEO goal should focus on identifying high-ranking content on Google, areas where internal links can be added, and articles that need an update.

Conversion rate optimization

Your content needs to fit into every stage of the buying cycle. To ensure you’re making the most of your content, categorize each piece into a marketing funnel stage: TOFU (top of the funnel), MOFU (middle of the funnel), and BOFU (bottom of the funnel). This ensures that each piece of content has a clear focus and outcome and nothing is wasted.

Analyze performance

By looking at how your content has performed in the past, you can improve on what’s already there and optimize for the future. As part of a performance assessment, gaps in content and potential for improvement are identified.

Content mapping

Mapping every piece of content on your website can be a daunting task, especially if you have a blog with hundreds of articles. However, with a website content audit, you don’t have to manually copy and paste each URL into a spreadsheet. The analysis would help you validate your content based on your sitemap data. You can select a specific domain like “/blog” to collect all relevant URLs and add them to a spreadsheet.

After you’ve added all of your URLs to a spreadsheet, create columns that further break down the category and purpose of each link. This becomes your content catalogue and you can sort your content by the following criteria:

Content-Type: Determine what type of content each article fits under. For example, blog articles, customer testimonials, videos, case studies, product overviews, etc.

Category: Each article should be nested under a category that aligns with your content goals. For example “latest”, “growth hacking”, “marketing automation”, etc.

Published Date: Provide a published or modified date so you know the age of your content.

Author: Determine if you will designate each author or if you will bring each piece of content to the organization.

Marketing Funnel Stage: Identifying where each piece of content sits in the buying cycle: Awareness, Opinion, Consideration, Preference, or Purchase.

Status: As you optimize any piece of content, you should label its current state, whether it’s being adjusted, deleted, reconsidered, etc.

TextProz Website Content Audit team can simplify this process for you. Just share the link to your website and get a free content audit report. Request a quote now.

Identify high and low-performing content

Now that you’ve got all your content together, it’s time to see what’s working and what’s not. Avoid making decisions based on riddles or opinions – the data is all that matters. Use Google Analytics to see how your content is performing on your website and if you post content on social media, check your like, share, share, and engagement metrics.

Analyzing your data may take some time, but the benefits are worth it. By examining your content metrics, you can determine exactly which content is performing well and which is low.

Many factors contribute to underperforming content. So before you completely erase any content, look for what can be salvaged. For example, a high bounce rate may be caused by a click-bait title, so your content may not match what the reader originally expected. If so, you might want to rethink your titles or rewrite your content.

Start a competitor analysis

It’s always a good tactic to know what the competition is doing (especially the competition that’s doing it right!). When a consumer is looking for a solution, it’s safe to say they’re checking out their competitor’s website and content.

To stay ahead, you need to create content that competes with your competitors. You should also check the content of your competitors. Create a list that identifies the top categories and breaks down the top-performing content. Replicate what you did for your content review to see where the gaps are.

You can’t measure all the metrics associated with competitor content, but with tools like BuzzSumo Backlinks, you can track relevant links belonging to their top-performing content.

This tool helps you see what websites your competitors are linking to and what popular content they are expanding. It can give you an idea of what to research and what to write about.

This is not a license to copy your competitor’s content. When conducting competitive analysis, you want to get content ideas for your creative output. Google will penalize your website ranking if it detects direct duplicates, and in any case, the original content is more interesting to read.

Creation of an action plan

Now that you’ve defined your marketing goals, mapped out a content inventory, identified high-performing and underperforming content, and researched competitors, it’s time to develop an action plan. This plan will help you define the next steps when it comes to content creation. With an action plan, you can align your team, set tasks, set goals, and create better content than ever before.

Here are six steps you can take to improve your content and complete your audit:

Step One:

Restructure your content so that it’s optimized for Google and makes sense for your readers. Add content categories to improve your ranking on Google and ultimately help users find what they need.

Step two:

Identify new categories or content styles. You may need to create gated content like eBooks or more engaging and creative content like videos or podcasts. Think beyond the blog.

Step Three:

Update your CTAs and links. Make sure every piece of content ends with an action, whether it’s “subscribe to our newsletter” or “try our product”. Also, check the links in each piece of content to make sure they’re still current, relevant, and useful.

Fourth step:

update your images. Your site may have undergone a rebrand between content reviews. If this is the case, you may need to redesign your blog images to match the new brand. This can take some time, so appoint a dedicated designer.

Step Five:

Improve your metadata by optimizing it for SEO. Rewrite meta tags, titles, and descriptions so Google displays the correct information about your content. It will also improve your authority, exposure, and search ranking.

Step Six:

Assign new roles to your content team and launch your new content marketing strategy. For example, assign one member to News Stories, another to Customer Case Studies, and another to Product Launch. Create a content roadmap that outlines how much content you will produce, who will write it, and what day it will be published.

High-quality content can take your website to the top of the search results. Use TextProz content writing services to build a content-rich website that your visitors would love!

Final thoughts

Finally, you have come to the end of your content review. It may have been a time-consuming and lengthy process, but now you have a clear plan of action. Your content marketing strategy becomes the heart of your customer acquisition strategy, so analyzing each article is worth it in the long run.

Some marketers recommend that websites conduct a content review once a quarter and once a year. It depends on the rate of change between the team, brand, and content. After conducting an audit, you will know what your company needs. So it’s up to you to set the right time for the next audit. Until then, read our blog on content marketing for content strategies you can implement now.

Jim Frost

Jim Frost is an experienced content writer with a decade-long experience in helping businesses grow. He has written multiple articles on topics such as business, finance, technology, marketing, and more.