A content audit is a thorough assessment of all your published content, including website pages, blog articles, white papers, e-books, videos, podcasts or other presentations, infographics, social media posts, and more. It’s a time-consuming process, but one that you should undertake annually or if there are disruptions in your industry or you want to change your business model.
Once complete, you’ll discover if your content assets align with your digital marketing strategy. Then, you’ll be positioned to make corrections or amplify what’s working. But, more importantly, you won’t waste precious time and money on content that is not helping you grow your business.
Why Do You Need A Content Audit?
Current economic indicators are gloomy and point to a challenging period ahead. Inflation continues to climb while short-term fixes appear more likely to plunge the US economy into a recession. In addition, the tech industry is witnessing a flurry of layoffs, including giants like Microsoft, Salesforce, Netflix, Tesla, and Coinbase.
According to Crunchbase, approximately 44,000 tech industry employees have lost their jobs.
76% of adults are making lifestyle changes to prepare for a potential recession, according to an article published on 13 October on CNBC.
Whether you are a B2C or B2B company, you will face challenges closing sales and growing your business. Furthermore, the economic disruptions we face today are global in scope, so it makes little difference where you are doing business.
Now is the time to optimize your marketing budget by ensuring that your digital assets are precise and reach your target audience.
What Are The Benefits Of A Content Audit?
A content audit is time-consuming, but the ROI is worth it. You’ll
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- improve SEO ranking (drive more traffic to your website)
- learn which topics are the most popular so you can create more content within those pillars
- optimize or delete poor-performing content
- identify topic areas that your competitors are covering and you are not
- increase engagement and conversions
- meet your goals and grow your business.
A content audit will help you identify
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- content that needs to be improved or that can be repurposed into other formats
- digital assets that are not resonating with your target audience
- content that is incompatible with your brand mission and purpose
- outdated and duplicate content
- content gaps.
Additionally, you’ll reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your content marketing strategy.
Finally, by taking the time to audit your digital assets, you’ll be less likely to be penalized by Google’s new helpful content algorithm update. Google algorithms will reward content written for users rather than search engines. It will look for content that provides value for website visitors and meets their expectations.
What Content Should You Audit?
Most articles focus on auditing all the content on your website. But today, when your audience is digital-first, and you’re publishing content across multiple social channels, you need to audit your entire stockpile of digital assets:
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- website articles
- blog articles
- podcasts
- videos
- social media posts
When auditing, ask if your content is
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- consistent and builds trust with your target audience
- honest, clear, and creates a frictionless journey for your customers
- helpful to your audience (addresses their pain points, needs, and concerns)
- relevant to your business products/services
- ranking high in Google
- helping to establish you as a thought leader in your industry.
The Basics of A Content Audit
Website Content
Collect And Organize Your Digital Assets
An Excel or Google spreadsheet is a low-tech option for collecting and measuring your content’s performance.
Establish Your KPIs
How will you measure your content’s performance?
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- website visits
- Google rank
- conversions
- impressions
- comments
- likes/shares
Take Advantage Of Analytical Tools For Your Content Audit
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- Google Analytics
- SEO tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush
- content quality tools such as Yoast SEO
- Grammarly’s performance scoring tool (paid version only)
Social Media Audit
For your social media audit, you’ll need to collect all your profiles, including ones you may not currently use. Then, identify the number of followers or subscribers, engagement metrics, and other indicators that help you learn how your channels perform.
You can use each social media platform’s built-in analytics features to assess
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- engagement metrics
- top-performing posts
- impression and reach
- audience demographics.
Once you’ve collected your top-performing posts on each social media platform, analyze which posts drive the most traffic to your website and whether any content was posted across multiple platforms that are performing equally well. This will let you know what types of social media assets resonate with your audience wherever they engage with your business.
Additionally, you’ll want to know
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- what is causing the highest levels of engagement
- which demographic is interacting with which types of content
- engagement patterns related to the day or time of posting
- content that fails to engage at all
- channel performance.
As mentioned, you can use your platform’s built-in analytics tools, but for more comprehensive analysis, you might want to use a social media audit tool such as
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- HootSuite
- Sprout Social
- Sociality.io
What To Do With Your Website Content Post Audit
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- Combine articles that cover the same topic and create an e-book.
- Rewrite underperforming blog posts by updating statistics and giving more tips and practical details to help your reader actualize your suggestions.
- Increase the word length of existing website articles. For instance, if you published an 800-word article, expand it to 2000 words or more. According to Semrush, website articles of at least 3000 words get three times more traffic, four times more shares, and 3.5 times more backlinks.
- Add images and videos to your articles, making them more engaging and keeping readers on your site longer. A longer dwell time will improve your search engine ranking.
- Review your meta titles, descriptions, and H1. Be sure you’re using the keywords you’ve focused on in your article. Do research first to identify trending metadata in search results and what your competitors are using.
Bottom Line
Marketing budgets are the first candidates for cuts when there is financial uncertainty. It’s an unwise decision, but typical.
But even in good times, you should conduct a content audit every year. If you don’t know how your content is performing nor how your customers are interacting with your business, you’ll waste money on creating and publishing digital assets that do not serve your interests.
A conduct audit will enable you to differentiate yourself from your competition, create personalized content, improve your engagement with your target audience, boost conversions, build trust in your business and increase revenues. It’s time well spent.
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