A Guide To Content Audits And What You Need To Know

In 2022, marketing experts believe that content is still KING.

Content marketing will still play a vital role in your overall digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies in 2022 and beyond.

If you have yet to conduct a review of your content marketing strategy last year, this is a good time to determine what needs to be improved and what needs to be stopped. This is where a content audit is needed.

Content audit: what is it?

In simple terms, a digital content audit is like conducting a personal inventory of how you spent your time professionally and personally in the past year. This is so you can gauge which efforts paid off the most, which ones did not, and what you would like to try in the new year.

Technically speaking, a digital content audit is the process of cataloging, analyzing, and measuring all your content marketing assets to ensure that you’re providing your audience the valuable information across the buyer’s journey. Consequently, this can improve your SEO rankings, which can also increase sales conversions.

To accurately determine the efficacy of your content marketing strategy, you need to check all of your content, including the following:

• Blog posts
• Video content
• Whitepapers
• Case studies
• eBooks
• Webinars
• Social media assets
• Infographics
• Reports
• Sales sheets
• Interactive experiences, i.e., assessments and quizzes

Content audit: why is it important?

You will need the complete list of every piece of content you’ve ever created. When performing a content audit, you will also need to consider all your goals to successfully measure which ones brought in the most highly qualified leads. This way you’ll be able to narrow down the list and get rid of the ones that are not helping you increase your revenues.

Here are some of the most compelling reasons you need to conduct a content audit.

1. To identify gaps and website issues

Keep in mind that customer needs are ever-evolving. This is why your products and services should, too. A digital content audit will help you evaluate your goals for the year and identify which types of buyers or part of the buyer’s journey you should focus on to maximize your marketing spend.

Additionally, a content audit will help you discover bugs and issues, such as broken links, that can pull down your rankings and eventually, your sales. By being able to correct issues in your website content, you can improve overall customer experience and website accessibility, which will result in an increase in the number of visitors and conversions.

2. To find opportunities to repurpose content

You might have great content you created some years ago that is still relevant and can be promoted again. You can breathe new life into old content by updating it. For example, an old brand video that performed well when you first uploaded it can use some updated footage so you can post it again on social media. The same goes with older blog posts, podcasts, and webinars so long as you update the content and make it seem new again.

3. To evaluate the quality of your content

One of the most important reasons why you need to perform a content audit is to evaluate the quality of your existing content. Is it high or low quality? Is it relevant or outdated? Is it lengthy or short? Google’s crawlers will determine the quality of your content and will rank or penalize your site based on its findings.

Similarly, a content audit will also help you get rid of outdated content that can still be relevant and drive traffic to your website. All you need to do is update the content to make it more aligned with your brand today. This retains all the traffic and link juices that your old content has acquired over the years.

4. To optimize website structure

A part of enhancing your site’s user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) is improving its structure. What good will excellent content be if your audience can’t access it? This is why you need to perform a content audit to know how you can make your most effective content easier to find by both your audience and search engines.

Content audit: essential steps to take

1. Be clear about your goals

This is the first and most important step when conducting an audit of your content. Once you determine what you want to achieve, you’ll then be able to break down your audit into categories, which can include SEO optimization, content to be repurposed, obsolete content, content to update, increased ROI, and increased conversions.

2. Review content performance

A dashboard and reporting software for your content audit will make it easier for you to pinpoint top-performing videos, blog posts, and other content. You can also use attribution reports to determine which campaigns contributed the most leads and revenues, which can help you save a lot of marketing dollars.

3. Pinpoint areas to be improved

There’s always room for improvement somewhere. By narrowing down all of your content based on your goals, you’ll be able to highlight which areas can be worked on to make them perform better.

4. Analyze issues

Use audit tools that have key metrics to help you analyze your content. The most important metrics you need to use include:

• Website traffic
• Bounce rate
• Conversions
• Traffic sources
• Average time spent
• New vs. returning customers
• Engagement
• Pages per session

5. Audit your content

Add a few columns to your existing spreadsheet. Then, give each evaluator a score. You should also add a notes column to mark insights, questions, errors, recommendations, etc.

Bottom line

The main goal of a digital content audit is to provide your business with a comprehensive framework of your existing content. This allows you to determine which content needs to be optimized, repurposed, reorganized, edited, deleted, or created from scratch. You will need to audit key areas on your website, such as the main landing page, product pages, and the like.

And with then, you can then take the necessary steps based on the information the audit will provide.