The work of a search engine optimization (SEO) professional is never done with content creation; optimization is never-ending. As we are constantly creating new and improved content to rank for more keywords, we may forget some of the content that’s been on the site for a while. A site’s existing content often represents opportunities that can improve organic search performance. In order to decide what kind of opportunities exist and how to prioritize them, you’ll have to perform a content audit.
What is a Content Audit?
A content audit, or content review, involves a thorough review and analysis of all or part of the content on a website. It allows us to identify strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in our topics in order to improve content strategy. It also ensures that the website’s content aligns with business goals and user needs. Cataloging and assessing the content on a site – from blog posts and articles to landing pages and product descriptions – allows you to make informed decisions about what to keep, update, or remove. A content audit is not just an inventory of the existing content but a critical evaluation that helps in making informed decisions to enhance content strategy and optimize the user experience.
Why Conduct a Content Audit? The Benefits
Conducting a content audit is crucial as it helps ensure that your digital content remains fresh, relevant, and capable of meeting business objectives. An SEO professional should focus on how content performs in terms of search engine visibility, user engagement, and conversion rates, allowing you to pinpoint areas for improvement. By assessing whether the existing copy supports your organic search goals, you can form a plan to prioritize which content needs to be updated, deleted, redirected, or even newly created.
Identifying gaps and opportunities in your content strategy can significantly improve your site’s organic performance. By creating the content that fills these gaps, you further establish yourself as an authority in your field. This also tends to improve user experience as it encourages you to build content that anticipates the needs of their search journey.
An audit also helps you identify outdated content, helping you decide whether to remove it or refresh it. By ensuring your audience finds valuable and relevant information, you can better guide visitors toward the right information, potentially increasing conversions, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
How to Conduct a Content Audit
Performing a content audit might seem daunting, but breaking it down into manageable steps simplifies the process. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to perform a content audit.
Step 1: Define Your Goals
This is the most important part of the process. This will dictate which pages you will focus on and why. It will help define what you plan to do about these pages and to what end. Your content audit checklist should contain a mix of objectives.
If you know you have many blog pages that are not generating any traffic, that may be your area of focus. Perhaps it may be that you want to expand your informational pages to improve your informational authority over competitors. Is it time to update or remove outdated content? Setting goals early on will guide your audit process and keep you focused on the changes you’re trying to make.
Step 2: Inventory Your Content
Create a content inventory. This involves listing every piece of content on your site, often using content audit tools that can automate part of the process. Spreadsheets are invaluable here, allowing you to organize content by relevant attributes. At the very least, you should be tracking:
- URL
- Title
- Meta-Description
- H1
- Content Type (i.e., collection, product, blog post, informational, etc.)
- Category (If your site is about plants, you may have categories like Flowering Trees, Houseplants, Shrubs, Fruit Trees, etc. It all depends on what makes the most sense for your website and content.)
- Keyword Targets
When it comes to taking effective inventory, the options are endless. Organizing your inventory will all depend on what you are hoping to improve.
Step 3: Assess Your Content & Create an Action Plan
With your inventory in hand, assess each piece of content against your goals. Evaluate content performance using metrics like sessions, bounce rate, impressions, and conversion rates. This will help you develop a priority order for addressing the areas of opportunity. It will help you identify the low-hanging fruit, but you’ll always want to consider the value of the potential juice against the effort of the squeeze.
Based on your assessment, decide on the next steps for each piece of content: Keep as is, update, consolidate, recategorize, or remove. Your action plan should align with the initial goals set for the audit, focusing on enhancing your site’s value and relevance to your audience.
How to Remove Content Online
In some situations, you may notice that content serves no purpose and may actually be detrimental to your site (duplicate content, I’m looking at you). Once you’ve Identified pages and copy that no longer serve your audience or your business goals, you will likely need to remove outdated or irrelevant content. This includes content that is low-quality or low-performing.
Addressing content like this is actually a crucial part of maintaining a healthy, effective website. Once you have your targeted pages simply set up 301 redirects to relevant, updated content. After redirecting, monitor your site’s performance and search engine rankings. Removing content can impact your organic search performance, so it’s essential to ensure that any gaps are filled with high-quality, relevant content.
Implement Changes and Monitor Results
Once the audit is complete and recommendations are made, it’s time to implement the necessary changes. It’s crucial to monitor how these changes affect site performance and engagement. Take note of implementation dates so you can begin to compare performance, but don’t expect an overnight change. A few weeks can also be too soon. Still, be sure to keep an eye out for any sudden dips or spikes in performance in case you need to revert changes or analyze why something worked well. You’ll want to check page performance every month to continue to understand how things are progressing.
A content audit is an invaluable tool for keeping your website fresh, relevant, and engaging. By systematically reviewing, assessing, and updating your content, you ensure that it continues to serve your business goals and meet the needs of your audience. Consider enlisting the help of an agency or SEO professionals for a more experienced approach.
Remember, content audits and the subsequent removal or refresh of content can be a project, which is fine, but it’s also meant to be an ongoing process that plays a critical role in your site’s success. Understand that it will take time and effort. By creating a good strategy to assess and maintain your content and looking for opportunities to create new content, you’ll be on your way to a healthy (and helpful) site in no time.
