Ultimate Content Audit Guide to Boost SEO Performance

Often, most marketers focus on creating new content but seldom take time to review the quality and performance of existing content. 

However, an overlooked blog post or web page can be a gold mine waiting to be refined. 

The guide sheds light on the critical goals of content audits, the steps involved, the tools you need, the metrics to track, and the importance of regular audits. 

Get ready to unlock new insights that can revolutionise your approach towards content.

What is a Content Audit?

A content audit is a systematic process where you review all the content on your website, including blog posts, product descriptions, and landing pages. The goal is to evaluate each piece's performance in attracting traffic, engaging visitors, and driving conversions. 

A content audit helps you decide what content needs updating, requires repurposing, should be kept as-is, deserves consolidation, or needs deletion. This audit process forms a critical part of your ongoing content strategy, aiding you in making informed decisions on improving your content.

Goals of a Content Audit

A content audit is aimed at achieving a variety of goals. 

Primarily, it helps you analyse the performance of your content and understand potential areas for improvement. Moreover, it identifies gaps in your content, highlighting opportunities to develop new, more effective content. 

Regular content audits can aid in identifying and removing duplicate or outdated content, consequently improving your website's SEO performance. 

It also aids in aligning your content with your business goals, thereby steering your content marketing strategy in the right direction.

6 Steps to Conduct a Strategic Content Audit 

From finding relevant content and tracking the metrics, it's best to systemise the process for better efficiency. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to do a content audit. 

Step 1: Define Your Goals and Metrics

Before delving into the details, define the objectives of your content audit. 

What benefits do you anticipate? 

What outcomes do you desire? 

Your goals could include improving SEO results, boosting audience engagement, increasing conversion rates, or identifying outdated and low-quality content. 

Having clear goals allows for measured success. Once goals are defined, attach them with relevant content marketing metrics such as organic traffic, engagement rate, the number of backlinks, and ROI. These metrics serve as benchmarks to assess the effectiveness of your content audit.

Step 2: Inventory Your Content

After defining key goals and metrics, delineate the type of content you intend to review, such as blog posts, news articles, product descriptions, videos, or external publications.

Collect URLs of the web pages you aim to analyze. You can manually gather links for a small website or use tools like Screaming Frog for larger content volumes. 

After assembling URLs, use a spreadsheet like Google Sheets to sort them. 

A content audit spreadsheet includes details like URL, page title, content type, user engagement metrics, bounce rate, content format, date of publication, author, and more. 

A comprehensive spreadsheet serves multiple purposes - it aids in evaluating performance, analyzing data, identifying gaps, and planning appropriate actions for each piece of content. 

Tools like Google Sheets can help you build a content audit spreadsheet, providing a holistic view and clear understanding of how your content is faring.

Step 3: Collect and Analyze Data Using Tools

The next step involves retrieving data from several sources and manually incorporating it into your spreadsheet. 

For comprehensive data collection, consider analytics tools like Google Analytics, which offers insights on traffic, on-site engagement, and conversions. 

Other resources can include Google Search Console and Scalenut Position Tracking for SEO-related insights. 

Analyze your content audit data for patterns or trends and prioritize issues that warrant immediate attention. 

Interpreting your data correctly informs your decision-making process and contributes to creating an efficient action plan.

Step 4: Assess Your Content

At this stage, scrutinize each piece of content in relation to your initial goals. Label each piece with one of the following statuses - 'Keep', 'Repurpose', 'Update', or 'Delete'. 

If some pages perform well and remain relevant, label them as 'Keep'. 

Content that could be refreshed or expanded for better performance should be filed under 'Update'. 

For content with a good track record but can be reused in a different format, opt for 'Repurpose'. 

Lastly, 'Delete' any low-quality or outdated content that adds no value to your website.

Also Read:
11 On-Page SEO Activities to Perform in 2024 to Rank Higher

Step 5: Draw Up an Action Plan

After assessing your content, create an action plan prioritizing areas that need improvement. Your plan should align with your initial business goals. 

Actions may include interlinking your content, optimizing your pages for conversions, adding visually appealing elements, updating CTAs, optimizing metadata, or adding 301 redirects. 

Keep this list of action items handy when implementing changes on your site. 

Continuously tracking your progress and making adjustments as needed ensures that you're always working towards achieving your content marketing goals.

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Step 6: Categorizing Your Content

Categorization is a crucial aspect of a content audit. It helps organize your content regarding what remains unchanged, needs updates, requires repurposing or should be deleted. 

Essentially, you need to assess your content assets using collected data and match them against your goals. Based on this evaluation, each piece of content is assigned one of four statuses:

• Retain 
• Repurpose 
• Refresh 
• Remove 

Retain

If a piece of content consistently performs well and stays up-to-date, it falls into the 'keep' category. Powerful evergreen content or content that consistently generates significant organic traffic and backlinks is ideal for this category.

These pieces can hold their place without any major modifications. 'Keep' can comprise content like success stories, FAQs, general business information, or any piece that continues to effectively serve its purpose even with the passage of time.

Repurpose

Content that has significant potential or has performed well in the past may need repurposing. This entails reformatting the existing content or presenting it through another medium to increase its reach and effectiveness. 

Often, a high-performing article can be transformed into an engaging infographic or a comprehensive webinar, extending its relevance and utilisation. 

Transforming and adapting your content to cater to diverse audience preferences can give it a fresh appeal and prolong its lifespan.

Refresh

Updating is a pivotal action item for content that is old or underperforming. This could include blog posts with outdated statistics, crucial pieces with outdated information, or content with low traffic or conversion rates. 

Updating such content involves introducing new examples, up-to-date facts or reevaluating the SEO elements. It gives the content a much-needed overhaul, making it relevant and topical for your audience. Regular checks and updates can boost the content's engagement and performance, enhancing its value for your website.

Remove

Not all content deserves a spot on your website. Some pieces might need to be discarded entirely. This could include content related to past events or campaigns, information on out-of-stock products, or duplicate content. 

Retaining low-quality or irrelevant content can adversely impact your website's overall organic performance. Therefore, if a page offers no foreseeable value and is beyond improvement, it is safer to delete it. However, ensure you set up redirects to avoid "not found" pages, thus optimizing the user experience.

SEO Tools to Use During Content Audit (e.g., Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, SEMrush)

SEO tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and SEMrush can significantly ease the process of a content audit. 

Screaming Frog is a powerful website crawler that can quickly gather URLs for your audit. 

Ahrefs offers in-depth insights into various SEO metrics such as backlinks, keyword rankings, and organic traffic. 

Scalenut provides position tracking, helping you monitor your target keywords' ranking performance. 

Webtune can bulk analyse on-page SEO factors and deploy them automatically for better ranking. 

These tools can track how your content is performing from an SEO perspective, guiding your decisions on which pages need improvement or optimization.

Content Audit Checklist

A content audit checklist provides a systematic way to conduct your content audit. This checklist includes tracking metrics such as:

• Page Views
• Bounce Rates
• Conversion Rates
• Engagement Rates
• Rankings for targeted keywords
• Social Media engagement

In addition, the checklist also contemplates whether each piece of content is crawlable and indexable, has relevant internal links, and is internally linked where relevant. 

Comprising a mixture of SEO, user-behavior, engagement, and sales metrics, a content audit checklist ensures comprehensive tracking of metrics crucial to improving your content strategy.

Why Are Content Audits Important?

While the content audit may seem like spending additional time on old content, however, it holds many benefits.

Here are a few reasons why you should consider auditing your old content in 2024. 

To Improve Content Ranking

Improving content ranking involves optimizing your content to increase its visibility and relevance to your target audience. 

To achieve this, you can leverage NLP terms like 'search engine,' 'internal links,' and 'meta description' to enhance your content. Analyzing SEO metrics using tools such as 'Google Analytics' and 'SEMRush’s content audit tool' will provide valuable insights into the performance of your content. Additionally, conducting regular content audits and implementing action items from an 'SEO audit' will help in boosting the performance of your content. Optimizing 'title tags' and 'page type' is essential for enhancing search results and driving organic traffic to your website.

To Improve Engagement

When considering how to improve engagement, it's essential to leverage social media to promote your pieces of content and analyze user interaction with tools like Google Analytics. 

Developing a comprehensive content strategy aligned with your marketing strategy can significantly impact user experience and boost the performance of your content. 

Incorporating internal links within your web pages and optimizing title tags and meta descriptions for search engine results are crucial elements in enhancing engagement. 

Regular content audits using SEO metrics and actionable data points provide a clear picture of your content's performance, guiding you to optimize for better engagement.

To Provide up-to-date Insights to readers

Online readers appreciate staying current with their knowledge. Outdated content can harm your credibility and deter visitors. 

Content audits ensure that your facts, insights, and data are all relevant and contemporary. They identify content pieces requiring updates or those that are irrelevant due to changes in industry trends and technologies. 

By keeping your content fresh and factual, content audits provide your audience with valuable and precise information while enhancing your brand authority and reliability.

To Find unutilized Content Opportunities

By capitalizing on social media analytics and Google Analytics, you can identify underperforming pieces of content. 

Crafting a strong content strategy is crucial for uncovering unutilized content opportunities and enhancing your overall content marketing strategy. Leveraging internal linking and analyzing search results will contribute to the identification of unexplored content potential within your web pages. 

Utilizing a content audit template can provide valuable data points and action items to improve the performance of your content. 

Regular content audits are essential for ensuring that your website content aligns with business objectives and targets the right audience.

Conclusion

In today's highly digital world, content audits have become irreplaceable for businesses focusing on a robust online presence. They lend a systematic and structured approach to assessing your content performance, identifying gaps and opportunities, and suggesting proactive measures for improvement. 

Whether you aim to boost your SEO, increase audience engagement, provide up-to-date insights, or uncover untapped content opportunities, a well-executed content audit can prove instrumental.

However, content audits are not a one-time exercise. The online landscape is constantly evolving, with audience preferences, industry trends, and Google algorithms undergoing frequent changes. Regular audits can help your content stay fresh, relevant, and optimized. 

Remember, what is important is not just the number of blog posts or videos you churn out but their quality, relevance, and value to your audience. A structured content audit is a stepping stone towards achieving this quest for superior content, driving greater engagement, conversions, and business success.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should you conduct a content audit?

Ideally, conduct a content audit at least once a year. For larger websites or rapidly changing industries, more frequent audits may be necessary. These periodic reviews ensure your content stays current, relevant, and optimized for both search engines and your target audience.

How do you prioritize which pages to update or delete?

In a content audit, pages should be prioritized based on their relevance to your business goals, their current performance, and their potential for improvement. Key metrics such as traffic, engagement, conversions, backlinks, and SEO ranking can guide your prioritization.

How Do I Analyze the Data I Gather During a Content Audit?

Analyze your content audit data by looking for patterns, trends, and outliers. Assess the correlation between different metrics. Identify content that drives high traffic but low conversions, or vice versa. Group your content according to the main insights observed, prioritize issues, and draw appropriate conclusions.

How Do I Determine Which Pages on My Website Need to Be Audited?

Unless your website is small, you will likely not audit every page. Choose pages based on their importance to your website's goals and how long it's been since you've last updated them. A good rule of thumb is to audit pages that makeup 20% of your traffic.

How Can I Make Sure My Website Content Is Up-to-date and Relevant?

Keeping your website content up-to-date and relevant requires regular content audits. Look for outdated facts or statistics, check if the content still aligns with your current business goals and branding, and ensure that all links are working correctly and lead to the intended pages.

How Do I Organize and Present the Findings of a Content Audit?

The findings of a content audit can be organized and presented using a well-structured spreadsheet or a content audit tool. You can classify the information based on different categories, provide summaries, highlight key insights, and add visual aids for enhanced comprehension.

How Do I Measure the Success of a Content Audit?

The success of a content audit is measured by assessing whether the changes made as a result of the audit have improved the performance of your content. Check the change in metrics such as organic traffic, engagement rate, conversion rate, and SEO ranking after implementing your action plan.

What Tools Can I Use to Conduct a Content Audit?

Several tools can assist in conducting a content audit. Scalenut, Webtune, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and SEMrush are powerful SEO tools that can audit your website's content. Google Sheets can help organize and track your content. 

What are the most important metrics to track for a content audit?

The key metrics to track during a content audit include page views, bounce rate, conversion rate, SEO ranking, engagement rate (time on page, shares, comments), and backlinks. These metrics will provide valuable insights on how your content is performing and where improvements are needed.

What Are the Steps Involved in a Content Audit?

A content audit involves several steps: defining your goals and metrics, inventorying your content, collecting and analyzing data, assessing your content, categorizing content, creating an action plan for each piece of content based on the assessment, and adjusting your content marketing strategy based on the audit results.

What should a content audit look like?

A content audit typically involves a well-organized spreadsheet comprising all URLs, along with key details like page title, content type, word count, and date of publication. It also includes collected data on each page's performance metrics, like page views, bounce rate, conversion rate, and SEO ranking.