Is this the most boring word?
Hello you,
Are you feeling the fresh start of September? I kinda am but my kids aren’t back in school for another week so it’s a bit like treading water at the moment. One more week of odd hours before we get some routine back in our lives.
I’ve had the utter joy these past two weeks of working on two SEO audits. I love doing these because, at the end, there is a clear plan and lots of content work to be done. It also sets a baseline to track how the work is paying off. Always a good thing to look at if you’re feeling like your content marketing efforts aren’t going anywhere.
But I also hate these as they are a reminder that I never do them on my own website. And it’s desperately overdue a content audit. So this week’s read is about how to do a content audit.
Personally, I think calling them an ‘audit’ makes it sound really boring. It’s like a tax audit or an accounts audit. Yawn fest.
But looking at what content you have and how you can improve it shouldn’t be boring. Just maybe don’t try to tackle it all at once.
Before we drop into that, I am working on creating a Monday Brew (oooooh).
A Monday Brew will be a list of social media prompts and ideas (and maybe a blog or two) plus some other nudges like “try this new feature, here’s how you can use it for marketing”.
There will be a fee (£5 a month) but as you’ve been reading my Thursday Brew, I’m going to send you the first couple for free.
Right, let’s get started on a content audit…
How to do a content audit
Having too much content on your website can be confusing. Your business has probably changed and evolved over the years so the kind of things you talked about when you first started out is not the same message you want to make right now.
It may not even be the same audience you are talking to, either. Plus, if you’re doing the content job right, you’ll be testing, tweaking and drilling down into the things that work. That means by its very nature, your content needs to change, too.
But having too much content or an established business is not the only reason you would need a content audit.
Off the top of my head I can think of:
Having a re-brand
Pivoting the business
Being a brand new business
Run out of ideas of what you want to say
Having no content strategy (because “winging it” is not a strategy)
Or your current content isn’t converting into actual sales.
Any of these is a perfectly valid reason to do a content audit. And I would recommend looking at your content on a regular basis. Once a quarter maybe.
Ready to get going? Here is how to do a content audit.
1. Start with the content you already have
It might seem obvious but looking at what you already have is the starting point. You’ll want to look at any blog, audio or video content you have, plus your website pages. If you use landing pages, have multiple lead magnets, or sales pages, make sure you don’t forget about these.
Basically, you want to run a search on any URL from your website and analyse it. You can do this in Google Analytics to make life easier and export the CSV file into a spreadsheet (hit reply to this email if you’re unsure).
2. Break it into three categories
Content that works
Content that doesn’t
And content that sort of does
Content that works means that it’s doing its job of bringing in paying customers. Whether that’s product pages, sales pages, or a blog. You can track the traffic coming to your website. And you can track conversions from that page to your marketing newsletter, purchase, or a sales call – depending on your business model.
Content that doesn’t work, well it doesn’t do the above. No one is clicking on or reading that content. I’m going to say something here that many people don’t like hearing – you need to remove this content from your website. No one reads it, no one is going to read it. It’s doing your website more harm than good.
If you struggle to identify content that needs to be deleted, you should consider getting something external to do this for you because they will not have the emotional attachment that you have to it. They’ll take a more pragmatic approach to what is or is not working.
Then there is the content that sort of works. This content looks like the pages that get organic search traffic but no one really converts. What you have here is work. Your job is to make this content either perform or go off into the ‘doesn’t work’ pile. Which is why I recommend doing a regular content audit so that you don’t forget about this content.
If you do this process well, you should have a selection of high-performing content on your website that works for you and your customer. Without the distracting clutter.
Although do remember that if you delete a URL, you need to adjust any links that go to it. And you may want to make a note of the kinds of content that didn’t work so well so that you don’t create the same thing again.
3. Look at your social media profiles
Once you’ve got your website content sorted, next look at the content you deliver on your social media profiles. Start with the platform that is performing best for you.
Generally, it’s the platform where you get the most engagement but you want to check through click-through rates to your website to make sure the engagement is turning into traffic or sales.
You don’t necessarily need to analyse everything you’ve ever put out on social media but instead ask yourself some questions like:
Why did this post perform well?
What do my top-performing posts have in common?
What did I do differently on this post where people commented?
And so on. Again, you need to be clear on what insights you need to analyse. It’s all well and good saying this video got outrageous reach but if no one bothered to click on your profile, follow you or even go to your website, was it really that good in the first place?
Whereas looking at the posts that had lots of clicks to your website may have had a smaller reach, those are the best performers in the long term. Do more of them.
4. Check out your analytics
Now, you can’t do either of the above without looking at and analysing your data. A fully comprehensive content audit will also take into account the SEO and any PPC activities you have going on.
I’ve known people who have ranked on the first page of Google for content but it not be attracting the right kind of audience. While it was great it brought in big chunks of organic traffic, it wasn’t bringing in clients. It’s better to have quality traffic than quantity traffic.
Again, make sure the analytics that you measure are the ones that lead to your goals.
5. Competitor check-in
Wait – a competitor analysis but this is my audit?
And that’s absolutely right. But if you know what your competitors and peers are saying then you can start to identify some content gaps to fill with things that they are not saying or going deep enough about.
Remember not to compare yourself to whatever it is that your competitor is doing. This is more of a ‘seeing what else is out there’ exercise than measuring yourself against another business – which is never healthy.
Just go and look at what others are saying who come up in your SEO targets. See what your competitors are putting out. Is there something you can do differently, or better?
See it as a reference point to analyse where you are going.
I do this by putting into Google the search terms I’m aiming to rank for and looking at who comes up on the first page. I look at how they structure their pages, have a sneaky check of their domain authority (you can do this on Moz or SEMrush) and see what else they’re doing.
What to do with this content audit
Firstly, don’t get overwhelmed. You can’t make all the changes you want or need to at once. It’s more important that you take some action as a result of all your research than you feel it’s all too much and never look at it again.
When you have everything in front of you, you can start to make some content decisions based on what is best for your business. You might want to tackle some glaring SEO gaps first. Or you may want to create a whole new content strategy.
It really all depends on factors such as how much time you have, what is working for you right now, and how many new customers you want or need. This is where I can’t give generic advice because what you do with a content audit is so very much down to each individual business.
But do SOMETHING with it.
3 ideas of what to do with your content audit:
Take some old blogs that are okay-ish, re-write them and re-publish them with a new date as new content.
Add some more stats or a quote to a well-performing blog
Plan out new content in areas you’ve not covered yet or not covered in enough depth.
And let me know how you get on.
How I help:
Get your content reviewed with a Content Clinic.
Have me write all your sales content with my Kick-Ass Sales Bundle
Get a whole year of me helping you with content on my PIMP Your Content Programme
Right, I’m off to go try and wash red hair dye out of my son’s hair before he goes back to school. I wish hair dye stayed in my hair this long.
See you next Thursday!
Fiona