A content audit is to a successful content strategy what spring cleaning is to a well-organized home. It’s taking stock of everything you have and, perhaps most importantly, getting rid of the things you no longer need.
Too often, folks think of “content” as strictly copy, but content is anything that communicates an idea or message—so copy, images, videos, and more. A content audit takes a detailed look at all of those elements that live on your website and then figures out what’s working and what isn’t.
You might be wondering if a content audit is truly necessary and beneficial, which is understandable. After all, it’s quite a bit of work. But the payoff is great. A content audit helps you to create a better customer experience and increase website traffic. This ultimately leads to not only more business, but better business and higher quality leads.
A successful content audit helps you plan for success
Ultimately, a great content audit will set you up for success, making it easier for you to create a content strategy that converts. By conducting a thorough content audit, you will be able to get a sense of what is working and what needs improvement. This will ultimately help streamline the work you do to create better content while saving time and money.
A content audit helps you answer three questions:
What type of content do you already have?
Get a sense of the content you already have. For example, you might be surprised at how much video content you have, which will save you time and money, since you will not need to film and edit new content.
How useful or relevant is your content?
Once you have an idea of what is already available, you can begin to rank your content in regards to how relevant or valuable it is to your business and to your users. Doing so will allow you to better determine what pieces you need to keep or update and those that you can do away with.
What are you missing and where are the gaps?
Now that you have everything laid out in front of you, you can better identify the areas that you need to focus on in regard to new content. That might be a new service you’d like to make some noise about or an existing offering that you haven’t paid as much attention to in the past.
With those three questions answered, you’ll find yourself in a much better position in regards to your overall content strategy—from where you are to where you’d like to go.
Ultimately, a great content audit will set you up for success, making it easier for you to create a content strategy that converts.
How to start a content audit
There are five simple steps that you can take to ensure that you conduct a thorough content audit.
Step 1: Think of your goals.
Think about the purpose of this content audit. Is it to increase organic traffic, grow the number of likes and shares, or improve conversion rates? Figuring out this step will help make sure you are on the right track. For example, if your goal is to increase traffic to your site, you’ll need to keep this in mind as you proceed through the following steps. Otherwise, you’ll likely solve for problems not directly tied to your goals.
Step 2: Gather your content.
This is the time to collect all relevant URLs and content on your site—so all the media on your website such as copy, videos, and images. Website crawlers and site scrapers make this process much easier. Make sure you gather relevant content according to your goals. Relevant content might be all of your content if your goal is broad, or just specific content for a specific goal. Sticking to a defined goal will help to save time as you’re collecting everything.
Step 3: Categorize your content.
Now is the time to sort out your URLs and content. It’s a good idea to to break them out in two different ways. First, categorize your content from a objective standpoint by type, topic, service, product, or date. If you’re trying to boost visibility on your social platforms, for example, prioritize videos, blog posts, and quotes that would perform well there. Second, divide them up according to relevance or usefulness to your business and specific content goals. Now you can quickly identify not just the type of content you have, but how valuable it is.
Step 4: Do some qualitative analysis.
Create an inventory of content that’s missing, content that’s underperforming, outdated content, and content that has performed really well. Data without context is useless, so it’s important to keep your goal in mind when analyzing your data. For example, if your goal is to get more clicks, make sure you’re keeping an idea of content that’s underperforming or helping in regards to this goal.
Step 5: Create action items.
Now that you have collected and analyzed your content, it’s time to create a plan for your content and each URL. Decide whether or not to reuse, rewrite, or expand, or create new content.
What you’re doing here needs to help support your goal. For example, if certain videos did an excellent job of driving more traffic to your website and one of your goals is to drive traffic, then it might be a good idea to reuse this content.
Step 6: Adjust content marketing strategy as needed.
At this point, you should have a good understanding of what content is working and what is not, making it possible to adjust your content marketing strategy accordingly. This is the time to double-check that your chosen strategy will help you hit your goals.
For more information on content audits and how they fit into your larger content strategy, check out our webinar “The Perfect Pairing: Content Strategy Meets UX Design.”
Ready to get started on your own audit?
If you’re ready to start but aren’t quite sure how to get started, we have some experts that can help with that. Our team knows how to use the right tools, correctly, to help you reach your business goals. Get in touch and let’s chat!
