SEO is all about content. If you research how to improve your site’s SEO or contact an agency, you’ll hear that you need content, original content, and more content, followed up by even more content. That part is true — you need content, but more importantly, you need the right content. How do you determine the right content for your site? With an SEO content audit. Get the basics and learn how to conduct a content audit on your site.
What is a Content Audit?
An audit simply reviews your site’s content, including all pages and blog posts. You want to evaluate how the content performs, so look at your analytics to see what pages are getting traffic and which are not. Also, review the keywords each page supports.
While reviewing everything, double-check that all links still work and that all content is accurate. Things change as technology advances, and depending on your industry and the age of the content, some pages may need a refresh.
Why Do I Need a Content Audit?
An audit confirms what parts of your site are working to meet your goals and where things could improve. You need content that pertains to your business. If you have a bakery, you don’t need content about the best running shoes. But if your bakery exclusively makes cookies, you don’t necessarily want content about croissants or bread. You need content that supports your business and goals. High-quality content informs customers about who you are and what you do. An audit determines if you have that type of content on your site.
An audit also uncovers on-page SEO issues. You may have amazing content but zero traffic. If the ‘do not index’ box was clicked in error, all of your SEO efforts are for nothing, and without an audit, you may not realize the issue.
Advantages of an Audit
An audit reveals which parts of your site work as intended and deliver results. Take a moment to appreciate this success and the hard work that made it possible before rolling up your sleeves to elevate the rest of your site to this standard.
Brand Consistency
Maybe you’ve had different people creating content, or your brand has shifted or evolved. You may have some older content that doesn’t fit your brand, so make it fit. Update posts that don’t match your brand’s voice or tone so everything is consistent.
Improve Underperforming Pages
You can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken, and the thing about SEO is that it isn’t always apparent when something isn’t working. Identify pages that are not getting traffic or parts of the site that aren’t functioning as intended, such as users not progressing through your site to reach a product page, newsletter signup, or wherever you want them to be. Something as easy as an improved internal linking structure or adding a landing page can solve the problem.
New Opportunities
When you’re running your business and incredibly busy and manage to write a blog post, it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. An audit forces you to look at the big picture and evaluate if there are content gaps on your site. You may realize relevant topics aren’t addressed, so add them to your editorial calendar.
Content Audit Tips
Before you start the content audit, establish your goals. Understand the keywords you want to rank for and the function of your website. Is the purpose of your site to sell a product, schedule appointments, collect quote requests, get users to sign up for your newsletter, or something else?
Review From All Angles
Make your first pass on the live site, or rather, view the site as a user or customer. You want to experience the site as a visitor, see how pages load, and click links. After you’ve experienced the site from a client’s perspective, log in and check out the site from the backend. Logging in allows you to check on-page SEO components not visible on the live site. Round up relevant data from Google Analytics and Search Console.
Be Organized
Having a Google Doc or spreadsheet to track a site audit is helpful. The metrics you track depend partly on your established goals. For example, you may want to track organic traffic or referral sources for each page or keyword rankings.
Tracking ensures you get to everything, and a document is a place to take notes. After you complete the audit and evaluate the bigger picture, use the notes to fix issues. Consistent notes can help you uncover patterns to address common issues as you create new content going forward. For instance, maybe your keyword efforts are lopsided, and you routinely forget to create content for one particular keyword, or you don’t write meta descriptions. Learning these things makes it easy to address them going forward, so you don’t have to wait until your next site audit to uncover a problem.
Call in Help
A content audit focuses on content but can be more in-depth. An audit can review title tags, backlinks, and more. These are critical components of on-page SEO; each piece works together to help your site perform. A content audit is necessary and incredibly helpful, but it’s also time-consuming, and once you have all the metrics, you have to figure out what they mean for your site. This is where I can help. Let me review your site, collect the data, and share my findings. We can review the audit results and discuss the next steps, and I can update your site pending your approval. You have a lot going on, and I specialize in SEO, so let me work on your website so you can run your business.
