The Complete Guide To Conducting A Full Content Audit

Pat Walls

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Updated: October 8th, 2022

What Is Content Audit?

A content audit is the systematic process of analyzing and assessing all the content on a website. The overall objective is to reveal the strengths and weaknesses in your content strategy.

Website content audits should be done regularly, and the overall objective should be to adapt the content plan to the current marketing goals.

Content Audit Key Takeaways

Content audits are critical to any SEO strategy
A good content audit can be a time-consuming and expensive process
The content audit evaluates all content you have created and identifies opportunities to improve
The audit results should inform your future SEO and content marketing strategy
Before you do the audit, identify your KPIs

How A Content Audit Works

The content audit evaluates the performance of your content and it is based on the following questions:

1. Which content performs best?

To find out which content performs better, Connect your site to Google Analytics and Google search console

The tools measure behavior metrics like page views, session, and bounce rate.

Choose the article metrics you consider successful based on your overall marketing goals and the scale of your audience

2. What topics does your audience most connect with?

From the results of the content audit, check the content with an impressive score.

Classify the content into clusters, with each cluster representing related content.

Review the metrics based on the behavior metrics, so that you find which topics perform better.

3. Which posts no longer work?

Not all content you post performs the same. some posts will have greater views than the other posts.

therefore, you will want to spend less time on the content that no longer works. Spare more time to complete the tasks that seem to work much better.

Essentially, a content audit informs you when you need to focus your efforts in terms of SEO and content marketing perspectives. In that regard, the content audit is part of your overall SEO audit

Content Audits: What You Might Find

Here are some of the possible outcomes of the content audit:

1. Determine the problems in your website content

One of the reasons your website is not performing well could be issues in your content strategy.

Conducting regular and thorough content audits helps you to identify the content that needs to be improved or repurposed.

Improving such content could result in more website visits, and attract backlinks.

2. Identifying opportunities for content repurposing

A comprehensive content audit could result in tons of opportunities for improving the content.

For instance, you may realize that adding a video to the blog post, is getting you additional website visits. Likewise, adding infographics could be resulting in website visitors spending a longer time on your website.

Without a content audit, you may not identify meaningful opportunities.

3. Highlighting areas where the website lacks information your audience is seeking

Part of the content audit involves looking at the feedback received from your audience.

For instance, during the audit you may come across a comment from your audience, requesting additional information on the particular topic.

Therefore, when you conduct a content audit, do not factor only the behavior metrics. Take time to read any feedback from the audience.

4. Evaluating the quality of existing content

High-quality content attracts more shares, backlinks, and more views.

On the flip side, if the content is poor quality, expect less to no views.

A content audit will result in grading your website content so that you can take appropriate action and improve the content.

Real World Examples Of Captivating Content Audit Results

Here are some inspiring content audit examples you can learn from.

1. HomeScienceTools.com content Audit Reaps Big From a Content Audit

Home Science tools is an online store that provides educational scientific products.

The website owners were worried about the shrinking rankings, and they decided to consult a content strategy expert who recommended a content audit.

Following the content audit, a number of pages were removed and content on other pages optimized for SEO.

After the recommendations from the content audit, some changes to the website were made and the results were as follows:

Clicks and impressions to the store reflected an upward trend in rankings.
Organic sessions to content grew by104%
Transactions grew by 102%
Strategic content revenue grew by 64%

2. How Wild West Pool Supplies Achieved 216% increase in Website Sessions After Web Content Audit

Wild West Pool Supplies is an eCommerce business specializing in the sale of swimming pool and spa parts. The business owners were determined to turn the business into a full-time job.

This meant they needed to optimize their website in order to attract sales and grow their business. The approach involved hiring an SEO expert to understand and execute a custom SEO strategy aligned with their budget.

The comprehensive web content audit pointed out that website navigation was challenging among other opportunities for improving the existing content. The content audit revealed the need to:

Rewrite and optimize the home page content
Consolidate category pages to streamline site architecture
Update brand pages to show total listing and reduce pagination
Rewrite and optimize top category and brand pages

The ROI was amazing! They attained a 216% increase in website sessions and a 434% increase in revenue.

How to Start Your Content Audit

Step1. Define the goal.

Examples of content audit goals include:

To improve your SEO results
Increasing the audience engagement
Improving website conversion rate

Step 2. Determine the suitable metrics

Content marketing metrics can be classified into four types. They are:

SEO metrics
User behavior metrics
Engagement metrics
Sales metrics

Step3. Take an inventory of your content

Collect a list of URLs for the content you want to audit
Catalog the content using a spreadsheet or an online tool

Step4. Collect and analyze the data

Connect your Google analytics and Google console accounts to collect the data
Gather the performance metrics and post them to a spreadsheet

Step5. Draw up an action plan

Determine which content needs improvement
Identify irrelevant and non-performing content

Step6. Adjust the content marketing strategy appropriately

Improve the content that shows some potential
Pull down the irrelevant and non-performing content

Should You Hire Someone To Do A Content Audit

Whether to hire someone to audit your web content or you do it yourself depends on whether you have the skills and the time.

If you can use the content auditing tools comfortably and you have the time, but you still might have to pay the subscription fee or use the free web content auditing tools.

Hiring an agency to do your content audit will save you the time and hustle of learning how to use the content auditing tools. However, you will pay the agency depending on the amount of content.

How Much Does Content Auditing Cost?

Depending on the size and scope of your company’s goals, a complete site audit could cost anywhere between $5,000-$25,000.

A complete marketing audit may include:

Inventory of existing site content
Content and resource planning
Social media efforts
Competitor performance
optimization
Analytics tracking

Agencies That Offer Content Auditing

Examples of the Best Content Audit Tools Available Online:

A content audit is a time-consuming and often expensive task. To Ease the experience, you can use online tools.

Here is an overview of the best tools for web content auditing

SEOptimer: A content auditor that provides a clear, actionable, prioritized list of recommendations to help improve your content strategy
Woopra: Woopra is a tool that provides information that clearly explains user behavior.
Website Grader: An online program that performs an in-depth website audit in less than a minute
MySiteAuditor: Audit unlimited web pages to use your reports in sales meetings.
Yoast SEO: This tool provides recommendations on how to improve readability and optimize every separate page for SEO