When spearheading a new or updated content strategy initiative for your clients, it’s vital that you help them understand what’s driven their success in the past. That’s why content audits are such an important part of the content strategy process; it’s an opportunity to assess the value of each piece of content you currently have in your arsenal. Armed with this information, you can discard or revise outdated content, or craft a plan to fill gaps in your current content marketing offering.
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How to run a content audit for your blog or website
01. Focus on performing content
A content audit helps illuminate content that’s already working in your client’s favor, giving agencies the potential to improve the site’s performance before new content is even created. In fact, more than half of marketers say that repurposing existing content can be one of a brand’s most efficient content marketing tactics, according to a survey by SEMrush.
It also singles out pieces of content that are cluttering up their website and SEO ranking so you can take immediate steps fix or remove them. Cleaning out a site’s low-performing content helps Google recognize it as a reputable, authoritative source which can lead to improved SEO and traffic. For example, when Ahrefs cut 31.7% of their content in a recent audit and saw a 7.57% traffic increase in just 60 days.
02. Locate all the content and prioritize new work
Depending on your company's content marketing journey thus far you might have just a few years of content to audit — or they might have a decade or more of material to wade through. Tackle the content from the past three-to-five years first, since it will likely be most relevant. See what content within that window best serves your key metrics. Prioritize those items and use them to model future content creation.
When you look through the entire content inventory, you may find articles from before that five-year window that are still drawing traffic. Those pieces merit prioritizing along with the newer material.
03. Catalogue by desired KPI and key topics
Identify which metrics matter most to your client’s audience, such as audience engagement, sales conversions or SEO. Then focus on the content that is best suited to boost those metrics. Some of it may already be performing well, and other content that’s currently underperforming might have the potential to become a success with a simple refresh.
Once you solidify the type of data you are collecting why, use your audit to improve your client’s labeling and archiving process. Content should be easy to find and access by anyone on the content team who needs to use it. Create your audit spreadsheet with tabs that clearly label each data point.
04. Assess whether the content needs updating
While some outdated blog posts will need to go, odds are there are plenty that can serve your goals — they just need a bit of sprucing up.
Save your clients time and money by repurposing pieces of content that were prescient or performed very well and just need a few updates to keep them relevant. You may need to update stylistic aspects as well, in case your company's brand voice and terminology has evolved or shifted in the past few years. A few copy edits will ensure that older but still helpful content doesn’t sound dated or in the context of your brand's newer messaging and verbiage.
05. Use analytics to find out what is (and isn’t) performing on search
Improve SEO by updating out-of-date internal links, optimizing your metadata and URLs, and tagging your client’s content. Look out for pieces that might be overstuffed with keywords or too short. This sort of content can still be very informative and beneficial to your client’s audience; it just needs a quick copy edit or expansion to perform better.
Learn more about how to use Wix Analytics to audit your content.
06. Determine where new content is needed
Are all key topics represented in your current content mix? Once you have a comprehensive inventory of your content and have made sure that their existing pieces are set up to best help them, you can structure your content strategy around the type of content that organically performs the best for them.
For example, a developer of enterprise technology certainly should feature content that illuminates the need for the company’s products. At the same time, the company’s acquisition strategy will benefit from content that solidifies its industry expertise. To achieve that goal, your content plan might include a blog series that features company leaders’ take on the significance of recent news in enterprise tech.
07. Build a plan for outdated content
For every piece of content you audit, ask yourself: Is this piece bringing traction? Should it be? If the answer is no, trash it. If it has potential, see if it would benefit from trimming away the excess, or if certain parts of the blog post might be beneficial in a different piece altogether. Revise, trash, or replace each piece of content with a fresh piece that can live under the same URL and capitalize on the SEO standing of the outdated piece.
08. Schedule regular content health checks
While a thorough content audit will set you up to improve your content strategy, remember that it’s worth briefly analyzing any content library about once a year to make sure that an organization’s content strategy continues to align with its business goals. The best content in the world only works if the right people read it and it delivers the desired results, so set your clients up to ensure that their content is always working for them.