How can you use content audits to improve your underperforming content?

Start with: Identifying Underperforming content with GSC: Utilize Google Search Console and Ahrefs to pinpoint content that's not hitting targets. Focus on traffic-driving queries for specific improvements. Competitor Analysis: Use Ahrefs to compare your content with competitors', identifying gaps and opportunities. Meta Tag Experiments for CTR: Test different meta titles and descriptions, monitoring CTR to find the most effective combinations. Content Quality and SEO Enhancement: Refresh outdated content, add depth, and optimize for SEO, leveraging insights from Ahrefs. Improve User Experience and Promote: Enhance layout and visuals, ensuring mobile responsiveness. Promote content through various channels.

A content audit is carried out to spot gaps between the website's existing content and targeted keywords. This process is crucial as it aids in the integration of targeted keywords, thereby boosting traffic to the website. Ultimately, this leads to enhanced website performance. Tools to identify content audit - Google Search Console - Screaming Frog - SEMRush - Copyscape Content Audit - Identify Objectives to improve SEO, engagement - List and categorize the content - Evaluate quality and analyze performance of each page - Conduct competitor analysis of content and keyword ranking - Identify gaps - Create action plans and implement changes - Update and track results regularly

Imagine you're organizing your home. You go through each room, evaluating each item, deciding whether to keep, discard, or improve it. A content audit is similar, but instead of a physical space, you're evaluating your digital content.

One thing I’ve found helpful in boosting content performance is to approach a content audit like a renovation project. Begin by outlining clear goals and defining the scope—decide what to keep, refresh, or repurpose. Use tools smartly, like a homeowner with their toolbox, leveraging analytics, SEO insights, and content categorization. Prioritize tasks, just as you'd prioritize rooms to refurbish. Finally, document your findings like a blueprint, sharing insights for a unified effort. This method turns an audit into a creative overhaul, enhancing content's appeal and relevance.

Content audits can identify gaps and opportunities in your content strategy. By analyzing metrics like traffic, engagement, and conversion rates, you can pinpoint underperforming content. Improve it by updating outdated information, enhancing SEO with relevant keywords, incorporating engaging media, and strengthening calls to action. Regularly revising content based on audit insights ensures your content stays relevant and performs better. Example: Boost your content's impact with a thorough audit. Update stale information, optimize for SEO, and enrich with engaging media to elevate your content's performance.

Before diving into the audit, set clear goals. Do you want to boost SEO, increase engagement, or simply get a better grasp of your content? Gather tools like spreadsheets, CMS data, and analytics reports.

Content audit is an incredibly valuable tool IF (and it's a big IF) you structure the content audit project properly. First off, understand its purpose. An audit makes sense if it is aligned with business goals. An initial content audit will be like casting a wide net where you paint the big picture of your website. While doing the first-glance audit, you will already see patterns. After you have crawled your website, take a moment and reevaluate your goal. Is the initial assumption of what the goal of the audit confirmed? Or do you need to reevaluate? Be agile and make the best of the audit - it is after all, a time-consuming task.

Imagine a content audit as a treasure hunt. Each underperforming article is a hidden gem, waiting to be discovered and polished. With a clear purpose, I sift through pages like an archaeologist, seeking to unearth the potential within. I meticulously update outdated information, optimize SEO, and infuse stale text with new vigor. It's not just editing; it's a reinvention, ensuring each piece resonates with my audience anew. Through this process, my content emerges not just improved but transformed, ready to captivate and engage once more.

Prepare for a content audit by defining objectives, compiling a content inventory, setting evaluation criteria, gathering analytics data, analyzing user feedback and SEO effectiveness, categorizing content, documenting findings, prioritizing actions, and planning for ongoing iterative improvements. This systematic approach ensures a thorough assessment, identifies areas for enhancement, and sets the groundwork for maintaining content relevance over time.

Content audits are important to conduct for individual subfolders or your entire site on a consistent basis. It's one thing to create content but another thing to monitor it ongoing and evaluate if there are any areas of opportunity for consolidation, optimization, or removal. There are also a lot of different metrics you can include relating to content or technical. For content, we should include keyword rankings (broken out by Page 1, Page 2, and then Page 3+) as well as the monthly search volume related to these keywords. It's also nice to include the average rank of the keywords for each page to understand how they are performing. If you have technical data, include the amount of internal links on each page when doing a content audit.

➠ Content Inventory: List all your content, including web pages, blog posts, videos, and infographics. ➠ Content Categorization: Group your content based on topic, format, or other relevant criteria. ➠ Content Evaluation: Assess each piece against your goals. Consider factors like relevance, accuracy, timeliness, engagement, and SEO performance. ➠ Improvement Identification: For underperforming content, identify areas for improvement. This could involve updating information, improving readability, or adding visuals. ➠ Action Prioritization: Prioritize content based on impact. Focus your efforts on the most impactful areas.

When conducting a content audit, start by creating a detailed content calendar. This should outline topics, content types, publishing dates, primary keywords, internal links (identifiable via Yoast SEO), meta descriptions, and page titles. With this in place, rely on tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and a content optimization tool like Surferseo as your go-to resources. Next, analyze each piece of live content using these tools to assess traffic and click-through rates (CTR). Following this analysis, focus on identifying areas for optimization, utilizing tools like Surferseo for guidance

I recommend the book "Content Audits and Inventories" by Paula Land. It walks you through the entire process and has a lot of tips and templates to help you out.

Conducting a content audit involves creating a comprehensive content inventory, gathering metrics, assessing quality and SEO effectiveness, reviewing user feedback, categorizing content, documenting findings, prioritizing actions, consolidating or removing outdated material, optimizing and repurposing content, implementing a promotion strategy, and planning for ongoing iterative reviews. This systematic approach ensures a thorough evaluation and enhancement of website content, aligning it with business goals for sustained effectiveness.

The frequency depends on your website's size and complexity and your content publishing rate. Generally, conduct a full audit at least once a year. Consider more frequent audits for specific sections or content types.

The frequency of content audits depends on factors like industry dynamics, content update frequency, and business goals. As a general guideline, conduct a comprehensive content audit annually to ensure relevance, accuracy, and alignment with evolving business objectives. However, in fast-paced industries or for frequently updated content, more frequent audits (e.g., semi-annually or quarterly) may be beneficial. Regular monitoring of key performance metrics and industry changes can also prompt unscheduled audits when significant shifts occur. Striking a balance between consistency and adaptability ensures that your content remains optimized and aligned with your overall strategy.

It depends on your resources. Ideally, you should repeat the audit regularly. It makes sense to audit a website if you are about to launch a large campaign - make sure that the traffic generated from your efforts is beautifully flowing through the campaign landing pages towards conversion points.

To simplify content audits, building custom tools in Google Sheets is highly effective. Start by creating a spreadsheet template that aligns with your audit goals. Use formulas and scripts in Sheets to automate data collection and analysis, such as pulling metrics from your CMS or analytics tools (GA, GSC, ahrefs, etc.). This approach not only saves time but also ensures consistency and scalability in your audits. Customize your Sheets to prioritize key content areas and generate easy-to-understand reports, making the process manageable and efficient.

Utilize tools like content management systems (CMS), content auditing tools, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics to streamline the process and gain valuable insights.

Learn Excel/Google Sheets formulas. Using tools such as Screaming Frog is extremely helpful. Document as much as possible when you run your first audit - create a workflow for yourself to make future audits more efficient.

Simplify your content audit by prioritizing goals, utilizing automation tools, segmenting the process, creating standardized templates, fostering collaboration, focusing on key metrics, categorizing content efficiently, scheduling regular reviews, using prioritization matrices, and maintaining concise documentation. This streamlined approach ensures a more efficient, focused, and collaborative content audit aligned with business objectives.

Content audits are crucial for refining your content strategy. By identifying areas for improvement, you can transform underperforming content into valuable assets that engage your audience and achieve your goals.

Start from the bottom up. Nail down your product pages, make sure they're aligned with what you're trying to do. Then tackle posts around making buying decisions, consideration, and then lastly work on the top funnel pieces. Initiate an exhaustive website audit to rectify SEO issues and pinpoint high-performing content. Develop a CONTENT PLAN aligned with content funnel phases (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU) by integrating research insights with SEO best practices. Attract a broad audience with top-level topics, build trust through specialized content. Continuously OPTIMIZE by monitoring weekly data points, including SEO metrics (organic traffic, KW ranking) and content marketing metrics like Traffic > Funnels > Leads > MQLs

An often overlooked aspect of content audits is examining internal and external links. Consider these questions: Are your blogs effectively linked to relevant sub-topics, case studies, and social proof pages? Do they include links to sign-up or request-a-demo pages? Are external links still relevant, or does the content need updating? You'll often find that blogs are not optimally linked. Addressing this can significantly boost your content's traffic.