When was the last time you did a thorough inventory and analysis of your content?
This is referred to as a content audit, and most content creators are so focused on creating new content that they neglect to audit what they’ve already created.
If it’s been more than a year, your content strategy may be based on out-of-date information.
Here are a few reasons why you should regularly audit your content:
- Goals: Is your content meeting its objectives? What is your return on investment for the content you’ve created? You won’t know unless you measure and track the performance of your content through regular audits.
- Staleness: Over time, your content may become stale or even outdated. But don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s not always your fault if your content is out of date. What was relevant two years ago may only need to be updated now.
- Accuracy: Facts and data that were once true can become inaccurate as your content ages. Regularly auditing your content will ensure the accuracy of your posts, thereby protecting both your brand’s reputation and search rankings.
- Recognize What Works: How will you ever know what type of content or blog post is the most successful if you never audit all of your content? Maybe writing three blog posts a week is just exhausting and doesn’t produce any results.
- Know What’s Working: You’ll never know unless you conduct a content audit to determine which pieces perform the best and which perform the worst.
Hopefully, one, if not all, of those bullet points resonated with you, and you now understand why it’s critical to audit your content regularly.
Let’s get into the audit breakdown now.
Audit of Content Specifications
The first part of a content audit is a one-time entry on your audit that dissects the basics for each piece of content.
Examine how the content was created, how many people worked on it, and the basic publishing information.
In a separate content details audit spreadsheet, track the following for each piece of content:
- URL.
- Author.
- Which team created it? (content team, social team, SEO team, etc.).
- Time Spent (how long did it take to produce the content in its entirety).
- Title.
- Date.
- Type of Content (is it a blog post, infographic, case study, etc.).
- Content Objective (what was the point of producing the content: backlinks, traffic, conversions, etc.).
- Count the words.
- Comments.
- Stocks (break this down by social network and total).
Audit of Content Data
Now comes the exciting part. The content data portion of your audit should include its own handy dandy excel doc, similar to the one I created for you.
Conduct a Past Audit
Before we get into the data, you should go back and audit your previously produced content.
Knowing how the content you’ve published performs will help you determine what kind of content you should create in the future — and what kind you shouldn’t.
This portion of your content audit will take some time, at least at first.
You must first decide how far back you want to start your content audit and then collect all of the content URLs for that period.
I recommend going back at least a year and collecting data on how your content performed the previous year.
Collecting all of your previous content URLs, on the other hand, does not have to be a time-consuming manual process.
Fortunately, there are numerous website analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and SEMrush’s Content Audit tool, that can quickly inventory your content based on your sitemap data. These can provide you with a list of URLs to audit for content.
Prepare to face ongoing audits
Once you’ve caught up and added all of last year’s contests to your Excel doc, you can repeat this audit activity every week for new content.
When you only have to go back one week to input data, it will be much easier to keep track of your content and audit it regularly.
Add the following section’s data to your Excel doc and upload the most recent numbers and statistics every week.
Take note of any significant changes over time.
It can take months for content, especially evergreen content, to take off.
Read What You Should Know About Keyword Prominence As A Ranking Factor In Google.
Metrics to Monitor
The following are the metrics you should monitor for your content data audit:
Comments
A properly moderated comments section can supplement your blog posts and articles with valuable user-generated content. If one of your content goals is to create a community on your website, you’ll want to know what types of content and topics spark conversation.
Use the UGC link attribute to ensure you meet Google’s link markup requirements.
If you don’t allow comments on your blog, look for them on your content-related social media posts.
Shares on Social Media
Some marketers dismiss social media shares as vanity metrics. Monitoring your content’s social popularity, on the other hand, can help you identify the topics that are most likely to pique the interest of specific social audiences.
Businesses that know that Facebook is where the majority of their conversions come from, for example, would want to create content that is popular with Facebook audiences.
An examination of which posts received the most social shares on Facebook in the past is a good way to predict which topics will perform well in the future.
Natural Traffic
Ideally, your content will receive a significant amount of organic traffic.
If you’re not getting organic traffic, this could be a warning sign.
Maybe there’s something wrong with:
- Your content marketing strategy.
- How you’re going to distribute the content.
- The type of content.
- The actual content.
By evaluating the organic traffic metrics in your audit regularly, you’ll know when you can pat yourself on the back and when you need to start over.
Rate of Bounce
Are visitors to your website arriving and leaving without engaging with your content? A bounce occurs when Google Analytics cannot detect scrolling, clicks, or other interactions with your content before a user leaves.
And if you have a high bounce rate, it could be an indication of poor content.
Ideally, your content serves as a portal that directs a user from a search to your website, entertains or informs them, and then directs them to additional content based on their needs.
A high time on page combined with a low bounce rate indicates “sticky” content that keeps users interested enough to read more of your content.
Unsure of what constitutes a good bounce rate?
Many consider a range of 26 percent to 40 percent to be optimal, though on average, it can go up to 55 percent.
Backlinks
Bring on the backlinks – but only the good ones that will give us a lot of kudos and credibility!
You must track the backlinks generated by your content regularly for two reasons:
Your backlink profile will evolve. You may receive 2–3 backlinks on the first day you publish new content. Allow a week to pass, and perhaps 10-12 backlinks will appear. A year from now, one piece of content could have 589 backlinks as it is promoted, discovered, and shared.
Not all backlinks are beneficial. Sure, 589 backlinks may appear to be a good thing, but if 500 of those backlinks are potentially harmful to your website, lead to spam, are paid, or lead to a poor website, you should consider removing those unnatural backlinks.
Time Spent on Page
Something is wrong if your content is a 2,500-word-long blog post with an average time on a page of 18 seconds.
This metric will tell you if your content isn’t right for your audience, or if it is and you should create more content on similar topics.
Visitors
We want a large number of unique visitors to view our content, increasing the number of views the piece of content receives.
The greater the number of views, the greater the likelihood of ROI from content such as conversions, engagement, shares, and backlinks.
Pages in a Session
How many pages does the user visit after viewing your content?
What pages will they visit?
A blog post about the best winter coats to have can entice a user to click on links within the blog post and shop for different coats on your website. Maybe they’ll even buy something (– goal!).
New Users vs. Returning Users
Is this piece of content attracting a new audience?
Returning customers are fantastic. Customers who return are even better.
However, we must also aim to attract new users with our content. Ideally, you should see a good balance of both.
Sources of Traffic
Define your main traffic sources to learn where your traffic is coming from.
If Facebook is where the majority of your content’s traffic is coming from, post more of your content on your Facebook page.
If your email newsletters aren’t producing much, it’s time to restructure them.
Conversions
If your goal for a new piece of content is to generate 100 conversions in the first quarter (for example, email opt-ins for your email newsletter), you should add a column to track the number of conversions generated by that piece of content.
Perhaps there are only two conversions in the first week, and you begin to doubt the content entirely.
Allow two months to pass and continue to audit every week. You may have noticed that the content has now produced 140 total conversions, not only meeting but exceeding your goal.
Ongoing auditing provides valuable context for the figures you’re seeing, allowing you to make smarter, data-backed decisions.
Tracking Additional Information
Here are some ideas for what to track if you want to add more details about your content.
Title and Meta Description for SEO
Create columns in your spreadsheet for each piece of content’s SEO fields.
It will be useful to see all of the SEO titles and meta descriptions you’ve used in one place when optimizing your content in the future.
Parameters of UTM
Log any custom UTM parameters you used to track your content to keep track of specific promotional campaigns for each piece of content.
These may be useful when creating UTM parameters for new content or searching for data on previous content in Google Analytics.
Sales / Leads
You can see which landing pages generate the most revenue if you have conversion events set up in Google Analytics. To see which pages on your website are leading to conversions, go to the Pages and screens report under Engagement.
This will provide you with information about the types of content and content topics that have a positive impact on your ROI.
Metrics for Email
How did your content fare when it was shared with your email list?
If email engagement is a key goal for your content, keep track of your opens, clicks, and forwards to determine which content performs best.
Content Repurposing
Have you ever turned a collection of posts into an ebook, or vice versa? Maintain a record of the content you’ve repurposed.
To see how repurposing benefits your content strategy, combine metrics from the main content and additional pieces of related content.
Top Keyword Positioning
Is a specific piece of content still ranking at the top of the SERPs for its target keyword phrase?
Take note of the best keyword rankings and how long they last to determine which types of content have long-term search wins and which have short-term search wins.
Reach of Influencers
Did you collaborate with any influencers to spread the word about your content? Take note of the influencers who drove the most traffic or social shares to your content.
You might want to work with them again for similar types of content in the future.
Assess the Outcomes
You must determine whether your content is working for you based on your original content goals.
Each piece of content your audit will have several data metrics associated with it. These metrics will tell you whether you’re on target or falling far short.
Take note of what the details in the audit are telling you about the content that performs well. Examine the type of content, the topic, who created it, and when it was published.
Replicating your successes can assist you in producing similarly high-performing content.
Take special note of the metrics for the content pieces that do not meet your objectives.
It is sometimes the channels on which the content was published. Other times, it’s a combination of factors such as the author, publication date, and/or content type.
You might be able to apply some of what you’ve learned from your top performers to your underdogs to help them rank higher as well.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with new content types as long as you’re willing to track their effectiveness through regular auditing.
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