Content Audit - Identify Content Gaps | SmallSEOTools

A content audit is often thought to be a holy grail. Even established bloggers and marketers are frightened by the word content audit. It usually becomes their nightmare, especially when they are afflicted by the fear of losing search engine ranking. However, a well-executed content audit can deliver insights into the gaps and shortcomings. 

It is generally believed that content audit is a time-consuming and overwhelming task. The notion is true to a certain extent, and there is a need to equip yourself with the mastery of content audit. No matter in which niche or industry you’re working in, the relevancy of content audit couldn’t be taken for granted. The audit is all about inventorying and analyzing the existing content you have produced. Several needs metrics need to be tracked with a scrupulous approach. 

What is a Content Audit? 

In a content audit, you evaluate the performance of your content that has already been published on your website. It is necessary to keep an eye on the content and determine what should be retained, what needs to be updated, deleted, redirected, or consolidated. There is no point in keeping pages, which aren’t performing well. You can consider it to be a spring clean and remove everything and anything that isn’t of any use. It will let you freshen up the place for your visitors and the search engines as well. 

How to Execute Content Audit? 

The content audit can be performed manually on a page-by-page basis. For conducting a manual audit, there is a need to get access to the analytics. In addition, there is a need to check inbound links to analyze which domains are pointing towards a particular web page. From Google Analytics, you should first determine whether your webpage receives any traffic or not. It means that you might have already set a threshold for yourself to gain a particular chunk of traffic. Suppose the content isn’t receiving appropriate traffic against a particular or a set of keywords. In that case, there is a need to update the content and add more relevant keywords to gain additional traffic. If you are looking to redirect the webpage to another one, it must be relevant to the post, or the topic must be similar. It could work in this way by redirecting low-quality posts to high-quality ones. It is just a simple scenario of looking at your existing content. There are other tactics and ways for conducting a detailed content audit. 

What Insights Content Audit Offers? 

The content audit is one of the ways to look at what you are really up to. It helps you identify and determine which pages are performing well and converting the visitors into potential consumers. In addition to that, you would also determine which pages could be consolidated. Furthermore, you would also need to check which pages have the highest bounce rate. Besides, there is a chance to explore search optimization opportunities. The basic purpose of content is to find out the gaps that you need to fill out. There isn’t any doubt that content audit consumes a lot of time. However, the necessity makes it an obligation for sustaining in the market. 

What Do You Need to Do Before Starting a Content Audit? 

There is always a need to revisit your content to make it better. You need to dig out the visitors’ behavior on your website. Additionally, boosting marketing initiatives should also be taken into consideration. By reading the content, you will surely be able to find out the gaps that are holding you back. A content audit needs a grammar check in the content gap analysis. However, a  spell checker can be a big help in detecting and fixing your spelling errors without any hassle. You have to take care of every little detail that can lead us toward improvement. There are cases where you take one step forward, and the invisible circumstances push you two steps back—the hidden areas need to be explored for the betterment of your business. 

Steps for Implementing Content Audit

Running a content audit is necessary when you think appropriate results aren’t generated. You would have to find out all the loopholes and shortcomings that need to be tackled.

Entrepreneurs, digital marketers, and bloggers are always busy curating new and fresh content rather than fixing the existing ones. A content audit isn’t just about revisiting your existing blog posts, guides, landing pages, one-pagers, or other material. You might have already worked on a concrete content marketing strategy, but for getting a picture and making adjustments, there is a need to look at other things too. There are pretty much good chances that a content audit will let you improve your marketing efforts. Additionally, you can get assistance from SmallSEOTools that can lead you to multiple opportunities in general and SEO in particular.

• Be Goal-Oriented 

First things first, you need to determine the goals you want to accomplish. If you are clear about the goals, then categorizing the audit could become easy and expeditious. The ultimate objective of an audit is to identify whether your content is engaging or not. The pages need to be optimized as per the set standards of SEO. In addition to that, there is also a need to find the most interesting and best-performing topics for your website, which can truly add value for the users. 

• Gather Content 

The content audit starts by determining which content you want to audit. For example, you might require auditing blog posts, product descriptions, multimedia, and publications. Streamline your work, prioritize which segment you want to audit first, and then create a backlog of all the content. In this regard, you would have to collect all the URLs of the web pages you have chosen to audit. If the website is small, then the task could be accomplished manually by putting the links in a spreadsheet. You can also fetch the relevant links from the sitemap, in case you do not have a sitemap, you can create one by sitemap generator that can align all information in a sequence. However, it depends on how you have approached the technical aspect of SEO in the first place. 

• Categorization of Content 

Afterward, you need to categorize the content on a spreadsheet. It helps you maintain durability and streamline the process, which ultimately lets you meet your audit needs. You can categorize the content by including the type of content, author details, publication date, and other formats. You need to think from a category perspective to deliver accurate results. By adopting this way, you would be able to work on all the ends one by one without any interruption or distraction. 

• Analyze the Data

Now, the data needs to be observed critically. It is the most important part of the entire content audit process. It will help you out in measuring the content. While analyzing the data, you need to look after certain ends. First, you need to determine what is missing, which means adding up content that your audience might be interested in, but you haven’t worked on. Also, discover which content isn’t performing well and which pieces aren’t doing good enough. Additionally, also fetch the content that is performing well. 

Moreover, there is also a need to recheck the authenticity and originality of your content to audit its uniqueness. After getting organized and fetching the results, there is a need to organize them in the spreadsheet. You can highlight colors based on priority. It will let you complete the tasks by streamlining the content. 

• Plan of Action 

After organizing the worksheet, there is a need to take appropriate action for conducting an audit. You need to determine which posts need to be rewritten and which ones need to be deleted permanently or redirected to other similar web pages to boost overall traffic. There is also a need to check the page’s loading speed and then get to know whether your page is taking time to load or not. If the page takes time to load, you can resize the visual content present over it through an image compressor to decrease the page loading speed. 

You can also run the image through a reverse image search to know whether other sources use your originally content. If that’s the case, then you can use those sources to get back credits for your creative work. It will help you in increasing your goodwill, and the search engine will rank your pages at the top on the search engine results page. 

If there is a plan to boost the ranking one by one you can use a full-blown content calendar for this purpose. It will help you prioritize the areas where you need to work ruthlessly.  

• Look at Your Competitor’s Performance 

After learning about the shortcomings and gaps in your content, you need to carefully look at how your competitors are working in this domain. There is surely a need to track down the areas where your rivals are performing well to further incorporate it into your content marketing strategy. Your performance is always analyzed based on how your competitors work out by drawing a comparative analysis. Therefore, look for the value they are providing to their users.

The content audit of your competitors works the same way as you own, but it comes with certain limitations. You cannot access a few metrics of your competitors without having the credentials to their website. You won’t determine their average bounce rate, average time spent on a page, or conversion rate. However, still, other ends need to be overviewed for better understating the working methodology of your rivals. You can look at their domain authority or backlinks pointing towards their web pages. Along with that, what is the additional information they have added into their content that is useful for the users, readers, or visitors?

• Reformulate Your Content Marketing Strategy 

After getting enough insights and other details, there is a need to reformulate your content marketing strategy. The new strategy will be based upon the results you have to dig out in the content audit process. You need to add the missing ends that aren’t a part of your strategy. It will help you in boosting your marketing efforts. The more your strategy is strong; the more are the chances that you will be able to get yourself on the top of the search engine results page. For some pretty obvious reason, everyone wants their webpage to rank on the top of the search engine result page. Therefore, revisiting or reformulating your strategy is truly essential for several reasons. 

Final Words 

The content audit is not just a process that needs to be conducted once in a blue moon. It needs to be done on all ends, whether it's your website or any other marketing channel. You need to be highly conscious in concluding because your decisions will significantly impact future results. Right decisions will let you save time, improve ROI, cut costs, grow your brand and improve overall visibility. However, you need to remember that there is no universal solution to the problems. Every niche and every segment requires a tailored solution, and that can only be presented with a deep research analysis of the market that you are working in. Several routes, shapes, approaches, and scopes can be taken into account while conducting a content audit. 

Moreover, the content audit can only be performed after a period of time. It requires days to find the gaps and reach solutions that could be effective in the long run. Finally, a content audit is essential to sustain your brand's credibility in the marketplace by overcoming the loopholes and areas you are lagging in.