“Never look back”, they say. But here at WordHound, we think there are times when looking back at where we’ve already been can shape where we end up in the future. And not just during your driving test.
Brace yourself – it’s time for some searching questions.
Put your hand up if you’ve ever published content on your website, then left it there to go mouldy at the back of your CMS. Honestly, we’re all guilty of having done that. After all, when you’re on top of things and publishing new content regularly (which we recommend doing… if you’re not, you need to check out our content writing services pronto!), then it becomes easy to forget about the old stuff.
The problem is, while it may be a simple case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for you, it’s not for your visitors. Sadly, your old content doesn’t just magically disappear from your website when you’re no longer interested in it. It’s still there, it’s still hanging around, and it’s still having an impact on readers. The big question is: is that impact still a positive one? You won’t know unless you check.
So whether you’ve been running your site for a while – or you’re taking over from someone else – there are times when it can be useful to take a step back and examine what’s already been done. Looking at what’s quietly sitting there in the background can help to shape your future content plan.
So… how do you do it? By carrying out a content audit.
What is a content audit?
A content audit is the process of listing and analysing all of your pages – even the ones that are long forgotten and buried deep down in the archives – and seeing whether or not they’re still serving any sort of useful purpose.
By analysing your existing content based on your own success parameters, you can decide to…
- Remove old stuff that’s become irrelevant
- Update content based on new information
- Fill gaps where you’ve not quite covered everything
- Keep everything the same – perhaps you’re perfect as you are!
You may have heard that content recency and relevance are important factors for ranking and visibility. And they are. So we all have a tendency to become hyper-focused on new stuff; to work with professional writers to push out shiny new content to appease the SEO deities. Obviously, this is a good thing. But in doing so, we can’t overlook the importance of managing what we already have.
What does a content audit include?
A content audit can include literally every item of digital content that you’ve ever produced; your video content, your written copy… everything. The whole lot. This can cover things such as…
- Main website content
- Landing pages
- Articles, blogs, white papers etc.
- Metadata
- Social media
- Brochures
- Email templates
However, you’ll be pleased to hear that the content audit we’re discussing isn’t quite this comprehensive or involved. Our standard audit focuses on the first four: web content, landing pages, blogs, and metadata. This will give a pretty good overview of what you’re working with.
Why perform a content audit?
You publish content for your audience, right?
Of course you do. At the end of the day, you want to publish stuff that resonates with the right people. That sends the right message and brings value to your readers.
But businesses change. And so do their audiences.
Are you the same business today as when you first started? Do you have the exact same target audience and brand personality? Are your potential customers still asking the same questions? It’s pretty unlikely.
Businesses evolve. Audiences evolve. And yet, content, once it’s published, often stays the same.
If a visitor gets distracted while chasing squirrels on your website, falls down a rabbit hole on your blog, and ends up snuffling around in the deepest, darkest corners of your site, are they going to find content that’s right for them? Or are they going to find a load of old stuff that leaves them confused? Perhaps an article with an entirely different tone of voice to the one you’re now known for? Something that sends a message that conflicts with what’s important to your brand today? A blog that’s epically out of touch?
And it’s not just that.
Even if tone, messaging, and relevance are A-OK, other website owners can mess things up for us. As others perform their own content audits, external content can be changed, updated, or removed entirely. And if we’ve linked to that content in our own content, we’re now out of luck. We’ve got links that no longer go to the right places… or to anywhere at all! Not a great trust-builder with readers, is it? In fact, this sort of thing can put off a potential customer entirely.
And there’s more.
Quite importantly, a content audit doesn’t just help you see what’s working and what’s not working. It also helps you understand why content might not be delivering value. Imagine Google Analytics shows a specific blog post as being right at the bottom of the ranks when it comes to user engagement. The natural response is to just toss it. But with a content audit, you might find that, actually, the post itself ticks all the right boxes. It’s just got a bad title and missed the mark on some keywords so no one can find it!
A good content audit will help you unearth…
- Inconsistent tone of voice
- Missing metadata
- Broken links
- Out-of-date information
- Expired offers
- Accessibility issues
- Poor SEO
At the other end of the spectrum, it’ll also…
- Help you recognise what’s performing well
- Make it easier to identify opportunities for future content
A content audit isn’t just about seeing what’s going wrong. It’s also about seeing what’s going right, and giving you an opportunity to do more of that good stuff. You can see what’s performing well, and use that information to your advantage. You can publish new content that relates to those high-performing ideas, extends them, explores them from different or unusual angles, or presents them in a different way, e.g. turning white papers into infographics.
A content audit can also identify gaps. Perhaps you’ve covered this and this but not that. It gives you a chance to really think about the direction you want your content to take in the future.
Free content audit tools
The fact is that there are loads of paid content auditing tools out there. But are they worth it? Sometimes, yes. But let’s be honest – you’re not going to be carrying out content audits every week, are you? If you’re not likely to really get the use out of paid tools, consider these handy free ones:
SEMRush
The free version of SEMRush allows you to run an audit on 100 pages for absolutely nothing. You’ll get a detailed report showing any issues that have been found – including duplicate metadata, broken links, 404 errors, and missing canonical information.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
This free SEO tool crawls websites – up to 500 URLs – to look for common errors like broken links, errors, and redirects. It can help you analyse page titles and metadata so you can make improvements, and it picks up on any duplicate content which could be affecting your ranking.
AccessiBe
An access scan from a product like AccessiBe can be useful for finding and improving content that isn’t accessible to all users. For example, content with excessive slang or abbreviations, which can be confusing for people with cognitive impairment, or for assistive technologies.
Does accessibility affect SEO?
Yes. SEO and accessibility are very closely linked, as both focus on clear, easy-to-understand, easy-to-navigate content. Users want content that they can access and understand, and search engines like Google want to promote content that meets their users’ needs. So accessibility is very likely to be an important factor influencing search engine rankings.
Google Analytics
You’re probably already using Google Analytics to look at the relationship between your content and traffic, engagement, conversions etc. The reason we’re mentioning it is that, following the switch from Universal Analytics to GA4, it’s important to make sure everything’s up-to-date – especially if you plan on using SEMRush, as the tool connects with your GA4 account to offer additional insights.
How to perform a content audit
1. Decide on parameters
How will you measure success? What will you be looking for? We’ve discussed checking that your content is still aligned with your brand’s values and serving your target audience, but what else? You could choose to look at engagement metrics like bounce rate or time on site, or technical metrics like content load time.
2. Crawl website
Using one of the free tools listed above, perform a scan of your website to get a comprehensive overview of what’s there. With this in place, you can cherry-pick the pages you want to examine.
3. List your pages
Decide which pages matter most to you, and create a list of all the URLs that you want to audit. You might focus just on blog posts, or cover everything, including main copy and landing pages.
4. Check metadata
Although not all metadata has an impact on where your website ranks in the search engine results pages (SERPs), it can massively affect your click through rate (CTR). It’s definitely worth checking to make sure titles, descriptions, and keywords are all unique and right for the page.
5. Check for broken links
Do the links in your content still direct visitors to working pages? Do they still go to the right place? Is the content on these external sites still relevant? Do you get any 404 page errors when you click?
5. Check titles & headings
The search terms that your audience type into Google can change – sometimes pretty considerably – over time. Make sure that the keywords in your content still align with what audiences are looking for.
6. Create a spreadsheet
List your informational (e.g. meta titles), quantitative (e.g. page views), and qualitative (e.g. link status) data for each page you’re auditing. You can also add in information for action and improvements.
7. Read it!
Yes, it’s painstaking. No, it can’t be avoided. Read through the content listed in your spreadsheet, systematically checking off against those parameters and metrics you identified earlier. Sorry – there are no shortcuts!
8. Record your findings
Note down what you’ve learned, and use this as an opportunity to categorise your content into different groups to ensure you’re covering all bases. Use our ‘6 types of content’ guide to help.
9. Take action
Update or delete content that’s no longer suitable for your website. You can also start to look for gaps and opportunities for new content, and create links between pieces to boost understanding.
10. Develop a content plan
Use everything you’ve learned from your content audit to create a valuable plan of action for the future. How many old articles will you update each month? How many new ones will you publish?
Content audit template
Often the simplest method is to export the data from one of the content audit tools listed and edit the output, but if you’re a fan of guidelines, we’ve got you covered.
You can find a content audit template here. Top tips:
- Follow the link above, then save a copy so you can edit it
- You don’t need to measure everything! Just choose what’s most important to you
How often should you perform a content audit?
Here’s some good news: while content auditing isn’t a one-time thing, it’s also not something you need to carry out every week. Or even every month. In fact, unless things tend to change very quickly in your business or industry, you’ll probably find that once a year is enough.
What’s the next step?
Finished your content audit and need some help interpreting the results? Book a free content review with us and we’ll work with you to decide on the best course of action. Our mission is to help businesses excel at content marketing, making sure that they’re always getting the right content in front of the right eyeballs. Whether we’re writing new blog posts, carrying out content reviews, or simply providing some free expert advice, at WordHound, we’re always here to help.
