As we approach 2022, it’s a great time to assess your current site and social content and determine if there are any course corrections that need to be made.
It’s something pretty much every business can relate to. We prioritize our clients’ needs, so when it comes to marketing, branding, social media, and more for our own company, it’s only natural that we push things to the back burner.
But now we’re planning for 2022 and setting goals to attract more clients. Next thing we know, our website and social media profiles bring up outdated and irrelevant content, case studies from clients that left a while ago, and pieces of content that simply don’t align with our brand or business goals any longer.
A content audit is no easy feat. They’re time-consuming and require a lot of bandwidth from your teams. However, the value of insights gained from the content audit process is highly worth it in the end. For companies looking at rebranding in the future or hoping to reach out to more diverse audiences, this is a great start. It makes you take a step back to assess the performance of your content, identify content gaps, and truly understand where your marketing efforts are landing and where they are not.
Read more to discover why this seemingly daunting project can really set the stage for your content marketing strategy and pay off.
Understanding Your Own Content
One of the most important, yet tedious, parts of the content audit is the content inventory. That means cataloging every type of content your team has put together over a select time frame. More than likely, the majority of this will be blog and website content. If you’re unsure of what to track, look up a content audit template so you have a good idea of where to start.
This typically involves a spreadsheet that assesses content by format, topics, CTAs, content assets, and more. If it’s an SEO audit, you should also track inbound links, keywords, SERPS, and organic traffic of your web pages and content.
Why this stage is so helpful is because it gives an overview of what is the most relevant content to your audience and is helping potential customers on their buyer’s journey. It also serves as a guide to know what content formats are performing well, where there are content gaps, what’s working and what isn’t so you know what topics to pursue for future content creation, and what existing content to update or repurpose.
Good for SEO
Whether improving your SEO results is the goal of your content audit or not, because the process involves a deep dive into the data and metrics, this will also benefit as a result.
To give your team a baseline of the high-quality, good content that’s driving traffic to your website, take a look at internal links, backlinks, metadata, meta descriptions, bounce rates, and target keywords, and compare them against Google Analytics to discover what messaging is aligning with your target audience, as well as showing up in search engine results.
Again, while this process is tedious, a completed audit will be invaluable for helping you further optimize your content marketing and drive traffic towards your landing pages.
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Be More Accessible
So you probably found some low-performing content throughout this process that’s just not working. That’s great! Now learn from those mistakes and take a deeper dive to question why it’s not working. Does it simply not resonate with others? Or is it a result of poor user experience?
You can’t have visibility if your user experience and accessibility aren’t there. A content audit is a great opportunity to ensure that the content on your site is ADA compliant.
Show Clients What You Can Do For Them By Doing It For Yourself
We know that for sales and outreach efforts, the website and content we produce is often the first impression we give to prospective customers. How can future clients trust us to produce high-quality work if they don’t see us do it for ourselves?
After completing a content audit, your team will have a roadmap for its content marketing strategy, which will help streamline marketing efforts and help create a more efficient process that yields results.
If you’re looking to kickstart your digital marketing or content strategy with an audit, we recommend checking out the resources below: