So you want to know how to do a content audit? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Conducting a content audit is a valuable process for anyone managing a website, but it’s not just about reviewing your content, it’s about truly harnessing its full potential.

In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of a website content audit and why it’s an important part of content management.

What Is a Content Audit?

A website content audit is a systematic review of all the content on a website, this includes the website’s blog posts, landing pages, and more. Its primary goals are to assess the content’s performance and to determine the correct actions to take, whether that’s updating, keeping certain elements just as is, as well as consolidating, deleting, or creating new content.

Why Is a Content Audit Useful?

Conducting a content audit has several benefits including:

Data-backed improvements
Holistic view of your content
Helps with content performance
Improves content creation

Data-Backed Improvements

A content audit not only evaluates the overall performance of your content but also provides specific directions on how to improve it. It uncovers issues, such as broken links, keyword opportunities, and metadata gaps, allowing your content’s usability and search visibility to get a boost.

Holistic View of Your Content

If your website has an extensive content library, a content audit gives you a comprehensive view of its effectiveness. It helps you identify whether your content is genuinely serving your business goals or falling short.

It Helps Your Content Perform

Optimising your content is essential for improved search engine rankings. A content audit is invaluable for optimising existing content to achieve its full potential, making it more trustworthy, influential, and a lead-generating machine. This is true even for small businesses with limited content.

Improved Content Creation

By conducting a content audit, you can gain insights into what works and what doesn’t. This knowledge can be applied to future content creation, helping you to gain better results in terms of audience engagement, trust, and conversion rates.

How to conduct a website content audit

Conducting a website content audit may sound daunting at first, but it’s manageable when you have a well-structured content audit checklist:

Content Audit Steps:

Define clear business goals
Catalogue your content
Assess content performance
Prioritise and plan
Adapt your strategy

Define Clear Business Goals

Establish specific objectives for your content audit, such as improving SEO results, audience engagement, or conversion rates. Align these goals with relevant content metrics, such as organic traffic, bounce rate, shares, and ROI.

Catalogue Your Content

Collect the URLs of your content and categorise them by the buyer’s journey stages, content type, author, and any other criteria important to your objectives.

Assess Content Performance

Make use of analytics tools to gather data on content assets’ performance, using predefined metrics. You can then evaluate your content assets and assign them statuses, such as keep, repurpose, update, or delete.

Prioritise and Plan

You will need to prioritise any actions based on the business goals, and then develop an action plan for each piece of content to ensure that your efforts align with your objectives.

Adapt Your Strategy

Any necessary adjustments to your content strategy need to be made based on the audit results. It’s important to adapt your content strategy annually to keep it aligned with your evolving goals.

When to Conduct a Content Audit

When it comes to a content audit, time is of the essence. You should consider conducting a content audit in the following scenarios:

If your website is a few years old, and you’ve never done a content audit before, a content audit is long overdue.
You’re developing a content strategy and need a clear picture of your current content assets.
You’re revamping your content strategy or getting your website re-designed.

Take your website’s content to the next level

A website content audit is a powerful tool for optimising your content strategy. It helps you improve content quality, search engine rankings, and user engagement.

Yellowball can help you tap into the full potential of your content, ensuring it aligns with your business goals and delivers exceptional results. Yellowball is a digital, web design and development agency based in London, UK. Don’t wait, contact us today and unlock the hidden potential of your website’s content.

How To Conduct a Content Audit