It’s no secret that SEO is an essential tool for a business in 2019 to succeed. That said, SEO isn’t cheap. It’s growing into an $80 million market and this means the competition is tighter than ever before.
If you’re looking to ensure you get your money’s worth and all your SEO strategies work, it’s best to start with a good content audit template. That way, you can get rid of those that don’t add more value to your online presence.
Do you want to know how to do a content audit? Read on and learn from this guide today.
1. Make a Spreadsheet of Your Content Assets
The first step to complete the audit is to gather all your content. You can use a crawling tool to know all the URLs within your own website. Once you gather them up, you have the means of downloading it as a CSV file by exporting it.
Once you’re done with the export, use a Spreadsheet program. Leave a lot of columns since they’re for the data you’ll gather in the next step. Another good alternative is to use content inventory and audit template available online.
These spreadsheets aren’t the only way to organize your data. If you’re using WordPress, you can use the Content Audit plugin instead. This will enable you to make content inventories in the Edit screens while using the platform.
Always remember that you should go for the method you’re most comfortable with. Don’t try to use anything that sounds too complicated for your expertise. If you do, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
2. Gather Asset Data
This step will help you fill out the aforementioned blank columns. Depending on the goals you set for your audit, the data points you need to gather will vary. You also affect the necessary data by the level of complexity you want.
The set of data you need to collect might look troublesome due to their sheer number. But it’s important to take note that you aren’t required to compile all. The truth is that you have the means of achieving your goals without the need for a lot of data points.
As soon as you’re done picking the data points, you can label each column in your spreadsheet. This will enable you to start data collection. With a limited number of data pieces, you can complete your audit without neglecting your other tasks.
Don’t put too much worry when you’re trying to audit your content. You can always go back and add more to your own analysis once you get more time. Regardless, you can go through your list and assign a score for each page depending on what metrics you prioritize.
How to Set a Rating Scale
You can assign an A-F rating for each page you have on your website. The pages that get an A score are your best-performing pages. Those that earn an F score are the things you might need to remove in the near future.
Alternative: Use the Google Search Console
Add a note on your spreadsheet to show the date of this audit. This will help in making future audit plans easier to do. You can always use the Google Search Console to get more organized data for your audit.
Once you’re there, you can click on the Search Analytics. Select the Pages options and check the Clicks, Impressions, and CTR. This will give you a snapshot of how well your pages are performing.
Do you need to export this data? If so, you can click the “Download” button at the bottom part of the screen. It will download the information as a CSV file that you can add to your spreadsheets.
3. Analyze the Data
The size of your website will play a big part in determining the duration of the data-gathering process. It isn’t unusual for your audit to take more than a few days, weeks, or months. As soon as you complete the audit, you should start putting all the information to good use.
You need to make a set of recommended actions as soon as the audit finishes. That will help in ensuring that you get the most out of the process. To do that, you should look into the data you collected and draw some conclusions.
Add another column to your spreadsheet—Action. In this step, you decide what happens to each content asset you rated. You can do something like:
Keep
This is the type of content you want for your website. That means your rating should be something in between A and B. Update this rating on a regular basis to see if you can improve it in time.
Update
The assets under this action are decent content. But they need more improvements to ensure that their ratings go up in the future. In most cases, the content rating is between C and D.
Remove
These are the content you need to get rid of from your website. They’re at the bottom tier of your content since they’re often rated between E and F. If you don’t get rid of these soon, you might hurt your own SEO efforts.
Consolidate
These are the type of assets that are either too short or lacking. They aren’t bad, but it will get better if you combine it with another. Always ensure that you’re making a complete 301 Redirect for all the posts consolidated to ensure it doesn’t lose SEO impact.
Get Your Content Audit Template Today!
It’s always important to take note that is no hard and fast rules when doing your content marketing audit. That’s why it’s important to take a good look at the data you gathered so far. This helps in identifying trends that could help you get better in deciding what to do.
Avoid any mistakes and use a content audit template. It will help simplify the process and let you repeat the process as often as needed.
Do you need more help with your SEO efforts? If so, read our guide here on how backlinks work today.
