You may have heard several times, and you need to hear again – Content is king. Without content, there is no SEO. When we say content, we do not mean just quantity, we mean quality.
Why not take a look at the definition of a content audit. Learn how to perform it and how it is important to SEO.
What do we mean by Content Audit?
When we talk about content audits, we actually refer to the review of a website to check its overall performance. It puts a spotlight on the modifications to make it more appealing. Modifications such as:
- Updating,
- Improvement,
- Elimination,
- Variation etc.
It can help us understand the reason why pages are not performing as per expectations. Basically, content audits are done to ensure that businesses yield better results. It will offer to learn to improve your SEO approach through SEO Services by Brainvire.
Now let’s look at some of the pointers for content-auditing a website. While reviewing a website, you should check which content is performing better than the others, which blogs, posts, pages are outdated and need to be updated or removed.
You may also want to check what topics attract more traffic, and why certain web pages have better impressions but lower conversions. Another thing to note would be what the bounce rate is on the well-doing pages.
Did you know, almost 86% of B2C businesses rely on content marketing to promote their brand.
Moving on, now we will understand the entire process of content marketing. The exercise can be daunting. However, if you categorize the process, it can be simpler and very effective. It can be divided into three categories:
- Listing down all the content
- Data analysis
- Revamping content
1. Crawling and Site Auditing
Designing a content inventory starts by searching through the website. It is probably considered to have different audit processes for different content.
Crawlability means the readability of content on websites by search engines. The first thing to check is if the web crawlers are working or not. The most common problems that affect content audit are issues in the web crawlers. The most common problem of website crawlability is:
- Broken Lines
Indexability is the process for the search engine to rectify the index or even add more pages to its crawlability books. Usually, technical SEO focuses on crawlable content auditing and the finer content strategy focuses on Indexable content.
The tools used for crawling are:
- SEMRush
- Google Analytics.
There are few references that you must keep in mind for content audit URL:
- You can check whether your website has any duplicate material or not via audit tools
- Ensure that external links are exactly like your particular subject.
- Indexed URLs mean good-quality pages.
- Keep a note of the content date and keep on checking and editing the outdated ones.
- Increase the number of internal links.
2. Data Analysis
Once the data is at hand, much inference can be drawn from it and in so many ways. Data is the most important thing but you need to ensure that it is steered clear in the right direction.
A great way to do that is by creating a dashboard using either Google Sheets or Excel to keep track and proceed to analysis.
Once a dashboard is created, check for all warnings and alerts. Addressing those should be the first priority. Good quality content, relevant information, and the absence of redundancy are what keeps readers engaged. Take care of these:
- All warnings/Red flags
- Incoherent sentences/inarticulate words
- Useful information
- Quality and not quantity
- Avoid repetition
Being the intermediate step between indexing and reporting, analysis forms an indispensable step. Unless the data is analyzed and worked upon, the entire process of auditing is futile. Data analysis and subsequent action can boost SEO and be a launchpad to success.
After the data has been analyzed diligently, it has to be actioned upon, which takes us to the next step.
Buzzsumo and Moz conducted a study in 2015 which showed that almost 50% of the content had zero backlinks. This means that the content was not at all read or readers did not find it engaging.
3. Content Updates
Refer to the dashboard created, whether it is Google Sheets or Excel. Use the matrix to describe the action or tag keywords against each attribute or feature. There is various software that help do the same. In this step, the focus is on taking action on the data analyzed. The following can be done:
- Grammar can be corrected
- Sentence structure can be improved
- Engaging content for the readers
- Any repetitive data can be removed
- Content can be rewritten
Once the content is updated, the next step is to prepare a report.
4. Preparing a Report
The final step is to prepare a comprehensive report of the entire method. The main purpose of the report is to check the drawbacks, suggestions, auctioned upon content, the feedback, and the way forward. By doing that, not only do you improve the website but it is also preparing for a future content audit and will be treated as a base document.
According to research conducted, 93 percent of all online experiences begin with a search engine.
Conclusion
The content audit has good potential to review and improve SEO strategies. It is a process to ensure that most value is derived from the efforts that are put in.
In today’s world of competition, it is important to create efficient content. With the help of a content audit, you can analyze your piece and raise the level and ranking from what it was from before.
