Content Audit for Dummies
(Full Guide + 4 Free Templates!)
Muiz Thomas
Founder & Creator
15 mins read
Published: 9th November 2023
Not all your content will be a hit.
Even with your best efforts, some content might not rank/convert.
If you’re like me, you’d rather just focus on new ideas or articles.
But the truth is, your old content is just as important as the new stuff, maybe even more so.
A few updates could really boost your revenue.
That’s why I’ve written this guide. To make content auditing easy and give you clear steps to follow.
What’s a Content Audit?
A content audit is like making a list of everything on your website and reviewing it based on certain standards.
It helps you keep tabs on what you’ve made, spot areas that need polishing, and brainstorm ideas for new content.
You can audit anything you want, like your:
- Entire site
- Blog posts
- Landing pages
- Product descriptions
- Videos, etc.
If you’ve never done a content audit, no worries. It’s not as hard as it sounds.
But first, let’s chat about why you need a content audit.
Why Do You Need a Content Audit?
1) Guide Your Content Strategy
Regular audits give you a clear picture of your content plan. The details you collect can help you:
- find out what’s working and what’s not,
- get to know your visitors better,
- and spot chances to grow or reuse content.
2) Boost Your Brand’s Reputation
Everything you post tells your audience a bit about you.
Regular checks on your content make sure it’s showing the best side of your brand and what you offer.
3) Boost Organisational Output
When to Do a Content Audit?
Content audits should be done regularly, but there are some situations where they’re an absolute must:
1) Sales Are Falling Short
2) Lots of Visitors, but Few Conversions
3) Visitors Can’t Find What They Need
4) You’ve Got a New Brand Voice
5) You’re Giving Your Site a Makeover
6) You’ve Run Out of Content Ideas
Checklist for Your Content Audit
There’s no one-size-fits-all checklist for a content audit. It really depends on what you’re aiming for. But here are some things you might want to look at:
1) Hard Facts
- Titles: Make sure they describe the content and are consistent across your site.
- Summaries: This helps you decide if your content needs updating or reusing.
- Keywords: Check if the keywords your content is targeting are still relevant.
- Meta title tags: These show up on search engine results pages (SERPs) and can affect how many people click on your content.
- Meta descriptions: These also show up on SERPs and should include keywords and fit within the character limit set by Google.
- Word count: The length of the content can affect its search engine ranking. Try combining short posts into longer ones for better ranking potential.
- Date published: Helps you understand traffic data and organise content by date.
- Date last modified: Helps you identify content that might need updating, especially if there have been key changes since it was last edited.
- Product or service supported: You get to see if there are any products/services that need more supporting content.
- URL: Make sure all links are working and relevant.
- Shares: This gives you an idea on how popular your content is.
2) Details
- Broken stuff: Look for broken images and links. They make your site look bad and hurt your rankings.
- Accuracy: Keep your info up to date. Outdated stats or tools can be confusing.
- Images: Bad or old images can be off-putting. Make them more engaging.
- Offers: Keep your offers fresh and only show them where they’re relevant.
- Language: Use the right words. If you’ve changed how you talk about your brand or stopped selling a product, your content should reflect that.
- Tone: Make sure your content matches your brand voice. If it doesn’t, it might seem less trustworthy.
- Forms: Make sure they work well. If not, you could be missing on valuable interactions with users.
- Readability: If your content is hard to read, people might not stick around. Keep things simple.
- Spelling & Grammar: Mistakes can look unprofessional and be confusing. Double-check before you hit publish.
- Comments: Respond to comments and remove any spam that could get you a Google penalty.
- Competitor equivalent: Learn from what others are doing. Look at similar brands for inspiration.
3) Measurable Data
- Organic pageviews: How many people found that page from a search engine? More views could mean it’s working well.
- Conversions: Did people do what you wanted them to do on the page? E.g., buying a product, signing up for a newsletter, etc.
- Conversion rate: What percentage of visitors did what you wanted them to do? This can show if the page is effective.
- Time on page: This shows how long people stay on the page. If they leave ASAP, something might be wrong.
- Bounce rate: Do people leave your site after visiting that page? If they do, the page might not be very engaging.
- Exit rate: How often is that page the last one people visit during their session? If it’s high, the page might be a dead end.
- Average position: Where does the page show up in search results? If it’s not on the first page, you might want to improve it.
- Keyword volume/keyword difficulty: Are the words people use to find your page popular and hard to rank for? If so, it might be worth putting more effort into that page.
- Page load speed: Does the page load quickly? If not, people might leave before they see anything.
- Internal links: Are there links to other pages on your site? This can help people find more of your content.
- Incoming links: Are other sites linking to that page? This can help improve its search ranking.
- Linking sites: Do many links come from one site? This could look suspicious to search engines.
- Image size: Are the images the right size and file type? Big, slow-loading images can make people leave.
How to Do a Content Audit (Successfully)
Now that you know why you need a content audit and what to include, let’s get down to the how-to.
1) Set Clear Goals
Content audits can be a lot of work, so you need a main goal before you start.
For example: Get better SEO traffic for this [keyword] within [time-range].
The more specific, the better.
2) List Your Content
Next, decide what kind of content you’ll review. This could be:
- Blog posts
- News articles
- Product descriptions
- Landing pages, etc.
Then, start collecting the URLs of the pages you want to review.
Small site? You can use Excel or Google Sheets to manually add all the links.
Big site? You’ll want to use a content audit tool like Screaming Frog or Semrush.
Include fields like:
- URL
- Headline
- Page title
- Meta title/descriptions, etc.
Your content audit spreadsheet might look something like this:
3) Collect Data
Now it’s time to see how your content is doing. Use tools like:
Gives you info about who’s visiting your site, what they’re looking at, and where they’re coming from.
Helps you keep track of keyword rankings, backlinks, and any other SEO problems on your site. You also get to see what your competitors are doing well.
Quickly scans through lots of pages and gives you info on things like broken links, meta tags, duplicate content, etc.
Plus, you get to find tech issues that need fixing.
HubSpot helps you keep track of how your content is doing in terms of getting leads and conversions.
It also works with other tools, making it a flexible choice for a content audit.
4) Understand Your Data
Once you’ve collected your data, you need to figure out what it means.
Look at your content metrics to see how your content is performing.
- Are there pages with lots of traffic but low conversions?
- Or pages with little traffic but lots of engagement?
Here’s a simpler way to understand the data:
- Lots of visitors, quick exits: These pages might not be answering the questions your visitors have.
- Lots of visitors, few actions: These pages might need clearer calls to action.
- Few visitors, lots of interaction: These pages could be made more SEO-friendly.
Finally, group your content based on these issues.
For example, you might make a group for high-traffic content that needs a CTA, or low-traffic content that needs an SEO check.
5) Develop A New Content Strategy
Now you should know what content is working and what isn’t. Add a new column to your spreadsheet for each piece of content to show what you need to do:
For example:
Keep
If your content is doing well and it’s still relevant, leave it as is. E.g., success stories, FAQs, or general info about your business.
Reuse
If some pages are doing well, consider using them in a different way.
If a blog post is converting visitors, turn it into a lead gen piece of content (like a template) and use paid channels to get even more leads.
Refresh
If some pages aren’t doing well, think about how you can improve them.
Update the CTAs, add visuals, optimise internal linking, etc.
Discard
If your content is low-quality, consider deleting it. This could be out-of-stock products or just old campaigns.
6) Update Your Content Strategy
You also need to keep your long-term plan in mind when doing a content audit.
Here are some tips:
- Do more of what’s working.
- Learn from your best content and apply those lessons to other content.
- Look at your competitors’ content to see where you could improve.
- Review your plan and audit your content at least once a year.
- Be ready to adjust your plan as things change.
Getting the Most from Your Content
Content Audit FAQs
Made Super Easy
Well, it depends on the size of your site, the complexity, and how much you update or add new content.
A third of marketers say they do a content audit at least twice a year. But half say they update their content when it’s out of date.
A good guideline should be at least once a year. But for larger sites, you might want to do it more often.
The metrics you pick should match your website or business goals.
For example, if your main goal is to boost newsletter sign-ups, tracking page views might not be that useful.
In this case, looking at newsletter sign-up rates might give you a better idea of how you’re doing.
Your content audit will show you what’s doing well and what’s not.
This gives you a clear direction: stick with what’s working and fix what’s not.
For example, if your audit shows that your infographic posts are more popular, make more of them.
If your case studies aren’t doing well, put them on the list for updates.
Keep an eye on how your content does before and after the audit.
After you’ve made the changes the audit suggested, you should see things get better.
If the improvements are worth the time and effort it took, then the audit was a success.
Get a head start with your content audit with these FREE templates.
Quick tip: To use, click ‘File’, then ‘Make a copy’ to save to your Google Drive, or ‘Download’ for an Excel version.
