Should You Be Performing A Quarterly Content Audit?
Even if you’re not a data nerd, it’s important to periodically take a look at your website’s analytics and performance. Doing so can help you make informed decisions about your content strategy and ensure that your site is reaching its full potential. One way to assess your website’s health is by performing a quarterly content audit. Here are four reasons why you should consider doing one:
1) To identify any stale or irrelevant content on your site that may be hindering user engagement or hurting your search ranking potential; 2) To gauge which topics are resonating with your audience and focus future content production around these themes; 3) To evaluate whether the overall tone and messaging of your site is on-brand and in line
The 80/20 Rule
Any website is only as good as its content. If a website’s content is stale, outdated, or simply not relevant to its audience, then that website will struggle to attract visitors and convert them into customers. This is where the 80/20 rule comes in. Just a small handful of articles or web pages are responsible for the vast majority of traffic and conversions on any given website. As such, website owners must focus on making sure their 20% is performing as well as it can. This means regularly publishing fresh, relevant, and engaging content that resonates with its target audience. By doing so, website owners can ensure that their website always attracts new visitors and generates conversions.
Where To Start
Before you can start auditing your website’s content, you need to decide what kind of content you want to review. Internal content such as blogs, news articles, product reviews, and landing pages can all be part of your audit. Alternatively, you can focus on external content such as guest posts or third-party reviews.
Once you have decided where you will put your focus, you can start your inventory. A link analysis is collecting the URLS of all the web pages you want to analyze. This will provide a list of all pages that need to be checked for your audit. Once you have your list, you can review each page to see if it meets your content criteria.
To start, take a look at each piece of website content and evaluate it. Is it still relevant? Does it accurately reflect your brand? Is it doing well in terms of engagement or website traffic? If you answer yes to all of these questions, then it’s a keeper. Move on to the next piece of content.
If you answer no to any of the questions above, then it’s time to take a closer look at the piece of content in question. If it just needs a few minor updates, then you can move it into the “update” category. However, if the piece of content is outdated or no longer reflects your brand, then it may be time to delete it.
The “update” category contains content that needs to be updated to make it more efficient or relevant. For example, you may have an old blog post that ranks well but doesn’t contain the most up-to-date information. In this case, you would want to update the post with new information while keeping the original URL (to preserve any backlinks and ranking).
The “delete” category is for content that is beyond improvement, and updating it will take too much effort. This can be seasonal content that has since lost its purpose (like a holiday-themed landing page), low-performing blog posts or thin pages with little value.
Keep It Up To Date
In today’s fast-growing world, website content can become outdated quickly. To ensure your site is up to date and at peak performance, you should regularly perform a content marketing audit. A frequency of 3 to 4 times a year is recommended, though you can adjust this to suit your company’s needs. Performing a content marketing audit is no easy feat, but it’s essential to keep your website relevant and engaging. If you need help performing a content marketing audit, our team of experts is here to help. Contact us today to get started!