Firstly, let’s talk about what a content audit actually is. It’s an inventory of all of your website’s text, photos, images, links, and documents.
Each piece needs to be assessed and checked to make sure that it’s:
- up-to-date
- in the proper place
- been optimised for search engines
A spreadsheet with all the information for each item helps tremendously to keep order in the chaos.
A site map helps to guide a content auditor through the website, much like a map guides a hiker through unfamiliar territory.
What to Put in the Spreadsheet for a Content Audit
For the spreadsheet inventory, put in for each item:
- The URL
- Title of the content item
- Description, i.e. product, blog, article, etc.
- Date
- Author
- Meta description
- Keywords
- Tags
- Broken Links
- Notes – if any
Once you have the content inventory, you can start on the content audit. Pages that need to be removed or updated will be clearly shown.
If the website doesn’t have a blog, give serious consideration to starting one. Websites that have a blog get 55% more traffic than those without one.
A study of the keywords used and looking for better keywords to replace some will improve the site significantly in search engines. Keyword stuffing, on the other hand, will be detrimental to your ratings and will also put your target audience off. It also looks cheap and tacky and is difficult to read.
Main Purposes of a Content Audit
The two main purposes of running a content audit are:
- To improve SEO ratings by optimising all content and images and to identify the weak spots.
- To surpass your competitors in a search by providing top quality content, and boosting content marketing significantly.
Instead of concentrating on just SEO, you will look at page length, page visits, bounce rates, and page shares to assess what content is attracting the most attention and what to concentrate on when writing content in the future.
A content audit should be run at least once a year.
How Much Time Does a Content Audit Take?
That is the million dollar question.
If your website is large with hundreds of products and a large number of blog posts, then it will be a monumental undertaking. However, if your website is small with only a few blogposts and less than 20 products, then it shouldn’t take too long.
Once the initial audit has been done, then it’s just a matter of going through the list for the next content audit.
So Who Can Run Audits For You?
You or one of your staff can do it, or you can contact Copywriter-To-Go and we will do it for you. We will provide you with a comprehensible report, with the spreadsheet, at the end of it.
We will go through the report with you and make sure that everything is clear.
You can either do the changes yourself, or hire us to do it for you.
How To Reach Us
If your would like to discuss options with us, you can contact us through any one of the following:
- destinationproduction@yahoo.com
- +1 721 523 8141 (WhatApp)
