Just like conducting a site’s SEO audit, reviewing the content on a timely basis helps you gain a lot of insights into how the content is performing. Most people are really busy creating contentious content so that they forget to review how their older pieces performed. And, when it comes to creating content, you need to know how much RoI you are getting from the hard work that you and your team are putting. So, in this article, we will check out the simple to follow content audit tips that you can follow.
Talking about the frequency of content audits, it completely depends on you and how much content you produce. But, doing a weekly audit will be convenient for you as you can measure the performance much faster.
Table of Contents
Start with auditing the previous content
Before jumping into the new content audit, it’s instrumental to audit the previously published content and know how it performed. You can take help from the content tool. It’s recommended to take at least 6 months of content and start the auditing. Instead of doing it manually, use the content audit option of SEO like SEMrush. On this note, let’s have a look at what to consider while doing the content audit.
Organic traffic gained
While calculating the organic traffic gained from the previous content, there are a few metrics that you need to check. First, write down how you are distributing the content, and what the primary channels are. Along with these two things, also jot down which platforms and strategies are driving the maximum amount of traffic. If you have not got the desired traffic from the previous content, then you may need to improvise the strategies.
Focus on average bounce rate
Bounce rate is a prominent factor to look for while performing a content audit and you need to focus on your average bounce rate. The same blog may have a high bounce rate on certain weeks and can have a significantly lower bounce rate on other ones. So if you are calculating the bounce rate of say 6 months, calculate the average bounce rate.
For a better perspective — if your 3000-word article is having a bounce rate of 70%, then there is something serious and you should look at why it’s so high. Also, check if the readers are visiting your other pages or not after reading your blog. Your ultimate goal should be motivating the readers to visit other pages as soon as they finish reading.
Backlinks are part of the content audit
Suppose you wrote an amazing blog post and within a couple of weeks, that piece grabbed more than 500 backlinks. You need to understand the fact that not all 500 backlinks are helpful for your site’s SEO. You need to get started with an immediate backlink analysis and disavow the low-quality backlinks.
Time on page factor
How much time readers are spending on your blog posts is a major KPI to measure. The longer the on-page time, the better the rankings. But on the other side, if the average time spent on a 5,000-word blog is only 24 seconds or so, you need to dig down and find out what’s wrong. Always focus on creating content that will hold visitors for a long time.
Content relevancy
This is a pivotal thing to consider in your content audit and you need to carefully check all the blog posts and other pieces are updated and relevant to the date. There are several facts, figures, and other statistics that may have changed over time and you need to update them all in your content.
Unique visitors
For higher RoI, it’s very important to have more unique visitors to your site so that your brand can reach more new people and they can become your regular readers. So, while conducting your content audit, make sure you are extracting unique visitor data as well from Google Analytics.
Total conversions
Now, the most important thing for which we all work hard to craft content— the total conversion. As a content marketer, you need to have a goal behind every content you push to get the maximum out of your hard work. It could be a traffic milestone, email signups, social media page likes, and anything else.
Once you conduct all these audits, you will have a better understanding of what content is working and what you need to ditch. Do those content often that are doing well rather than trying hard to push on content that is not working.
Content marketing is a long-term game to stay relevant in the game and you should have a set of goals to measure both short and long-term success. If you are just starting out with content marketing, keep the above points in mind while performing a comprehensive content audit. For 2021, have a content audit format ready and share it with your content team members so that all can be on the same page.
Author Bio –
With over 13 years of experience as a leader in digital marketing, Mansi Rana is Managing Director of EZ Rankings – SEO Reseller. Passionate about all things data; providing actionable business intelligence in digital, future tech; and venture bubbles categories for everyone, everywhere.