Use a Content Audit to Boost Your Content Strategy
A content audit may be the investment you need now to boost your online content strategy.
How is the content on your website performing? What about that blog content? Is it moving you toward your goals? Not sure? It’s time for a content audit.
What is a content audit?
A content audit is a systematic review of the content across your site, including:
- Blog posts
- Landing pages
- Product and service pages
- Core content pages
This review helps you understand whether your content is working to meet your goals, including reaching your desired audience.
There are more benefits:
- Identify which content needs improvement.
- Get the big picture of your web presence. Completing a content audit is the only way to dig through all your content and get a true understanding of whether it’s serving your business.
- Optimize your content to perform. A content audit helps you optimize the content you have so it performs at its peak.
- Get insight for content creation moving forward.
Basic steps of a content audit
The basic steps for a content audit are setting goals, gathering content and data points, and critically analyzing what you discover. You can look for tools that can help you with each of these steps.
Step 1: Set goals
Don’t go into a content audit without a clear goal. Figuring out what you hope to get out of your content audit is the critical first step.
Step 2: Gather, categorize, and organize your content
You need to document everything you have in a way that facilitates a big picture assessment as well as piece-by-piece evaluation.
Step 3: Analyze your content
Look at the data and determine which pieces you’ll update, rewrite, keep, or delete.
Step 4: Make a plan based on your findings
Make a priority list for which content pieces need immediate attention, and make a plan for how you’ll carry out updates and rewrites.
A Content Audit Leads to a Strong Content Strategy
A content audit is the best way to understand your content, each piece and the big picture.
Whether your site is massive or tiny, a content audit can help you understand what you have, what you need, what you don’t need, and what actions you can take in the future to make sure your content is contributing to your business goals.
The information you gain ensures that your content marketing strategy moves you toward your goals.
