4 Essential Steps for Completing a Content Audit on Your Blog

When you’re looking to revamp your content marketing strategy, you may consider only new content opportunities. The fact is, though, that you likely have a lot of solid content buried deep on your website.

A content audit enables you to rediscover and repurpose old content.

In this post, we’ll outline four essential steps for completing a content audit on your blog. This will allow you to renew old content and find gaps for new content ideas.

1. Set SMART Goals

A content audit is is a time-consuming process. It also takes considerable money and resources to complete. With that in mind, you should have clear, well-defined end goals for the audit.

What do you hope to achieve with this audit?

More than just goals, though, you should set SMART goals. These goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-Bound

Why are these types of goals important? Because people with SMART goals are 33% more likely to achieve their goals than those without.

So what goals might you hope to achieve with a content audit? Here’s a list of ideas:

1. Improve on-page SEO by fixing 100% of broken links within 3 months.
2. Reduce website exit rate by adding [number] of internal links to each blog post.
3. Increase backlinks by writing 5 guest posts for authoritative sites in 6 months.

You will likely have one or two overarching goals (i.e., improve SEO), but creating SMART goals like those above will significantly increase your odds of success.

2. Assess Your Current Content

Now that you know what you want to achieve, it’s time to evaluate your current framework. That is, what do you already have in place?

This step is likely to take the greatest amount of effort, but it’s worth it in the long run.

First, begin by pulling down a list of URLs currently live on your website. There are plenty of ways to do so, such as by copying and pasting from your sitemap or downloading a list from Google Analytics.

Next, determine the target keywords for these pages. You can also include a list of secondary keywords, though the target keywords are what we’ll use to analyze the data.

Finally, categorize each URL by the type (e.g., blog post, landing page, product page, etc.) and the stage in the buyer journey (e.g., awareness, consideration, decision). This can help you to better understand the data you’ll analyze in the next step.

3. Analyze the Data

Now is the most important step, as it will largely determine the direction you go in moving forward.

If your CMS doesn’t offer analytics, or you just want access to a robust suite of tools, then consider using Google Analytics. This free platform allows you to analyze your website’s performance as well as track user behaviors.

With the list of URLs you’ve collected, you can use Google Analytics to understand which pages are the highest performing. You can also determine how visitors navigate to the URL (e.g., search engine, social media, direct link) and how they interact with the content.

You will also want to understand how your website compares in ranking for those target keywords you determined earlier. While Google Analytics does have some keyword research functionality, other tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or an SEO tool like Ubersuggest can provide more insight.

4. Create an Action Plan

Once you have an idea of how your website and keywords currently rank, you can make a plan for the future. That is, what do you need to achieve the goals you outlined in Step 1?

An action plan helps you to break down your SMART goals into bite-sized chunks.

For example, let’s say you have 200 blog posts and you want to tackle your first SMART goal:

• Improve on-page SEO by fixing 100% of broken links within 3 months.

You know that you can’t dedicate every day of the work week to this goal, so you break it down into the following:

• Fix broken links on 6 blog posts per day, 3 days per week over a 3-month period.

The more specific you can make your action plan, the better.

Learn more about content audits in this interview with Kelsey Jones and Ross Hudgens:

Conclusion

While completing a content audit is an important website maintenance task, it’s only the beginning for a successful content marketing strategy. Be sure to check out our Marketing Blog for more information and how-tos on creating your brand’s ideal marketing strategy.