Content audits are a task that everyone loves to hate, yet they are necessary for determining whether your content marketing strategy is working. Chances are whenever its time to do one, you put it off until it is absolutely necessary, or not even. However, what if you could accomplish a mini content audit in just a few hours? Yes, it’s possible to do a condensed one that will give you a new approach to regularly assess your website’s content and determine what may be done to improve it.
Condensed audits are not meant to replaced comprehensive ones, but what they allow you to do is more frequently examine what’s important on your website and narrow your goals. They’re meant to be done frequently, at least monthly, and can give you valuable information that you can pass on to your content writer to use when writing new articles. The nature of these mini audits is flexible, however, by making them routine, you can identify little problems more quickly before they turn into big ones.
Choose Your Metrics
The first step in performing a condensed content audit is to determine which three metrics will be your focus. Look at the three that are most important to your current goals. By only choosing three, you can gain insights more easily. You can do the same three during every mini audit or change them as needed. You don’t have to choose every page, but if your website is large, you’ll get a complete picture by assessing a higher number.
Inventory Your Content
Create a spreadsheet and list the URL, page title, content type and the three metrics. Give an overall grade at the end. Consult Google Analytics for information such as page visits, time spent on the page and other metrics. When you have this information in hand, you can analyze what content is performing well what is mediocre and what performs poorly. Detail as much as possible what each letter grade means regarding a particular piece of content.
By taking a close look at areas that are not performing well, you’ll get a clear idea of what needs to be done. Perhaps old content has run its course and needs to be updated, or maybe certain types of content don’t grab the interest of your audience. With this information in hand, you should be able to come up with an actionable plan that you can hand to a content writer to implement and gain more viable traffic.
Another helpful tip is to have more than one person taking a look at the data to perform their own analysis. By having multiple people involved, you can more easily spot trends or have suspicions confirmed when you are unsure of whether your hunches are correct.
In Conclusion
A condensed site audit is not something to be feared. Rather it’s something to be welcomed because it will get you and your team in the habit of performing these important analyses. Thus, when the time comes to do a full audit, it won’t seem so bad and you’ll actually have a heads up on what a full assessment may bring.
