Why You Need a Content Audit

What Is A Content Audit?

A content audit is a vital exercise you need to carry out before the creation of your content marketing strategy and content calendar. This helps you improve your existing content, maximise your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts and fill content gaps across your site. Using and acting on the findings of your content audit can help you to more effectively connect with your existing audience, reach new customers and more importantly convert more of those customers.

You might be thinking, “I have a content calendar, why do I need to carry out a content audit?” But see if you can relate to any of the statements below – if you do, you could probably benefit from carrying out a content audit.

Lots Of Traffic, But Not A Lot Of Conversions

You’ve headed into GA4 and can see you’re getting a healthy amount of traffic, so why isn’t that traffic converting? You might be quick to assume the best option is to carry out some conversion rate optimisation, but you need to expand your mindset further than conversion.

It may not be that your users don’t know how to get in touch, it might be that they don’t feel ready to do so. Assess the content on your pages, and ask:

• Is this content relatable for my target market?
• Is it fully informative and going into enough detail?
• Is it answering all the questions your customers are asking?

Don’t stop there either. Look at the tone of voice, does it suit your brand, or is it too formal/informal? Perhaps your content isn’t persuasive enough or there is no call to action within the content.

There are a range of factors you can look at to improve your on-page content, provide better value to your audience, and encourage them to get in touch.

You’re Revamping Your Website

A content audit is a perfect task to carry out if you’re in the process of redesigning your website, as it allows you to understand whether the design and content are working towards the same goal. By undertaking a content audit, you can better establish if your content has drifted from its original purpose, and therefore put the steps in place to optimise this content to better work towards its aims.

Not only this, but this is a key time to decipher which pieces of content are or aren’t performing and identify why this is. Use the factors we mentioned above, such as not being as informative as they could be, not utilising the right tone of voice or not using a suitable call to action. Knowing what you did wrong last time will help you produce killer pieces of content for your website, whether that means improving current content or filling content gaps.

Your Content Is Unclear

Digital marketing is a prime example of an industry that is full of jargon, which can make content confusing and unclear to the user if it isn’t an industry they actively engage in.

This is where the importance of assessing your content against your target market comes in. Think about your customer profiles, what type of information they want to know and consume, and the ways that you can provide them with value throughout your site.

Ask yourself, will they care about and understand this content? If the answer is no, think about how you can improve the content to provide more value, or fill content gaps to meet these needs. There is nothing worse than wasting time on content that you don’t understand or doesn’t meet your needs.

You Aren’t Getting Leads For Your Full-Service Offering

Are you consistently getting more leads for particular services over others? Thinking beyond demand, look into the content you have associated with those services. Do services that are better sought after come with more detailed service page content or additional blog posts? Perhaps you have more case studies or testimonials for particular services. These all play a part in educating your target market, showing your expertise and providing them with the trust signals they need in order to enquire.

Your Bounce Rate Is Too High Or Session Duration Too Low

Again looking into your analytics are you seeing your bounce rate is too high, or session duration lower than you’d like? You can assume from these analytics that either your target market are struggling to find what they’re looking for, or aren’t finding your content valuable or engaging. Either way, it’s resulting in users exiting your site.

Here, your content audit can help you to both simplify and improve your user journey or look at enhancing the on-page content in order to help users find what they are looking for much more easily.

Whether you’re carrying out a content audit to boost your SEO efforts, improve the user journey on your site or work towards boosting conversions, it is clear to see there is much value in taking the time to do one. If you’re not sure how to carry out a content audit, or need help implementing your findings, then our team of SEO experts can support you – talk to us today to find out how.