Content Audits: A Guide For Marketing Managers
Learn what website content audits are, how to perform them and how to measure your content marketing’s success in line with your business goals.
“Tools are great, but content marketing success is about the wizard, not the wand.” – Jay Baer
“We write and design content that gets search engine traction and makes your visitors take action.”
Is your content marketing attracting, converting and keeping visitors on your website?
Digital content and copy are the face of your search engine performance and your ability to attract, convert and keep visitors to your site.
That’s why we care so much about the words on your site, ads, social, email and more.
Our approach is humans > algorithms.
Mimicking the individual voice of a business is a skill that our Content Team excels at – whatever your style is, we can match it (but like an old and honest friend, we’re not afraid to make suggestions to improve what’s already there).
Equally, if you’re struggling with messaging around your key products or services, we’ll enable you to find what you’re trying to say. We work in parallel with our Tech SEO and Paid Media teams to keep us rounded.
We create:
- Strategy documents (for website, social and email)
- Content calendars (for website, social and email)
- Whitepapers
- Ebooks
- Social media content and copy
- Landing pages
- Email copy
- Blog posts
Which are always backed up by technical expertise.
“Whether you’re after a full blown content strategy, or simply need help with the time consuming task of content production (or both) we’ve got our creative minds and Google Docs at the ready!” – Josef James, Head of Content & Conversion
What should website content audits include?
This is perhaps the most broad of all of the marketing audit types. If you work with anyone in the marketing world, they would approach a content audit differently! We break content audits down into three broad areas, but naturally the scope of the website content audit depends on your goals.
1) Content success
To measure content success, we’d typically look at it’s ability to generate traffic, links, shares and new business. If you’re starting a new content marketing strategy, an audit ensures you’re using this data to drive your strategy in the right direction. You’ll get answers to the following questions:
- What level of engagement has the content received from social media?
- How many backlinks (see below) has the content received?
- How much traffic has the content generated and from which sources?
- What were the outcomes after people viewed the content?
- Is there any evidence of the content being talked-about?
Use data from SEMrush, Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 to help with this.
You should come away with a list of actions for each piece of content you’ve audited: update, re-write, consolidate or delete.
2) Content appropriateness
How well does your content talk to your target users? This type of audit should be run by a copywriter or a Content Marketer/Manager who can get into the mind of your audience and can judge the copy’s effectiveness. Think about the questions below:
- Does the content answer my question?
- Can I see my needs or anxieties met by the content?
- Do I have to work hard to read and understand the content?
- Is the content sincere?
- Is the content of an appropriate length for the platform?
This is a subjective audit that requires a solid understanding of your target audiences.
3) Content accuracy and site accessibility
Accuracy comes in many forms – but spell check, sentiment analysis, and readability can all be focused on here. If the copy on your website is hard to read or full of spelling errors, your visitors won’t want to engage. This is also important for search engines. Review how easy it is to read your website and whether the spelling and grammar is accurate. You can use tools to speed this up.
- Is your site free of spelling errors? – Use a tool like InSpyder to spell check your site.
- What is the readability score for your site? – Use a tool like Hemingway App or Grammarly to assess readability.
- Does your website achieve accessibility standards? – Use a tool like W3C to check if your site achieves web accessibility standards.
Setting content audit goals
Before setting your content goals, you’ll need clearly defined business and website goals. For example:
Get 10 qualified leads per month from the website.
To achieve this with your content strategy, you may want to focus on increasing your relevant organic traffic and conversion rates. Increasing conversion rates by 50% may help you get there.
KPIs
The metrics you’ll use to measure performance will vary depending on your goals. But generally, some important metrics to consider are:
- Average keyword rankings
- Engaged sessions
- Conversions
- Exit rates
- Click-through rates
- Impressions
- Scroll depth
These are all Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of your content’s success that work towards achieving your content goals.
Manual content checks
A key manual check you can carry out is establishing if you’ve got content which covers all parts of the buyer’s journey. And that it’s nurturing the traffic to guide them through the conversion funnel.
Run some manual checks across key pages and consider the purpose of each page. The types of pages you’ll want to look at:
- Homepage
- About us page
- Category pages
- Service/product pages
- Blogs
- New landing page opportunities
Use the navigation summary to check your users are going where you want them to. If Google Analytics is indicating some of your content is performing badly or has room for improvement, drill down into the on-page content.
On-page content:
Consider the following factors:
- Value propositions: are there strong motivating factors and compelling USPs on the page?
- CTAs: are they high quality and using emotion to maximise value?
- Internal links: are you using anchor text to internally link to important pages?
- Helpful content: is the page written for my users and meeting their search intent?
- Copy: is it actionable and persuasive?
- Layout: is the content easy to digest?
Check out our guide on optimising your web pages using a copy teardown to help you do this.
Remember, all pages need to have a purpose and seamlessly guide your visitors into taking the action you want them to take.
Content audits and creating a strategy that works for your business is time-consuming, so if it feels overwhelming (and we don’t blame you!) we’re here to help. Many will look at this mammoth task and leave it for another day. But there’s nothing more important than pinning down your content marketing strategy – it’s the cornerstone of everything you say to your customers, and getting you one step closer to achieving your business goals. Our Content Managers can manually review your website to look for optimisation opportunities and create a complete content strategy for your whole team.
Ready to start auditing your content?
If you’d like support in kickstarting your content strategy or need some expert content creation – simply get in touch. Our content team will be more than happy to help!
