If you want to get back on the right track, you need to put your content marketing efforts under the microscope: it's time for you to run a content audit.

This will help you identify any gaps and understand where and why you're falling short. If executed well, this process will help you to:

  • evaluate what articles on your website are performing well
  • discover what content your readers prefer, and
  • eliminate irrelevant or outdated content.
Here is how you can run a content audit on your content: 

1: Catalog your existing content

To stay on the top of your content marketing game, you need to put your content in order. The very first step of your content audit should be to create a document where all of your content can be found. The main purpose of this exercise is that you should be able to find articles easily when required.

In order to do this, you should pull out all the existing URLs on your website and enter them into a spreadsheet. For small websites, this can be done manually. However, there is also a wide array of web scraping tools available to aid this process.

You should then categorise your spreadsheet. Ask yourself why you are carrying out a content audit. Some of the many goals could be to boost audience engagement, discover new content ideas, or to improve SEO. 

Your audit goal must influence how you go about categorising your spreadsheet. For example, if you want to improve SEO, here are some of the categories you could create:
  • target keywords
  • inbound links
  • image ALT tags, and
  • average page visits.
The more data points you choose to analyse, the more time-consuming the process will be. That's why it's important to set goals from the beginning.

2: Understand your customer profile

Knowing your audience is one of the prerequisites for a successful business. While many tend to turn a blind eye to this step, it will help you identify gaps in your content strategy.

Here are two easy steps how to do it:

1: Identify your audience

You can't possibly create content that appeals to all. For example, if you sell sports shoes, chances are that your website is often visited by athletes, sportsmen, travelers and adventurers.

Narrowing down on a target audience is very important to increase online sales.

2: Determine what appeals to your audience

On the basis of who your primary readers are, you can estimate what your audience is interested in. This can be done by conducting:
  • a demographic analysis: this includes factors like age, gender, ethnicity and religion, and
  • an attitudinal analysis: this includes factors like attitudes, beliefs and values
These steps will help you understand your customer profile. Based on your findings, generate relevant content and keyword ideas and create a new spreadsheet for the same.

3: Rework your content repository

Now, you need to find out how all the information that you have acquired can be analysed in order to alter and polish your content marketing strategy.

Depending on your pre-determined goals, here are a few metrics worth tracking:

Content that's missing: merge the two spreadsheets and search for gaps. Is your website devoid of any content that your readers are interested in? Remember, giving your audience what they want is one of the best ways to improve customer experience.

Content that's doing well: after your content audit, highlight those blog posts that help you get conversions. Additionally, check their average session time, bounce rates and average visits for more insights.

Assigning grades (A-E) for the content and each of its categories can largely simplify the process of finding the best performing content.
The end goal for each piece of content should be to put your content in one of the following three categories:
  • Keep — this category includes content that's relevant, generates traffic and conversions. You could choose to leave it as it is, or make a few modifications. You can assign 'A' or 'B' grade to such articles.
  • Update — your website is most likely to have content that is neither too good but not too bad. It's time to update such content. Looking up competitors' content on similar topics, targeting new keywords or assigning new titles could help bring such content to life.
  • Eliminate — businesses are ever-changing. Chances are that some pieces simply don't align with your goals anymore. Do not hesitate to remove such content.
A great way to get the most out of your efforts is to create a content map. It can help you make sure that you deliver the right information to the right people, and at the right times.

Additionally, it can help you to relate an article to a specific stage of the customer journey. For the best results, you can also use advanced tools for content marketing.

For more information, visit www.shanebarker.com.

*Image courtesy of Pexels.