Website Content Audit: Why Do You Need it and How to Do it

“I constantly update and upgrade my content, but I still get no leads”. “I write a lot on my website or blog, but I still can’t rank.” If any of these two sound like you, it’s time for a website content audit.

What Is a Website Content Audit?

As the name implies, a website content audit is an inventory of the content on your website. The final “product” is typically a spreadsheet of all your URLs.

You can conduct a:

• Full inventory of your content: this means that you will list every little thing on your website, from main pages to downloadable files.
• Partial inventory of your content: you can choose a certain subset of your content and perform an audit on that. For instance, the main pages of your website or the content you’ve added in the last three months. However, every section of the website should be audited, even if not in its entirety.
• Sample of content: go in-depth and analyze a single example of content from your website.

This sounds like a lot of work, especially if your website is quite large. Don’t worry, though, there are plenty of website content audit tools that can help you – no, you don’t have to index all the pages by hand. But more on that below.

Why Do You Need a Website Content Audit?

So, if the website content audit process is that much of a trouble, why bother conducting it? There are countless reasons, but let’s focus on the most important of them.

A website content audit can be done for multiple purposes, but the two most common are:

• SEO – find out how you can improve your ranking
• Content strategy – see if your voice and content match what your audience wants to see

An audit is more than a simple inventory; after all, why would you want to know how many pages your website has (other than sheer curiosity, of course). A website content audit can help you understand what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to content marketing and SEO.

Better yet, it can help you plan your content strategy for the future. This is why I recommend all our clients to perform a content audit at least once a year.

Your Website Content Audit Checklist

Once again, there’s no need to panic – the term might sound as if the IRS should be involved, but the whole website content audit process can actually go very smooth.

Here’s where to begin:

1. Get a Website Content Audit Tool

As I said above, there’s no need to spend weeks cataloguing every page by hand. Website content audit software like Screaming Frog can do all that for you.

Even better, if you have a medium-size website, you can use Screaming Frog for free – the free version is good for up to 500 pages. If your website is bigger or if you want to get really serious about content marketing and SEO, you can always scale up to the premium version.

This website content audit tool is very user-friendly: you just need to download it, paste your URL and press start. The crawling will begin immediately and it shouldn’t take too long.

When Screaming Frog is done, export your results into a spreadsheet.

You might need to do a bit of cleanup and some annotations, especially if you have a very large website. I recommend writing who wrote the content, the target audience you created it for and any other things you may deem relevant – it will help you a lot in getting value from your website content audit.

2. Create a Detailed Customer Profile

Now you know what you’ve got, let’s see whom should it match. When you create your buyer persona, list the following characteristics:

• Age
• Sex
• Occupation
• Marital status
• Income
• Hobbies
• Business/personal pain points

A detailed buyer persona should also have a name or a photo – this will help you relate to your persona better.

Next on the agenda, think about what kind of content they would prefer. Are blog posts the solution, or should you go more in-depth and create white papers and webinars?

Creating the buyer persona should also tell you what keywords your target audience responds to. For instance, are they the type of people who search for “how to outsource your content writing” or simply “outsource content writing”?

The same goes for the tone of voice: do they respond to promotional copywriting or do they prefer informative copy?

Get Started on the Real Website Content Audit

So far, you’ve got an inventory, but the website content audit is just beginning. Thanks to your content audit tool, you have a list of pages and you know what your buyer persona wants. Now let’s take see if the two match i.e. if your buyer persona can find what they are looking for on your website.

1. Your Content Should Deliver on its promises

Take a look at your page title and meta descriptions, then read the entire copy. Did you or your copywriting agency stay on track and write about the topic in the title or did you digress and created a page that’s either too promotional or too superficial?

Pay extra attention to your landing pages. Make sure that they clearly state the benefits of your product or service and that you have the right CTAs in place.

2. Your Content Should Be Accurate and Evergreen

Check all the links – are they still working? If you quoted certain stats, do you need to update them? Do you still have former employees listed as current ones on your website? Did you forget to update your physical address?

These simple mistakes can cost you real business. It’s understandable that it slips your mind to make the necessary updates – especially if you have a complex website. This is just one of the reasons why you need a website content audit.

Updating the blog posts that the content audit revealed as too short or outdated can literally bring you back in the spotlight. Adding more copy to them and more relevant links can improve your ranking significantly. And keeping your copy evergreen is bound to attract new leads.

3. Your Content Should Support Your Business Goals

I’ve said it over and over again: it’s not enough to hire SEO writers and tell them you need 6 blog posts per month. Aside from SEO-friendly, your content should also be user-friendly.

Whenever we onboard a new client for our copywriting services, we first make sure we understand their pain points. And then we come up with a plan to help the client “alleviate” them and reach their business goals.

For instance, it’s not enough to have 200+ blog posts on your website. Not even if you rank for certain keywords. Let’s say you own a pet shop. If you rank for “funny cat videos”, this won’t bring in too much business. People clicking on your links are looking for cat videos, not actual cats or cat food. Instead, if you rank for “pet store Seattle”, then you will have some business coming your way.

But don’t label your content as “OK” just because it ranks for relevant keywords. Once again, you need to dig deeper: do you have CTAs? Are they in the tone of voice your buyer persona responds to? Yes, you can (and should!) add CTAs to blog posts, too, not just to landing pages. If there aren’t any, how can the reader know that you’re selling cat food, not just boasting about your knowledge on it?

4. Find out Who Reads Your Content

Google Analytics can also be a great website content audit tool. Look into the demographics section and find out who reads your content. Do the readers’ characteristics align with those of your buyer persona?

Next: what are your most read pages? How much time do readers spend on each page? Do they bounce after the entry page? (I wrote an article on bounce rates and why they matter – read it and learn how to keep users engaged.)

Most importantly, you need to find out what keywords bring readers to your pages. Since Google Analytics doesn’t offer that information, you can always use Search Engine Console. This is another Google product that offers valuable information for any website content audit: what are the keywords you rank for, what is your average position in SERPs and how many organic clicks did you get in a given timeframe.

I check the Search Engine Console just as often as Google Analytics. Pairing up the information and cross-checking between the two can give you a lot of valuable data.

If you want to get serious about your SEO, there are other tools that you can use:

• SEMrush – research keywords and gain insight into your competitors’ strategy
• Ahrefs – the same
• CanIRank – this service has a steeper learning curve, but it’s extremely valuable, as it literally teaches you how to rank on the keywords you want i.e. add more text, more links or photos to a blog post. You can set priorities and even get professional advice from their consultants.
• BuzzSumo – a great resource to find hot topics and see what are the top ranking sites for certain keywords.

5. Go Back to SEO Basics

When you go through your website content audit checklist, it’s easy to dig deep into advanced optimization and forget about the basics. And this is where most websites lose organic traffic.

During your next website content audit, make sure to check if all the page titles, headings, image tags, metadata and keywords are in place. Check the way they are used, too: even if all your pages have all the necessary elements, they may not be used appropriately.

6. Find out What’s Missing

Last, but not least, your website content audit should reveal opportunities to create new content and fill in the gaps where needed. It’s very easy to focus on what you already have and needs fixing and forget about what needs to be added.

Here are some commonly overlooked items:

• Shipping information
• Complete contact info (phone number, address, map and so on)
• Product descriptions
• Terms and conditions

As far as the opportunities go, you should be able to identify them much easier now that you have a complete overview of your website’s content. Think about new blog post topics or other types of content: webinars, podcasts, white papers and so on.

For instance, let’s say you used one of the marketing / website content audit tools listed above and you discovered you don’t rank for a few important keywords. The approach that worked best for my clients was writing dedicated landing pages for as many of their products and services as possible and supporting them with blog posts and inbound linking.

Do you need help with planning and implementing a content strategy? We’ve got your back! There’s no need to despair of your website content audit revealed that you still have a lot of gaps to fill. We’ve definitely seen worse and fixed it.