Guide to Content & Social Media Audits for Your Business
Why it’s high time your business conducted a content audit
Content marketing is one of the most popular and effective business strategies. It’s a form of marketing that focuses on the creation and sharing of material online with a certain audience. The intention is usually to spark an interest in one’s product and services which may later convert to sales.
As opposed to the past where businesses would center their strategy on the amount of content that they distributed, the current SEO guidelines demand more than just a high number of SEO articles.
Now, for your business to rank higher on Google Searches, you must also consider the quality of the content that you publish online. This is where a website or social media content audit comes into play.
What is a content audit?
A content audit involves an in-depth analysis of a website’s or social media page’s existing content with the objective of assessing for relevance, accuracy and engagement. A content audit should entail checking for the following:
- Content that is performing effectively
- Content that is bringing about the most engagement
- Any content gaps that may need to be filled
- Existing content that is currently out-of-date or irrelevant
- Issues with conversion despite high impression rates
Benefits of conducting a content audit
There are several benefits that can be reaped from conducting an effective content audit.
Identify content problems
The only way you are able to address any problems with your website or social media content is by first identifying them. Conducting a content audit will play a big part in revealing these issues. These can be issues with performance, broken links, accessibility problems or other content problems that may be compromising the effectiveness of your business’ content marketing. This will give you a base to work from as you come up with actionable steps to improve your content marketing strategy.
Enable content remodeling
During a content audit, the existing content on the website or social media page will be thoroughly analyzed. This is because even though the content may be available, it may not be boosting the performance the way it should. A content audit will help highlight content that is out-of-date and is not helping with the performance of the site or page.
While your first instinct may be to outsource for new content, this may not always be necessary. With the help of an expert digital marketer, the existing articles, blog posts or other content can be repurposed in a way that it will be able to achieve the desired objective.
Highlight content gaps
A content audit is not just about looking at what is there but also at what is missing, such as useful information with great potential for the site and page that has not yet been included. This could be information that you feel could be of value to your intended audience or you may also discover an opportunity to expand your target audience by introducing new topics. This will put you in a better position to add relevant information to your site/page.
Implement a better information structure
Having content on your website and pages in itself is not enough. The content needs to be accessible to the users, which means that your audience shouldn’t have a hard time finding or accessing content. One way to do this is by reducing the number of steps that they need to go through to reach the content.
Also, you need to ensure that you are not too broad or too specific with the topics. This will help to attract just the right audience. With the help of a content audit, you will be able to structure your information in a way that is accessible, enticing and engaging to the user.
Improve your SEO
By focusing on improving your site’s usability, you will also be improving your SEO. This is because the user experience on your site will affect the number of repeat visitors and bounce rates which will, in turn, have an impact on your search ranking.
An effective content audit will assess the connection between your SEO and user experience. From this, changes can be made to ensure that both your SEO and users are catered to. This will improve the search performance of your website/page.
How often should you conduct a content audit?
There is no right answer to this question as content needs to be constantly revised and depends on the needs at hand. Nonetheless, there are certain situations that may necessitate a content audit at a particular instant. This includes:
- When the content is not meeting the required performance expectations
- When your target audience is not responding to the content in the way that you wish them to
- When out-of-date content needs to be updated
- When you wish to assess the performance of the content and reveal any issues
- When there are bad reviews and complaints
It’s important to note that user needs and behaviors are constantly changing. Hence, for you to be up-to-date and be able to adapt, it’s best that you conduct a content audit every so often. Preferably, every 3 to 6 months.
A well-conducted content audit will not only ensure that your website and pages have quality content but will also improve the experience of your audience. This is why you should consider hiring a professional so that you can come up with effective content marketing strategies.
Reach out to our team at Brown Bag Marketing today to get started on your content audit and let us help you meet your business goals.