How to carry out a content audit to prep your site for 2020

We may have said this before – but we absolutely relish the prospect of a New Year. It’s a fantastic time to stop, sit down and take stock of what’s worked, what hasn’t, what you did well and where you can improve on the last 12 months. This is especially pertinent from an SEO perspective as things change so rapidly it can be hard to keep track on the fly. Dedicating a chunk of time to auditing affords you the opportunity to assess how your activity measures up against current best practise and identify gaps where you may have missed a trick or two.

Today, we’re taking that thought and running with it in the form of a content audit. The importance of content needs no introduction so it should come as no surprise to learn that time spent reviewing, sorting and designating content for improvement is an absolute lynchpin of a successful year’s digital marketing.If you haven’t audited your content before, here’s how to do it from beginning to end… Step 1: Organise The first step to auditing and having a useful, tangible output at the end of the audit process is to get organised. We suggest creating a spreadsheet which lists out each piece of content on your site. Don’t just list out your blog posts, include other content such as landing pages too. If you have a sitemap which auto updates when new content is added, such as those generated by WordPress plug ins, this part of the job can be accomplished quickly and easily. Step 2: Set goals Once you know how much content you’re dealing with, decide what your goals are. A very obvious one is to update your content so it’s better optimised. Be granular too though as things like refreshing outdated content so it’s more useful to your site visitors are also important. Step 3: Auditing, categorising and recording Now that you have a list of pages, you’ll need to begin the task of physically auditing it. Ensure you have your spreadsheet ready as the easiest way to create a useful, workable document is to record as you go along. The URL of the content will naturally form one column but next to that as you work along the spreadsheet we suggest adding page tile and meta description, word count, whether images are included, page views or hits and other details such as focus keyword and number of likes or shares. You may also want to assign a category, record date of first publish and if any updates have been made and if so, when. Step 4: Review your data and pull meaning from it With all of your auditing done and metrics recorded, now is the time to begin going through the data, reviewing your findings and pulling meaning from it. You should be able to identify which pages are you best performers, which ones perform the worst, if any are too short or lacking in content, missing a focus keyword, need updating etc. At this point to, you may be able to identify any gaps in your content or duplications. Step 5: Create an action plan By now, you’ll have a great idea of what content you have, what you need, what needs work and where further development is required. Now, refer back to your goals and your spreadsheet and create a to do list. Include all of the work you need to do on your content. A second tab on your spreadsheet is helpful for this.