Last week, we were auditing your website. This week, we’re auditing your content. If you haven’t performed a content audit recently, or ever, today’s the day!
You’re probably asking yourself, “why the heck should I audit my content?” Well, here are a few reasons:
- Goals — A content audit will help you figure out if your content is actually achieving its goals.
- Staleness — Content becomes outdated over time. It’s not always your fault, though.
- Wrong Info — Facts, figures, and data that were once accurate can become inaccurate over time.
- Know What’s Working — If you never audit your content, how will you know what’s working?
Mmk, let’s get to the details of performing your content audit. First, start with a spreadsheet (like this one). In addition to what’s already on that spreadsheet, below are some data points you’ll want to consider adding.
(P.S. You can get all of this info from Google Analytics.)
- Organic Traffic — In an ideal world, you should be getting a ton of organic traffic to your content. If not, you might need to reevaluate your content strategy, the type of content you’re publishing, or the content itself.
- Bounce Rate — A high bounce rate means people are visiting your website and immediately leaving. Not good. If your bounce rate is above 75%, something is probably wrong.
- Backlinks — Do we need to explain this one?
- Time on Page — This will help inform you how much people like your content. If you have a 2,000-word blog, but visitors only spend 18-seconds on that page, something is wrong.
- Unique Visitors — Returning visitors are essential, but unique visitors mean your content is reaching new people. That’s important.
- Pages Per Session — How many pages are your visitors looking at after they’ve viewed your content?
- Traffic Sources — Where your traffic comes from can help you determine your strategy. If you always send out an email that notifies people of new content, but hardly anyone views your content from that email, it might be time to restructure your emails.
- Conversions — Self-explanatory, no?
Ready for more?
