Sarah Clarke, Negosentro | When an entrepreneur starts a website, he often wondered what he should include and what not. Developing and designing a website is one thing. The other thing is what information are you conveying to your target audience. This is where content plays the most important role. Honestly, content is the only thing that plays any role at all and it is of course important.

We heard a lot about auditing content. The term “Audit” itself conveys that we need to adjust or revamp the entire structure of content. When we as a marketer thinks that we need to revamp the entire content of the website, content auditing is the approach we opt for.

According to the contentmarketinginstitute.com, “Over 55% of digital marketers do not have an idea how their content can help them in achieving better conversion rate.”

This figure shows how anxious the situation is among the marketers. This is the reason for writing this post.

What are you going to learn?

Well, a lot. You will learn all the rudimentary facets of content auditing. Not just that, I will provide you with a list of Tools that will help you in successfully achieving this Herculean task.

So, let’s get you started,

What Is Content Auditing & Why Is It Important?

If you follow the common sound, content auditing is a list compilation of all your website content. This list will help you in bringing order to the future content of your website. By saying bringing order, I also mean right direction of the content to get higher conversion rate.

In content auditing, three components are very important,

• A list of those contents which are quite popular in recent time.
• A list of those contents which got the views with less engagement.
• To-do list for revamping those contents to get better results.

These three components define the relevancy of content auditing in a nutshell.

Now moving on to the importance of a content audit. What makes it so crucial for a marketer to conduct an audit of its website content? Let us understand this with the following argument.

A content audit is one of the most important weaponry in the war of marketing. We define it above as an inventory, but it is much more than that. It is a method that gives your marketing strategies a direction, a pathway to the final destination of growth. All you need to do is keep a hawk eye on the developments, follow as per the marketing trends. Period. It is not an ending process. In fact, it is a never-ending process.

With the right approach to content marketing, you will get aware of the awesome, ok-type, and poor content on your website. You must ask these questions while conducting a content audit of your website.

• What strategies helped you in increasing your pageviews?
• Which content helped your website to attain a higher percentage of engagement in the form of comments and questions?
• Which content performed poor in terms of engagement?
• Which of your content is no longer fresh? Can you update that content or not?

In a nutshell, a content audit will help you in understanding the relevance of fresh content. Plus, your website traffic and engagement will increase dramatically.

Let’s move on to the next milestone,

Major Steps To Follow When Auditing Content

Before we jump in the exhaustive process of content auditing, you must understand few tenets. First thing is, content auditing is a formidable task that requires focus. So, you must focus on what you want to achieve with the content of your website. Second thing is, you must understand these two terms,

• Content Inventory, &
• Content Audit (I know you have a proper understanding of these two terms but it is worth mentioning!!!).

There are five steps to a successful content audit to cater favourable results. These steps are,

1. What’s your major goal?
2. Listing the necessary content to be included.
3. Creating an inventory.
4. Adding the content in the inventory.
5. Auditing the inventory content accordingly.

Seems like a child’s play aye? Guess what? It is not!!!

Let’s understand these steps more deeply,

• What’s Your Major Goal?

Your conscious knows what is wrong with your content. You just need to identify the right set of actions to set things right. What is the most important thing for getting the favourable results? It is the determination of your goals and aims. You must know what exactly you want to achieve with this content audit.

There are some secondary goals which might catch up with your eye,

• Identifying and increasing SEO effectiveness.
• Standardise your content quality.
• Is your content delivering the consistent message to your audience?
• Searching for a balanced plan for your editorial tasks.
• Removing repetitive and ordinary (generic) content.

• Make A List Of Necessary Content To Be Included

Revamping the content of a website means removing old content and adding a new one. But this process must be restricted to only poor yielding contents. Be sure what direction you want to give to your audience and then choose content related to that.

After that, make an inventory and add all these contents you want to add up in your website. This is an easy way when watching someone else doing it, but a damn difficult one when it comes to doing it yourself.

• Now, Create The Inventory

An inventory is not just a list of items. It contains all the vital information about your content. There are certain details which you must add in your content inventory to make sure that everything is in proper order and information.

• An index number
• A URL
• The Headline
• A summary of the content
• Type of audience intended for
• What message do you want to convey to your audience?
• How your audience navigate your website to find this content?
• How’s your content looks like?
• Details of media files used in this content.
• Which sharing tools did you use to enable your audience to share your content?

Including these points in your content inventory will help you understand the needs of your audience. With the help of this inventory, you can make sure that every content on your website is targeted for who and how.

• Include The Content In The Inventory

Adding content to the inventory is a two-way process. You will not only add the existing content of your website but also the content you want to remove or add. Another aspect of this step is, you can work it out in two ways, first, you can add the content manually in a spreadsheet or if you have a bigger website, you can make use of tools to insert the content in an inventory. Either way, you will have an exhaustive inventory that will highlight all the tenets your website content.

• Audit The Inventory Content

This is the most difficult task of them all. After you add content to the inventory, you need to revamp the contents in the way you planned. Sticking to the plan is the key here. While making such changes, make sure to leave areas of opportunities for the future. Mention the future plans. This will be helpful for any future venture of content auditing.

• Tools That Can Be Helpful

You may be good in writing and have the tools available. But wait, don’t forget first to do a plagiarism check just to make sure you’re good all the way. Then, have a look at these tools before you go for content auditing of your website:

• Screaming Frog
• SEOPTIMER
• SE Ranking
• Marketing Grader
• Mysiteauditor
• Seo Site Checkup

Final Words

So, these are the necessary tips you must be aware of while thinking of conducting a content audit. Website redesigning, content rewriting, website optimization can be considered under website audit. This website audit has another part which is the content auditing.

I do hope that you like the post. For any inputs, feel free to drop a comment. I love to get constructive ideas. Adios fellas!!!!

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Author Bio:

Sarah Clarke works as a writer for Media Fortress, an SEO Agency offering cost effective search engine optimisation services in Melbourne. She is a web addict and spends too much time in front of the computer. When she actually manages to get away for more than 10 minutes, she is usually reading books, traveling or shooting photos. For more blogs you can follow her on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.