Do you know how well each piece of content and page on your website is performing? While it may take time, dedication, patience, and a bite out of your budget to conduct a thorough B2B content audit that provides deep, relevant information, it is essential to help you make decisions about your future content marketing campaigns and strategy.
You may be surprised to learn that the old saying “less is more” can actually be true about your marketing content, especially if old or irrelevant content is dragging your site, brand, messaging, or traffic down. If you are a new upstart or are just beginning to develop your online presence, a content audit may not reveal much, but if you’ve had an internet presence for more than a year, it is crucial.
Why Does My Site Need A Content Audit?
Depending on your specific business and industry, there may be a few different audiences you are trying to reach. By auditing your online content you can find out who you are reaching and when you are connecting with those audiences, and find out who you aren’t reaching. You can pinpoint the content that is successful, results in the most interaction, and what is essentially dead weight.
No matter what line of business your brand is in, to build an efficient and successful content marketing strategy, you need to know whether your efforts are paying off, and if not, how to fix the issues
Before You Conduct a Content Audit
Before beginning your audit, in order to determine whether your content is connecting with potential clients as well as long-term consumers, make sure you have a keen awareness of the audience you are trying to reach. You can’t use an audit to refine your strategy if you aren’t even sure what message you are trying to send to which readers!
What Makes A Successful Piece Of Content?
A successful piece of content will effectively achieve all of the page’s intended objectives. The great thing about content auditing is that you can find out exactly which metrics are failing, and which pieces of content have everything in place. Some may need just a bit of love and tweaking, and some may need a complete overhaul – or to be removed completely. Some may be duplicates of other information, dated, or not relevant anymore.
What A Content Audit Should Look For
While the words and images on your site, its organization, and it’s value as an information-provider are all crucial, they aren’t the only essential elements to your marketing success. In order to boost your site’s conversion rates, bring new traffic in, and eliminate “one-page” visitors, you also need to pay attention to and focus on other aspects of effective marketing content production such as:
- Page names
- Meta-page titles
- Meta-keywords
- Meta-descriptions
- URLs
- On-page copy
- Videos
- Internal and external links
- Comments
- Navigation details
- Social buttons and engagement
Competition Check
A good marketing content audit doesn’t just focus on your own brand’s pages. No matter what industry you market in, there are plenty of competitors attempting to do the same and have the same target audiences. So, don’t let you’re your content marketing audit overlook competitive analysis. Who is your competition, and who has the potential to steal your market share? What are they doing that you’re doing, and what are they doing better than you? Finding this information out will give you a reference point to help you make better decisions about your online content related to the findings of your own marketing audit.
