Make a Content Inventory
A content inventory may already exist or you may need to create one in a spreadsheet. You need to capture the title, type of content, subheadings and URL. You should have a unique identifier for each piece of content so you can track what you’ve updated and what you haven’t. This includes your product directory pages. It is wise to identify who owns each piece of content, such as press releases, product descriptions or video. For example, you should know which content comes from an RSS feedRSS feeds gather posts relevant to a user into one single feed. Adding an RSS file to your website could help you reach more people online. or is an article from a periodical. If you already have a content management system, this information may already be in the CMS.
Rate the Content
Each piece of content needs to be reviewed. You may give each piece a score of 1 to 5 in general, though the better option is to give it a one to five rating on each of these metrics: brand voice, customer needs, SEO and conversionA conversion is a desirable result on a website that leads to an action such as completing an order, filling out a form, or simply clicking on a link. rates. There are a number of tools for calculating the conversion rateA conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that take a desired action on your site. of visitors to your website to paying customers. However, it takes a human to determine if content is hopelessly out of date or too far from the company’s current mission.
Decide How to Fix the Low Ranking Content
Start with content that is very thin or has grammatical errors: this includes content with keyword densityKeyword density is a measure of how often a keyword or phrase is repeated on a given web page. so high that the language seems unnatural. You will need to decide if you want to write new content to rank well for specific SEO terms or revise existing content. Revising older content may be cheaper and faster than writing new content on a topic. Yet new content will also certainly benefit search engine optimisation and will be of higher quality.
Even well written older content likely needs to be reformatted. Clear headlines, sub-headlines and short paragraphs need to be incorporated. Titles and subtitles should be rewritten to include key phrases or conversational SEO. Don’t neglect meta descriptions for each website, which are normally missing from older pages, as this is what search engines present to users.
Update calls to action so that they remain relevant. The last thing you want to do is have someone land on a page and be ready to sign up, only to see that it offers a reward that has expired. You should also update evergreen content, even if this is only in terms of keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. density, titles, subtitles and tags to fit what search engines prefer today.
Fix Your Links
A content audit is a great time to scan your site for dead linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. and either remove or update them. Don’t forget to check for working links that go somewhere you may not want customers to go, and update links to take customers looking for a service or looking at information on your old product models to pages on your latest and greatest product. You should also reduce the number of links on older pages, such as those that had hyperlinks on all of the key phrases. Remove links from sites that have a low trust factor with search engines.
Crawl All Indexable URLs
While we’ve focused on the quality of the content, a content audit in 2017 must include a full website crawl of all URLs you’ve made indexable to search engines. Verify that all pages can be crawled. Have each page crawled while rendering JavaScriptJavascript is one of the web’s key programming languages but coding it incorrectly can cost you in technical SEO terms. In order to avoid common mistakes, and understand how Java operates, here’s a quick guide to coding Java the right way. to ensure that they all work from a technical perspective. There are a host of tools that will rank pages on page speed and mobile-friendliness, and those that do not should be referred to your website administrator for improvement.
Create New Content Where Necessary
A content audit may find holes in your existing content, such as product models that lack their own product pages or insufficient information on troubleshooting error messages. You may want to consolidate content, too, as there might be overlapping topics competing with each other.
Conclusion
To conduct a successful content audit, first make an inventory of your entire content, and then rate it compared to your current brand strategy, quality and SEO. Decide how you will fix the lower ranking content. Rewriting versus writing new content will depend on your schedule, budget and skillset. Fix the links to your content and cross-links. Once you’ve done this, have your site crawled to identify technical issues to be fixed. Then create new content where appropriate, though this is a lower priority than improving existing content.
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