What Is A Content Audit and Why It’s Essential for Your Business

When was the last time you took a good hard look at your business’s digital content? If it’s been a while, your marketing may have wandered off the path – scattering mixed messages and getting overgrown with outdated, irrelevant pieces.

If you have ever gone hiking, you know that it is fairly easy to get turned around on a trail that is overgrown and not well-maintained. Well, losing your way online can feel pretty similar. It can result in your potential clients and customers bouncing away from dead ends. 

That’s why performing a periodic content audit is essential. It’s your opportunity to re-establish your bearings, survey the landscape, and start clearing obstructions. You’ll be able to forge ahead with a well-marked path toward better user experiences and ROI.

Today we’ll talk about what a content audit is, why it matters to businesses like yours, and six key phases of an audit. So grab your pencil and notebook. You’ll want to take notes.

What is a Content Audit (And Why Does it Matter)?

A content audit is the process of taking a comprehensive inventory of all the content assets across your website, blog, social channels, and campaigns.

You analyze each piece to assess its effectiveness in areas like:

• Alignment with your marketing goals and brand messaging
• Quality, relevance, and ability to engage your target audiences
• Performance metrics like traffic, shares, conversions, etc.
• Support of user journeys from awareness to conversion

For small businesses with limited resources, it’s especially important to make every piece of content count. A thorough content audit provides the opportunity to identify what’s working and what needs to be updated, consolidated, or discarded. This refocusing allows you to optimize content for maximum impact rather than wasted effort.

What Does a Content Audit Include?

1. First Steps: Inventory

The audit begins by taking a full accounting of every single piece of content you have – from website pages, blog posts, and PDFs to videos, infographics, social posts, and more. Catalog everything in a spreadsheet or project management tool with columns to start capturing key data points.

Depending on how much content your business has generated, this may be the longest step to complete but it is important.

Not sure what to record in your inventory? Here is a basic example to help get you started, but be free to add columns to capture the data unique to your content.

2. Gap Analysis

With your inventory complete, perform a gap analysis to identify any holes, overlaps, or misalignments between your content offerings and current marketing initiatives or buyer journey maps. You may uncover valuable content getting buried or even campaigns that are completely missing the mark on targeted messaging and calls to action.

Here are a few examples of a gap analysis with fairly common issues faced by small businesses:

• Webpages:
  • Home page exists but is missing clear value proposition and calls-to-action.
  • About page is just a brief bio, needs more details on company history, mission, testimonials, etc.
• Blog/Content Marketing:
  • Blog exists but only has 5 posts from over a year ago.
  • Topics seem random, not aligned with target keywords.
  • Post lack calls-to-action, lead capture opportunities.
• Lead Generation:
  • No lead magnets like guides, checklists, videos to capture emails.
  • No prominent email sign-up forms or pop-ups.
• User Experience:
  • Slow page load times.
  • Hard to navigate and find information.

3. Evaluate Content Health Metrics

Next, you should evaluate the performance of your content from a quantitative perspective. This means taking a look at your metrics and data to measure the results in numbers.

You’ll want to pull key metrics from data sources like:

• Website analytics tools (pageviews, time on page, bounce rates)
• SEO reporting (rankings, keyword visibility, backlink profiles)
• Email/automation tools (open rates, clicks, unsubscribes)
• Social channels (shares, comments, paid/organic reach)
• CRM data (lead sources, conversions by content touchpoint)

With this mountain of data assembled, start forming an objective picture of what content is resonating strongly with your target audience versus what pieces may be falling flat. Look for patterns and outliers to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses.

4. Assess Messaging and Content Quality

Beyond just the numbers, you’ll also need to audit qualitative factors like brand messaging cohesion, content quality, and structural/UX elements.

Are you presenting a unified brand voice and value proposition across channels? Is content written with a clear, logical flow serving your targeted audience and addressing their pain points?

Review components like:

• Accuracy, timeliness, and comprehensiveness of information
• Spelling, grammar, and skimmability of formatting
• Inclusion of persuasive storytelling and compelling calls to action
• Visual appeal and mobile-friendliness

Carefully examining these qualitative factors ensures your content builds credibility and helps people take the actions you want.

5. Map Content to the Customer Journey

One of an audit’s most powerful functions is mapping your full body of content to the full customer journey: from initial discovery and brand awareness phases through to purchase decisions, onboarding, and retention tactics.

Visualize a typical customer’s path and plot where each piece of existing content intersects that journey. Are you leading prospects along logically with the right messaging and offers? Or are there gaps like a missing middle-funnel case study or nurturing email series?

Analyzing your content coverage can reveal opportunities for repurposing assets into new formats for different buying stages. Or it may reveal you need to completely create new content to fill in missing trail markers and keep customers moving steadily forward.

6. Report Findings

At last, it’s time to compile all your audit findings into a digestible findings report. This serves as your new trailhead to begin optimizing and advancing your digital content presence.

Outline key takeaways like:

• Content rating scores for quality, alignment, effectiveness
• Specific underperforming pieces to prioritize updating or pruning
• Gaps where new content is recommended (types, target channels)
• Consolidation or repurposing suggestions for redundant assets
• Content governance and maintenance workflow recommendations

What Happens After A Content Audit?

With your report’s roadmap in hand, you’re ready to implement changes and tackle initiatives like:

• Rewriting and redesigning existing content with poor metrics
• Launching new cornerstone pieces like pillar pages or lead magnets
• Deleting outdated, irrelevant, or redundant content
• Revamping content structure, navigation, metadata, and UX
• Developing new, documented content processes and accountability

I know a content audit can appear daunting. Like clearing overgrowth from a long-neglected trail, conducting a content audit requires an initial burst of effort. But your journey ahead as a business becomes significantly smoother and more rewarding.

Does your company’s content need a fresh set of eyes to re-orient and forge a new path toward better customer experiences? Book a free 30-minute discovery call to discuss auditing your content and getting you on the right trail.