Website content audit - quick guide

Audit should also provide information about the lack of content that is critical for a site in a particular business niche, which directly leads to a lack of requests from a particular audience.

What should a site content audit include?

In general, a comprehensive site content audit covers a large amount of information, which can take a significant amount of time.

This note is designated as a quick guide, so only the most important parts of such an audit will be covered.

1. Get a Website Content Inspection Tool

You don't have to spend days manually cataloging each subpage. There is a reliable site content audit control software that will do most of the dirty and tedious work for you, such as Screaming Frog.

The free version allows you to scan 500 subpages. If your site has more of them, you will be forced to purchase the premium version.

At first glance, the tool is simple in use. You enter your domain address and press start.

When Screaming Frog completes its work, you get valuable results that you can export to a spreadsheet and start sorting and validating the data.

Combine the strengths of Screaming Frog and Google Analytics. The result of this combination can be very interesting information, which is enough to determine whether the content on your site resonates with the right audience, etc.

2. Match Audience

Create a detailed recipient profile.List all the characteristics your client has here:

• age
• occupation
• gender
• interests
• income
• marital status
• education etc

The more detailed the client profile is, the better you can choose the content of the site that will be converted.

Now put yourself in their place and think about what you really need but to your audience:

• Blog posts that solve their problem.
• News from the world of a specific business niche.
• Workshops.
• Guides on how to do things or.
• Online solutions such as a calculator, a price list based on personal preferences, etc. .e

3. Check the titles and meta descriptions of each subpage

This is where the real site content audit begins. Thanks to Screaming Frog and Google Analytics, you now have a list of all subpages and detailed data about them, such as the number of visits in the last year.

Now think about all the subpage titles and meta descriptions.

Can a prospect quickly determine that your page contains the information he needs?

The content of your site should contain a promise that will attract users.

Also analyze the narrative of the titles, meta descriptions, and the content of the site itself.

Are they too propagandistic in tone?

Is the promise too shallow and general?

Pay special attention to pages about your services or products. Make sure their description clearly states their benefits, functions, and applications. Don't forget about the appropriate CTA (call to action) and its positioning on the site.

4 site and its links

The report from Screaming Frog includes the number of pages where server response codes are returned.

• Check all links that return 404 code and fix each one.
• If your site contains any statistics, check that they are up to date.
• Are phone numbers, physical addresses, email addresses up to date?
• After staff turnover, is there any information about the employee who was fired? Or is it long gone? Have their posts and descriptions been updated?

Such simple omissions can cost you dearly, especially if your site is very complex.

Blog posts worth mentioning here. Any audit of your site's content should reveal whether a particular blog post is:

• too short
• obsolete
• whether to add new information
• which entry should be improved to it has always been the so-called evergreen
• is it worth adding a link to this entry, for example, from a study
• are the links in the post relevant and necessary, etc.

5. Write down the business goal of each subpage and its content

It's not enough to just write something on the blog, the content should be useful and provide some value to the audience.

Remember that when working with a copywriter, there should be an agreement that posts will be optimized for SEO in order to they were convenient for both search engines and users.

For example, if your site sells tours for border, blog posts about how many residents are in a given city won't give your audience much informational value.

People looking for tours, first of all, want to know what can be seen in a particular city, what places to visit, how much the entrance to museums costs, and so on. Any such message will be properly received by the reader, leading them to make a valuable decision for your business.

6 . Find out who is actually reading your content

Again, Google Analytics is your biggest friend and specifically the "Recipients + All" section below.

• Do any of the characteristics of your real readers match with the information you wrote out earlier in your client profile?
• What is the bounce rate?
• How long does the average reader spend on the site?

A lot of important information can be gleaned from this subsection. To avoid repetition, I refer you to our Google Analytics category, where you will find dozens of texts.

Most an important part of this analysis will be knowing which keywords are driving users to your site.

You won't find this information in Google Analytics.

Visit your Google Search Console profile.

If your site has been running for a while, then in the Search Traffic -> Search Analytics section you will find an extensive database of keywords that are entered into the search engine system and target your domain.

Again, Google Analytics is your biggest friend, namely "Recipients + All" section below

The final part of the audit should show the possibility of adding new content to the site and the lack thereof.

Here are some of them:

• No Google map.
• Info no physical address.
• Missing complete contact information.
• For online stores - no terms and conditions, size charts, product descriptions, etc.

If we are talking about the possibilities of expanding the site through content, then first of all you should think about the blog and those posts that are most missing, for example, tutorials, manuals, news, updates, etc. h then your site describes questions in complex language taken from an industry dictionary.

Then you should include an extensive glossary of terms in the menu and frequently asked questions.

What does a site content audit do?

Whether you choose a comprehensive site content audit or a general and superficial one, this is the first step to understanding what your customers really need.

Creating a shared audit does not require years of experience, but it does require patience, persistence, attention to detail, and the ability to position yourself like an audience. All this is done in order to draw the right conclusions and apply the results of the audit in practice.