You have spent a lot of time creating content over the years, and now you hardly have any idea what's being hidden on page number seven in your archive. Guess what? That's probably something really good! While we are constantly striving to search for new trends, news and all the different angles, we have a tendency to forget that we were actually really sharp with content - already a few years ago. Save time, money and gain more traffic by doing a proper content audit.

What is a content audit?

A content audit is a process of systematically reviewing all the content you have on your site. This process allows you to look closely at your optimization efforts to see how well you are meeting your business objectives. When done correctly, you will be able to find any gaps in your content so that you can adjust your process to better serve your intended audience. This will allow you to mature your content and digital strategy so that your company can more effectively and efficiently provide the material that audiences need. The major purpose of a content audit is to update, optimize, develop and refine the content that already exists. Usually there are several nice side effects, like a lot of new ideas. In addition, it is a really nice ego boost, because you will discover that "hey, what I wrote back in 2019 was even better than I thought".

Why should you do a content audit?

There are many reasons to optimize your business blog. When HubSpot optimized its blog archive, they doubled the number of leads generated through blog posts per month and increased the monthly organic impressions in search engines by 106 percent. Here we are going to list the main reasons why content audit should be done.

1. You get more visitors from search engines

By simply updating and optimizing your existing content, you can get a lot of new and relevant traffic from search engines. And we all know that relevant traffic = potential customers. You have probably seen in your statistics that many of your old texts do not get that much traffic. But that does not necessarily mean that those texts are bad! It's just that no one knows they actually exist.The safest way to get organic traffic to your content is:

• Search engine optimized texts
• Dissemination in social media
• Links inside of emails
• Links from other sites

A content analysis actually helps you with all four. By optimizing your older texts for words that many in your target group are searching for, you will have a greater chance of increasing your traffic. You will also get to know what content you can spread on your own channels, and what other websites might want to link back to.

2. Updated and relevant content

"My old articles are no longer that relevant so I don't really want to spend time on them, it is better to just do new", is a common objection.

There is an emoji for this 💵

Of course, you should always produce new content continuously, but isn't it better to have a blog where all your content is relevant, instead of considering the texts as one-time material? It is usually enough to update some old figures with the latest statistics, boost the text with current information or angle the article so that it works regardless of the date. Once you will start to do this, you will learn to try to keep your texts timeless and save the news angle for press releases or posts on social media.

3. Clean out the old

A content audit helps you discover small details that are of great importance. Most often, blog archives are full of relevant texts where only the time indication can be completely off. In addition, if it is a text that draws a decent amount of traffic to the site, it is even more important to take a deeper look. This means that many out there want to read about this particular topic, but what you are currently giving them is completely irrelevant. Rewrite, stay relevant and start gaining visitors' credibility.

4. Guide your visitors

Our online behavior consists of us clicking on something new that seems interesting through links we think are valuable. This is how inbound marketing works, and a good text helps the reader by guiding them to the next thing. For example, you who are reading this may be interested in a few important steps on how to create good content. Relevant links and call to actions lead a potential customer further in the purchase journey. Once you have done your content analysis, don't just update the content so that it gets better. Also update your links, call to actions and optimize your content for conversions.

5. Recycle your best items

When you have finished your content analysis, you will have a good idea of ​​what content you have today, what needs to be improved and what topics might need more or new content. Take the time to get the most out of every article, movie or podcast you have in your archive by thinking about how you can reuse it in different ways. For example, a blog post can be multiple videos for social media and a podcast episode can become multiple articles. Learn more about how to convert old content by adding new formats.

6. Refresh with new images

When you do your content analysis, you will surely discover that certain images or style of design that was popular in 2015 are no longer in or hot. Replacing old images so that they match your new brand also makes the post feel current and interesting - whether you come in from Google or through a link on your LinkedIn feed.

This is how a content audit works

A content audit consists of two parts, where the first is an analysis of the content and the second one is an implementation of the measures you will need to take.

Part 1: Analysis

When it comes to content analysis, you look at selected KPIs such as traffic figures to see how each page is currently performing. Then you do a qualitative review of each text and check things like which keyword content should be optimized for things like:

• Search intent
• Relevance
• SEO
• Call to actions
• Internal linking
• Author

Part 2 - Implementation

Once you have done your content analysis, gather all the recommended actions, here at Advedro we use Google Sheets. With the help of that data, the next step will be to start the update and browse the list. Start immediately by recycling and working on your new ideas. You will save time, and your target audience gets a lot of new and valuable content which they will find highly relevant.

Once you have completed a content audit, you can be sure that you have an optimal basis for growth for organic traffic to your website! After that, just keep your focus on the horizon.