The Content Audit - Part 2

In the world of digital audits, the SEO audit steals all the spotlight. But successful SEO goes hand in hand with successful content - one cannot exist without the other. A content audit makes sure that the content you put out there fits the needs of your customer; making them a regular visitor or regular paying customer. In the second part of our two-part series, we show you our 4-step roadmap of our content audit.

Step 1: Defining the Goal

A content audit is a major, almost philosophical challenge. In a sense, this is where we ask ourselves the big questions of entrepreneurial life: who am I, what makes me and my offering tick, and where do I want to go? The more clearly we formulate our goals in a content audit, the more concretely we can evaluate our content. Our goals can be quantified through metrics, but we need to interpret the values qualitatively.

We start by defining our business goals. How do we want to earn money in the future? What content, topics, or search terms best describe our offering to our future target audience? How does success show up in our analysis tools? How do we recognize failure?

Since winning a customer is always a development process, we start at the top of funnel.

Goal 1: Improve our Visibility in the Search Engine

Every offer ranking on a search term in the search engine is nothing more than a place in the window display of the largest department store in the world (next to Amazon). If our offer is visible in the organic search engine results, we are doubly fortunate. On the one hand we have convinced Google's artificial intelligence that we have described our offer excellently, on the other hand Google rewards us with free visibility. Not every visitor to our offer is gained via the search engines and not every text is intended for the search engine. Let's think about an abstract Dadaist poem: it is hardly indexed on Google, nor does it correspond to keywords with a relevant search volume. But if it is read on the author's website, it could result in the author's booking for a reading tour and create an economic effect.

If we evaluate our content from an SEO point of view, the search engine should also be a valid attribution channel.

Goal 2: Increase the Interaction of our Target Group with our Offer

Using data from Google Search Console and our analytics tools (Google Analytics, Piwik, Adobe Site Catalyst, etc.), we can find out which offers are of most interest to our anonymous users. Typical metrics include page views, visitor counts, dwell time, bounce rate, the length of a user's path to our offer, or even the achievement of a conversion goal, such as visiting a particular subpage.

These metrics quantify an engagement with the topic presented and represent part of the user's customer journey.

Goal 3: Improve Conversion Rates

According to our conversion funnel, the user's behavior changes and so does his role. Before he, the anonymous visitor, becomes a paying customer, he must identify himself as a potential customer. Most often, this happens by registering via email or by entering a phone number - a form submission or data transfer. Form submissions and page visits correspond with each other. Each form submission is preceded by a page visit, each page visit by a click on a search engine result, a link in an email or an advertising banner. The higher the percentage of form submissions per visitor, the higher the conversion rate. The basic data for calculating conversion rates usually comes from various technical solutions, which are either evaluated in a consolidated form in a technical solution such as HubSpot or calculated in Excel.

After determining which areas of the funnel we want to take action on, we identify the metrics we can use to determine the status quo. These generally fall into four categories:

• SEO metrics, such as organic traffic, backlinks or keyword rankings
• Behavioral metrics, such as page views, average dwell time or bounce rates
• Engagement metrics, such as likes, shares, comments, or mentions
• Sales metrics, such as number of leads, conversions, ROI, etc.

Which specific metrics matter to us, depends on what reasoning we want to use them to support.

Step 2: The Inventory

Content audits begin with an inventory of all content available for search engine indexing. This is not because we just want to optimize visibility, but because the search engine is cataloging our content. This content is then analyzed against a variety of metrics to be transformed into one of three actions: Keep, Improve or Remove.

Which data we use for inventory is entirely up to us. In most cases, we have more data than we can handle. The above tool provides information on the following metrics:

Page Title, HTTP Status Code, Click depth, Links To Page, Links From Page, Word count, Cache date in Google, Link Value, Page Authority, InLink Rank, Page Bounce Rate (GA), Pageviews (GA), CSS Validation Errors, HTML Validation Errors, Frames, Conflicting Character Encoding, Broken Links, Nofollow External Links, Nofollow Internal Links, Nofollow links, External links, Internal Links, Image Count, Images With Empty Alt Text, Broken Images, H2-H6 Count, H1 Count, Meta Keywords Length, Meta Keywords, Multiple Meta Description Tag, Meta Description Length, Meta Description, Multiple Title Tag, Title Length, Assigned keywords, Optimization rate, Multiple rel="canonical" URLs, Canonical URL, Redirect URL, Robots Instructions, Last Modified and Page size.

This "more" information does not help us to judge which content is relevant and which is not, but it helps us to get the most out of the content we focus on.

We collect the results of our crawl in an Excel spreadsheet where we can structure the data as we see fit.

Step 3: The Analysis

Once we have exported the data, we need to interpret it for our purposes. We use quantitative data to evaluate it qualitatively. To do this, we need to relate the information to the goals we have formulated.

The biggest challenge is the third column. This is where we record what we want to do with our existing pages. Whether we keep a page or invest in it and improve the content on it is not so much a content decision as a commercial and strategic one.

Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis

Content can be described qualitatively and quantitatively. From a quantitative point of view, a content consists of various content elements that are described by text in a certain number of characters. The characters convey information to the search engine crawler, which is matched with the user's search query. One might assume that the more information we provide to the crawler, the better. However, the search engine does not want to provide the searcher with all the information, but only the correct information. Correct information is characterized by the fact that the user shows behaviors that indicate a positive evaluation, e.g. a long dwell time, a click on a link that leads him deeper into the website, etc.

The reason for this behavior lies in the quality of the content. The quality of the content can be described by the approach, the visual language, the use of keywords or the thematic focus.

However, there is another aspect to this: the search engine is merely an attribution channel for access to a website. Users can also come to us via a brand mention in a third-party publication. We could also run ads that link to our landing page. In addition, search engines have a problem with innovation: What if we want to launch a product that has never existed before, users don't know about it, and accordingly don't search for it?

In step four we delete or revise existing content

Step 4: The Revision

A revision has a cost-benefit ratio. If our content works well and remains relevant to us in terms of content, we don't need to optimize it.

If our content does not work, then we have to decide between a revision or a deletion of a page. The revision can be caused by changes in search engine algorithms, user search behavior, our business offer, or other external circumstances.

If the revision is too costly and the content is no longer justifiable in its current form, we must delete the page. However, deleting a page does not mean deleting content: if the content is significant, just not its current form, the content could be absorbed into another page as an enriching element, if necessary.

There is no standardized procedure for editing the content; it results from the deficiencies that become apparent during the analysis. Basically, the following applies: only when we have formulated ourselves and our offer in a clear-cut way can we think about how to prepare it for the various distribution channels and the different target groups. First position, then market.

The following actions are part of the revision process, but they don't always have to be done:

• Reuse of existing content in other contexts or formats.
• Revision of content with regard to statements made
• Technical restructuring of content
• Updating using new statistics, trends, or product details
• Revision of calls-to-action for conversion rate optimization
• Enrichment with videos
• Enrichment with images
• Metadata optimization
• Internal linking optimization
• SEO troubleshooting
• Technical troubleshooting
• Re-indexing via Search Console

All the actions we take need to be documented in a reporting. The reason is simple: everything is in motion, our knowledge and views, our competition, search engine algorithms, the needs of our target audience, etc. What seems to make sense to us today, might not make sense tomorrow. Since there is a logic behind each of our decisions, we should keep them for later reflection.

Summary

How you rank in the search engine is only part of your (future) success: the quality of your content needs to turn a potential customer into a paying one. We hope that after reading our two-part mini-series you have a deep understanding on how important it can be to separate the useful content from the clutter on your website, making sure your website ranks higher and the content is more fitting to what your user is looking for.