Content auditing can sound a tiny bit intimidating and overwhelming, but that s probably only because we usually associate the term “audit” with finance and numbers. Auditing your online content, on the other hand, is about gaining both a qualitative and quantitative view of everything your website contains.

Why should you audit content?

It may seem like a time-consuming and labor-intensive task, but assessing your online content is more than worth it.
A content marketing audit serves as the foundation of your overall strategy. It s astounding how many companies publish content without actually knowing their goals and what they need to get there. Obviously, such lack of approach would garner little to no results at all.
The beauty of a website audit is it allows you to gain a clear and specific idea about where you currently are in terms of content marketing. This way, you can:

•     Spot the gaps in keyword use, topics, and even writing style (i.e., tone and branding).

•     Observe whether there are patterns in the content you publish.

•     Analyze the gap between the content you have and the content you need.

•     Evaluate whether your content helps in achieving your business goals.

•     Determine content that should be transferred, deleted, or revised.

•     Create a solid content strategy for optimum benefits.

How should you do it?

Establish the questions you’re trying to answer.This would help focus your content marketing audit toward the goals you want to accomplish and the content issues you want to understand further.

Create an audit template.Using a template to keep track of the entire website audit process will help you stay true to your objectives. The template includes data from your inventory, the organization s goals, marketing analytics, and content marketing guidelines established by the brand.

Come up with an inventory.Be as exhaustive as you can. Gather all URLs, categorize content types down to the most specific, list keywords, and record how each piece of content has performed in the past.

Think of your audience.You’re probably targeting more than one group of audience, so you have to assess how your content resonates with different sectors in your audience. Are there particular content types that seem to work better for some groups?

Include quality, effectiveness, as well as tone and branding.This is the qualitative component of the website audit and is perhaps the time-consuming part. You have to evaluate web content based on how well it reflected the company branding, its impact on customers, and its ability to generate leads.

Assess content performance.What types of content work best for your audience? And what doesn’t? You may be surprised to find out that you re still publishing weak content when you could have channeled the effort to a more robust content strategy that drives results.

Compare your site with competitors. Although you should avoid copying other’s strategies, you can learn a lot from a single glance at your competitor’s website or blog. Take a look at what they do that you don’t, their strengths, and weaknesses, and compare these with your own website.

Compile and present your findings. Make use of the insights you gained from the content marketing audit and transform them into a marketing strategy to improve your content game.