With all the changes Google has been making to their search algorithms and your audience’s content preferences constantly changing, it is important to make sure your on-page content meets their standards. As Matt Cutts reminded us recently, you need to give your pages “a fresh look” to keep your content from going stale.

Let me offer a few simple tips that can help you perform thorough content audits for your website.

Create a Content Inventory

You can’t perform a complete audit without knowing exactly how much content you need to go through. Check your website’s content pages, blog posts, and downloadable content, and take note of them in an Excel sheet. You should include information about each piece of content in the sheet, such as publication date, URL, document type, and target audience. Take note of any outdated content that needs to be revised.

Content audit meme

Target Keyword Rankings

Finding out which of your pages rank high for your chosen keywords can give you ideas which pieces of content you need continue creating or and which ones you need to improve on. While secure search is making it more difficult for SEOs to gather important keyword data, you can use your reseller dashboard’s live keyword ranking features to see which pages are performing well on SERPs.

Look at the Right Metrics

Looking at your traffic and rankings on your SEO dashboard can give you a good idea how well your content is doing in Google’s eyes, but you need to consider how well it engages your audience, too. Look at other analytics data such as pageviews, bounce rate, exit percentage, and conversion rates to find out which pages have content that reels your audience in and turns leads into sales.

Think like a User

Metrics and analytics data can show which of your content isn’t performing as well as it should, but they can’t exactly tell you why they don’t work. Dig a little deeper and think like a user. Search engines have been adapting to mimic user behavior, and a real person can usually identify what’s wrong with a problematic content page with more accuracy. Some of the things you should look out for include:

  • Weak titles and calls-to-action
  • General user experience problems such as broken links, fonts or colors that make content hard to read, confusing navigation, and so on
  • Overused stock photography

Keeping your content fresh and up-to-date is the best way to keep your website ranking throughout different algorithm updates. Sign-up as a partner to gain access to your own next gen reseller dashboard and allow our team of experts to audit your website today.

Similar Posts