How to Perform a Content Audit in 2021

It can be difficult to put together a good strategy to market your
business. Figuring out how to reach your marketing goals can be a
challenge, and it’s often a matter of the content you create. Keep in
mind that you’ll have to carefully calculate how you’re going to
approach your marketing.

If you fail to formulate the right plan for how you’re going to create
content for your business, you may end up causing more damage than
otherwise. You can save a lot of money by reworking existing content
that may already be on your site. If you want to determine the quality
of your existing content, you may wish to conduct a content audit to
figure out what you should be putting out there.

What Are Content Audits?

Content audits go through all of the content on your website by
analyzing it and putting it into groups. By conducting a content audit,
you’ll be able to find out what’s wrong with your site as well as what’s
working out with it. You will also be able to determine what changes
need to be undertaken so that you can establish a content plan for the
future.

What Are Website Quality Audits?

Website quality audits are crucial for businesses that wish to improve
the efficiency of their sites. A search engine will examine the quality
level of a site when it determines what will appear higher in a search
results page. The quality score of a site is much more important than a
wide range of factors when it comes to the Google algorithm.

This will affect how frequently your site is indexed or crawled by the
search engine, which will in turn affect your rankings.

You need to optimize your SEO so that you can enhance your rankings and
have Google assign you a higher organic quality score. By increasing
this score, you will be able to get a better ranking because your site
will be prioritized by Google’s algorithm. Google has a wide range of
metrics and tools that they use to figure out how your site is
performing.

If you wish to perform quicker and easier audits on your site, you
should use the simple and effective Ranktracker Web Audit Tool.

Determining the Quality of Your Website

There are a few things that you can do to enhance how your site’s
quality score is ranked by Google, so let’s go over them.

The first step is to ensure that your site is coded and structured
properly according to the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

For example, Google prioritizes sites that have quality content that
matches the search intent of the people looking for it. The content also
needs to have depth. Your site should also get mentioned on a wide range
of sites since that’s an excellent gauge of its popularity.

This essentially shows you the lens through which search engines like
Google see your content. Knowing the metrics that the Google algorithm
uses to determine how highly your site ranks can give you a crucial
advantage when it comes to making your website look like it’s of higher
quality in the eyes of the search engine.

Putting Together the Content Audit File

Before you get started, you’ll need to establish the base file that
you’re going to use for your content audit. Start by creating a sheet
and then use a template or add in the following headings:

Notes
Sections
Next step
Final URL
Pillar
URL
Title
Cluster
Meta
Last modified date
Top keyword
Word count
Ranking
Volume
Average top
Bounce rate
Sessions
Impressions
Sales
Goal conversion rate
Conversion rate in dollars
Links
Lost traffic
Percentage change
SERP CTR

Create a document with these headers and then copy and paste the info
that you got out of your quality audit into it.

Topic Modeling

In this part of our guide, we’re going to explore how topic clusters
systems work, also known as the hub and spoke model. Knowing how a site
is modeled will allow you to create a quality site that will look good
to search engines. Content organization is the building block of topic
modeling.

There are many different forms of topic modeling, but the one we’re
going to look at is the hub and spoke model, also known as topic
clustering. There is one page that forms the backbone of this model, and
these pages are known as pillars. This is essentially a hub for the
remainder of the posts that are linked to it, which are known as
clusters.

Every cluster will be linked to a pillar, and this is a good way to
improve your SEO. Organizing your content will allow you to rank more
competitively. While pillar posts allow you to demonstrate your
knowledge about a particular topic, they will also allow you to link to
many other internal pages.

By linking all of these pages together internally, you’ll be able to
ensure that various pages on your site are easy to travel between. The
pillar pages on your site will essentially act as highways through which
your visitors can access the various clusters. These clusters will
expand on more intricate and detailed topics.

By clustering your topics, you’ll be able to enhance the UX on your site
and it will also make it so that your visitors travel the path that you
want them to. Search algorithms are designed to understand these complex
interactions, so you're able to improve the quality of your site, which
will also improve your search results.

The main advantage of keeping your site organized is that you’re able to
strategize when it comes to your content creation. This will allow you
to focus on the topics that are the building blocks of your business. In
turn, this means that you’re able to target your campaigns more
effectively. It will also be easier to determine which resources need to
be used when everything is organized.

Topic Cluster Model

Here’s a short overview about what you need to know about the topic
cluster model so that you can get better search engine results.

Pillar Pages

These pages are the foundational aspect of the hub and spoke model and
they are essentially in-depth pages that extensively go into the topics
that your business is related to. You should focus on keywords that are
related to the products and services that your business offers in these
pages.

Pillar pages should mainly include topics that your target audience
would be interested in, and they should relate directly to the industry
that you’re in. This will allow you to improve your business by driving
further traffic to it. These pages should contain everything that your
visitors would want to know.

Cluster Pages

The cluster pages act as the spokes on the hubs that are formed by the
pillar pages on your site. While pillar pages broach topics in a broader
sense, cluster pages go into further detail about the things that are
discussed on the pillar pages so that they can support them and create
internal links.

Cluster pages will allow you to ensure that more people visit your site
because they will draw in visitors who are searching for more detailed
topics. For example, if you have info on your pillar page that needs to
be supported, you can create a cluster page for it.

These clusters essentially allow you to further flesh out the topics
that you’re addressing in your pillar articles.

Hub and Spoke Page Idea Development

Keep in mind that these are just the basics of the hub and spoke model
for developing websites. You’ll also need some content ideas so that you
can fill these pages up with things that your audience will find
relevant.

Finding the right content ideas is crucial because it will allow you to
find content that will allow you to emphasize the product or service
that your company is selling. Unfortunately, it can often be very
challenging to figure out which content ideas will work best for you.
Since these ideas will be a central part of your strategy, they need to
be solid.

There are a few questions that you should ask yourself when coming up
with ideas to ensure that you get the best possible results out of them.

Will this Lead Back to My Business’s Product, Industry, or Service?

We’ve already mentioned that the content that you output needs to be
fully in line with what you intend to do with your business. This is a
big part of ensuring that the content you put out is applicable to the
industry that you’re in.

When you create content about topics that are irrelevant to your
industry, then you’re simply wasting your time as well as your
resources. If you’re going to use these resources to create content, why
not use them to create relevant content?

Make sure that you can always ensure that there’s a link between your
topics and the products or services that you’re offering. This means
that you’ll always draw in the right audience and that you’ll stay
relevant. By bringing in the right audience, you’ll also ensure that you
have the best quality traffic.

Creating the best possible content will allow you to generate more
leads, but it will also allow you to convert more of those leads into
sales.

Is This Something that can be Discussed?

Whether or not you can discuss a topic at length will determine whether
or not it will be suitable for content marketing on your site.
Researching your topics on Google will only go so far because there’s no
guarantee that the topics you find will be worth putting up on your
site.

For example, if you want to create content about medical topics, you’ll
need to ensure that the info you’re putting out there is valid. Simply
making a couple of citations isn’t enough, you’ll need to be sure that
what you’re saying is true. This is an oft-overlooked part of the
content creation process, so ensure that you know what your subjects
are.

In 2018, there was an update to search algorithms that essentially
reworked content marketing strategies. After this change, content
marketers had to start branching out to a wider variety of topics. While
this helped boost business, it also reduced the quality of sites because
they were less directly targeted at their audiences.

After Google noticed that sites were essentially putting deceitful info
out there, they further refined their algorithms to punish this kind of
behavior. If you’re putting out info that is patently untrue or simply
outside of your wheelhouse, your search rankings will drop. You need to
ensure that your content has the necessary amount of depth and that it’s
also popular.

To make sure that your content has a relevant amount of depth, you’ll
need to use the pillar and cluster model. Your popularity will depend on
how engaging your content is as well as the number of shares that it
has.

Don’t create content about topics that you’re not an expert in. Make
sure that you keep writing about the topics that your business knows
best if you want to be sure that your audience will see you as genuine
and authentic.

Pillar and Cluster Page Examples

Let’s say that we’re performing a content audit for a digital agency
(perhaps using Ranktracker’s audit software). We’ll start by taking a
look at the topics that this hypothetical agency would want to publish
relating to their core services. For an agency of this type, the core
services would be design, development, PPC, SEO, and social media.

Using these topics, you can then come up with pillar articles for each
of them, giving readers a broad overview of these areas. For example, a
pillar about technical SEO would likely discuss things like robot.txt,
canonical tags, and technical SEO in general. These topics are directly
related to services within the industry.

A Look at URL Actions

URL actions are essentially instructions that mention what needs to be
included in a particular web page. This is related to web quality
audits, though the actions and their classifications will be a little
different. Here’s what you need to know:

Leave As-is

This URL action is usually assigned to the more recent pages on your
site. As the name suggests, you are going to leave these pages the way
they are. While the page may not yet be getting you exceptional results,
it might take a bit of time for it to start drawing people in. The worst
thing you could do would be to delete a recent page.

Also, if you have an older page that is still drawing in more than 100
visitors per year, you can assume that the page is up to date and that
it should be left the way it is.

While pruning pages that are underperforming is usually a good idea,
this tag ensures that you won’t end up deleting pages that may not be
getting results but still have potential. You should only delete pages
that are actively a burden on the site.

301

Let’s say you have a page that isn’t currently generating any traffic
and that isn’t linked to any of your pillars. These pages will need to
be redirected because they’re dragging your site down and negatively
impacting your search results.

Most content auditors would 404 a page like this, but using a 301
redirect will allow you to retain a page that has current links and
redirects. This is a less heavy-handed way of deleting or renaming
pages.

This will ensure that you lead your visitors to pages that have the
right info without losing traffic like you would with a 404.

Refresh

When you have a page that’s losing keyword rankings and traffic, you’ll
want to refresh the content, especially if it has potential to rank
higher. All you’ll have to do is update the meta title and description,
media, internal links, headings, and potentially even the title.

If you’re working with a pillar page and you have excellent content
depth, then you may just need to refresh the URL. This means that you
won’t lose the spirit of your site, but it will ensure that the changes
are significant enough to return to your previous traffic and engagement
levels.

You may wish to change up the title tags, add in more keywords, or even
change the title so that it baits more clicks. This will allow you to
get more traffic to the page without having to rework it entirely.

Rewrite

If you have the same issues as with a page that needs refreshing but the
content lacks depth, then you may end up needing to rewrite the page
entirely. This will ensure that your content remains relevant. For
example, if your page is about the best way to rank in 2019, that simply
won’t fly in 2021.

You’ll need to update the content on that page so that it draws in and
retains visitors, so you’ll need a content creator to update the
information on that page. Keep a close eye on industry patterns so that
you don’t end up having to rewrite the article yet again later on.

Rewriting content ensures that your content is always of the highest
quality and it makes your site look good to visitors and the search
engine that you’re trying to rank on.

Merge

If you have a few pages that cover the same thing, then it’s a good idea
to merge them so they’re not splitting your traffic.

This will make it a lot easier for your visitors to access the content
they need without having to visit multiple pages. This will improve
visitor retention.

So how do you merge pages? The simplest way is through a 301 redirect.
This will allow you to merge the content into one pillar page that
contains everything that your visitors need to know about a particular
topic, improving content depth.

Target With Links

If you have content that doesn’t have any of the issues we mentioned
above but it’s still not ranking, then you may wish to target it with
links. This will ensure that you improve the page’s ranking through a
link building campaign that will increase the number of inbound links
that target it.

Building a Content Report

When you’ve done all of this work, you’ll need to compile it all into a
report that will be easy for your client or boss to go over.

Not everyone has the expertise in SEO that’s required to understand a
lot of these technicalities. You need to use this report to make it
legible for someone outside of your realm of expertise. Since many of
these changes will be major, you need to be transparent about why
they’re happening.

Avoid putting together complicated spreadsheets that will just result in
headaches for whoever’s reading them. Here’s how your report should be
organized:

Start with a brief overview of what the client needs to know.
Move on to what you did to find the information that you have.
Cover what info you gleaned from the processes that you implemented.
Explain the hub and spoke model and then go over pillar subjects
that are currently on the site.
Go through the results and then discuss the URL actions that you’re
currently suggesting to the client.
Summarize what you found needs changing. Explain why some pages need
to be merged and why others may need to be archived.
Give a future strategy for how your client’s content needs to be
developed if they want to succeed in their SEO approach.
Perform a follow-up call in which you can have a real-time
discussion with your client so that they can more easily ask you
questions about any concerns that may still exist.

What to Do After Your Content Audit

Keep in mind that content audits are entirely actionable, so you’ll need
to go over the results and see what you can do to make the most of what
you see. When you do this, go over the results and assign some of the
actions that we mentioned up above to the URLs that you see need help.
If you don’t take action on the insights you’ve gleaned, then those
insights are useless.

Most of the time, you’ll find yourself either spearheading content
mergers or rewrites, though there are cases in which you’ll use the
other actions, as well.

When you’ve finished auditing the content and compiled a report, send it
to the client (if you have one). Explain what’s in the audit and then
outline the steps that your client will need to take so that they can
make the most of it. Also, be sure to mention deadlines that the client
may have to abide by.

Conclusion

You don’t need to make content auditing a challenge for yourself, and
it’s even easier if you’re using Ranktracker’s Audit Software. This
software allows you to speed up an otherwise time consuming process and
ensures that your content marketing approach is as effective as
possible.

What we mentioned above should allow you to make the changes you need
without hampering your business.

Table of Contents

Intro