If you understand the need to add, and keep adding, good quality content to your website or blog on a regular basis then you need to consider whether you need to do a content audit too.

If you don’t do at least a simple content audit from time to time then you could be losing traffic, losing business …. or even deterring your customers and prospective customers from doing business with you at all.

On the other hand, a periodic content audit can help to pull in more site traffic to your site and help generate more enquiries, more business and more sales.

First of all, what is a content audit?

Well, chances are that over the years you’ve been adding content to your website without really keeping track of it. So most likely you don’t really know what or why the content that’s now on your website is there at all.

The first step of a content audit will help you get an overview of what content is on your site. That is to compile a content inventory. As the name suggests, this is basically just a list of what is on your site.

Now, some content inventories can be really detailed and include every possible fact about every single piece of content on your website. In the real world, of course, you probably don’t have the time to do that. So even a simple inventory is better than no inventory at all.

There’s no fixed format for an inventory. You can choose what and what not to include.

I’d suggest that, as a minimum, your inventory includes the following:

… Headline/caption for each piece of content

… Type of content it is, eg. text, pic, video or review

… Brief description of content

… Date published and date last amended

… Number of views and/or shares

Questions to ask yourself when auditing your content ….

Once you have your inventory to hand you can use it to audit your content. Here are some of the areas I suggest a simple content audit should cover:

1.Is there enough content there in the first place? Do you need a concerted ‘content blast’ to bring your website up to speed?

2.Is content being posted regularly? That is, a minimum of 2/3 times a week at least for a small business or probably daily for a larger business with a busier website.

3.Is your existing content out of date? Out of date could mean anything from no longer relevant right up to plain wrong or dangerously misleading. Is there anything there that really shouldn’t be there?

Links in content can be a particular problem. They may be broken. Also consider details like addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

Aim to set up a simple K-R-D system where all content is revisited regularly and one of three courses of action taken: That is to either keep it, review it or delete it.

4.Is your content still relevant to your customers/prospective customers? Are these people still likely to be interested in reading what is on your site. Remember, relevance is everything in online marketing.

5.How often is that piece of content being read or viewed …. if it is at all?

Even a very simple content audit like this can help keep your website clean, tidy and productive. It can also help you decide what types of content/types of subject you maybe shouldn’t be publishing any more of. And, most useful of all, what types of content you should be adding more of and more often to build traffic and improve results.

For more help and advice on creating, updating or improving the content on your website feel free to get in touch with me: mark@markhempshell.com