How to perform a content audit in 10 steps

First of all, SEO, also called “natural referencing,” refers to a set of techniques that make it possible to be indexed by search engines such as Google or Bing. Indeed, if your website content is not properly indexed, you will not appear in the SERP and, consequently, few people will access your website. Traffic generated on a website through organic searches is the most important factor for the growth of your business.

An SEO audit is a tactical way to analyze the performance of your online visibility.

In this article we explain the SEO audit, its purpose, and the actions to take to carry it out.

What is an SEO content audit?

A content SEO audit is an in-depth analysis of your website and everything related to social media. The goal is to highlight performance in terms of natural search so you can be best indexed by search engines.

The aim of this audit is to provide clear, documented information based on reliable sources. Among this information, there are three types of analyses:

Technical:

This concerns On-page performance, that is, all the technical elements related to your site and that make pages more visible by making them appear among the top results in search engines.

Content:

This refers to the analysis of everything written that has a direct link to SEO. Marketing materials, blog posts, websites…

Content should be based on the company’s editorial strategy.

Your website's ecosystem:

This also refers to Off-page factors. It’s the impact your site has on social media and the set of links managed through your company’s public relations.

There are other possible elements to analyze in an SEO audit since each case is unique.

Why carry out an SEO content audit

There are no strict rules for carrying out a content audit; however, three reasons for doing one come up most often:

Organic search (SEO)

Most of the traffic on websites comes from organic search. Auditing your content is therefore very important. For natural referencing, the way your content is presented is fundamental. It will help you identify potential weaknesses and enable your website to be better indexed by search engines.

Content marketing

It’s important to evaluate your content marketing strategy regularly. Look at your page lengths, statistics (visits, pages viewed, time spent on your site…). Check reviews and other comments related to your content. All this data tells you how engaging your content is and whether it’s getting enough visibility. You can then modify it based on the findings of your audit.

Plagiarized content

They are heavily penalized by Google. It is therefore important to carry out audits to check:

The content audit should prompt you to question your writing—whether blog posts or any other marketing documents. They may be important and perfectly suited to your business, but if they are not updated or are poorly positioned, they will not contribute to your website’s ranking. Your site will not be properly indexed and its traffic will suffer. Increasing your site traffic mechanically leads to a higher conversion rate of visitors into customers.

Consider reworking your content to optimize it before creating new material.

Redacteur.com offers tailored support for your SEO content strategies. Whether for your blogs, e-commerce site or other content, Redacteur.com’s experts free you from the constraints of SEO writing.

For a turnkey package, we offer you SEO content strategy packsThey include an SEO semantic audit.

Don’t hesitate to request a quote on Redacteur.com

The 10 steps to perform a content audit

To perform a complete content audit, it is important to follow these steps:

1. Assess your website's overall loading performance

To carry out the first step of your content audit, we recommend the free tool PageSpeed Insights. This solution lets you determine the site’s loading performance on both desktop and mobile.

With a score out of 100, PageSpeed Insights shows your performance on several key indicators:

This initial diagnosis identifies the issues and the solutions to implement.

2. Dig deeper by identifying problems and opportunities

Following the PageSpeed Insights diagnosis, you can deepen your content analysis using the free tool Lighthouse.

From your page inspector, go to the "Audit" tab and click "Run audits".

The diagnosis highlights certain problems to be solved and opportunities for improvement. This may be related to:

Fixing these issues improves the site's loading speed and helps make it more pleasant for visitors.

3. Define the site's primary keywords

A website ranks for multiple keywords. Each has a different value and does not bring the same volume of visitors.

The free solution NeilPatel allows you to perform precise searches for a domain name. You can target your search to a single country and see the ranking of each of your keywords on search engines.

This part of the content audit determines the quality of your ranking for the keywords associated with your site. If some seem important to you and you find you are poorly ranked, you just need to intensify your SEO efforts to climb the SERP.

4. Find broken links and images

Google's bots regularly analyze a site's pages: crawling ensures pages are properly indexed.

Thus, a site that contains broken links and images may be penalized by Google and its SERP ranking will be lower. It is therefore important, during a content audit, to find all of these broken links and images.

Thanks to the paid solution SemRush you can access all these issues. Just go to "Site Audit" in the left menu to see the broken links and the affected pages.

Fixing these links is important to improve the user experience.

5. Check the insertion of HTML tags and Meta Descriptions

Articles on a site must comply with several SEO rules. This notably includes the following points:

There are also other rules to follow regarding the choice and density of keywords, sentence phrasing, paragraph length, and the insertion of internal and external links.

The solution YoastSEO for WordPress (available in free and paid versions) allows you to analyze each article and see the changes to make.

6. Analyze the relevance of page content

Site analysis also involves evaluating the relevance of your content. The best tool for this step remains Google Analytics .

For more information, we recommend reading our article about theanalysis of your content strategy.

7. Evaluate the quality of the backlinks score

Backlinks are the links on the web that point to your site. The quantity and quality of backlinks are essential for understanding a site's relevance.

The paid tool Woorank allows you to evaluate the "backlinks" score and also shows the names of the sites that link to yours. It is then possible, during the content audit, to assess the relevance of these backlinks. Indeed, those of poor quality, commercialized, or coming from dubious sites bring nothing.

8. Estimate the potential or actual SEA traffic

The final step of the content audit must address the issue of SEA, that is, paid search.

To do this, you should use Google Ads. This free tool (a Gmail address is required to access it) allows you to perform the following tasks:

Google Ads then indicates the advertising budget to plan for a site to be well positioned for certain keywords. This is an essential step in a marketing strategy for market penetration.

9. Study certain KPIs

To know whether your content is relevant, you need to look at certain performance indicators. Start with traffic. This gives you important information about the number of people arriving on your site. If its increase is gradual, your content is beginning to take effect. Otherwise, you need to dig deeper. Look at the number of visitors and the time spent on each content page.

The time users spend on your content pages is an interesting indicator. If the time needed to read your content is 5 minutes and you have more people leaving after 1 minute, for example, your content is not adapted to your target's needs or may be poorly written or uninteresting.

Another important metric to analyze is the bounce rate. This figure tells you the percentage of users who visited only one page on your site before leaving. If your content were high-quality with links that encourage the audience to explore further, or if it were well suited to your target, chances are they would stay longer on your site, moving from one piece of content to another via your internal links.

To increase the conversion rate of your visitors into customers, they need to stay on your website. Your goal should be to ensure they find interesting information so they navigate your site longer.

10. Analyze competitors

To carry out your audit, you can rely on what your competitors offer.

You can start by checking with tools like SEMrush, Keyword Spy or even SpyFu, the keywords your competitors are ranking for. Based on the results, you may want to change or refine your list.

Look at the competitor site pages that are well ranked for the keywords you want to use, then see what links these different pages. This will give you an idea of the content to develop for your domain.

Observe who is creating links to pages similar to yours. This will allow you to identify some influencers in your industry. Then you should contact them to consider creating a link to your page.

Redacteur.com SEO content strategy packs

Redacteur.com offers tailored support that relieves you of the responsibilities of your content strategy.

Your content is managed by professionals.

Whatever your need—implementing a content strategy or revising existing SEO content for your blog and website—Redacteur.com offers to take care of everything:

To learn more, Redacteur.com's SEO content strategy packs

What next?

Now that you have completed an audit, it's time to take action.

Optimize your content

You can record in a document all the elements you identified that should help you modify your content, then take action. Decide what needs to be implemented for each of your texts.

You can list your content under three different categories:

Tips

Watch out for links that point to URLs that no longer exist on your site. Create a redirect page so visitors know what to do.

Check the Alt tags

Replace images when necessary and update the alternative text.

Analyze your backlinks and check the URLs

Implement the changes made

Highlight the elements to change. Note the pages or articles with the highest bounce rates and those that struggle to convert.

Prepare a schedule with deadlines. Having deadlines helps you take action.

When setting your deadlines, take into account the scope of the work to be done. It will not be the same for updating a blog as for a complete website redesign.

For the latter, which requires some technical SEO knowledge, hiring a professional working at an agency or as a "freelancer" can be a good idea.

Tip

Note all the changes you make and once everything is finished, go to Google Search Console and verify your site again.

Our tip for performing a content audit

In industries where SEO is crucial, it's important to pay special attention to it. Indeed, thanks to the organic optimization of your content (website, social media, emails…), you can help your business rank well on the SERP.

However, it's a complex and time-consuming task that requires consistency.

Don't hesitate to contact a marketing professional or freelance and request a quote for the Redacteur.com SEO pack