Conducting a content audit: step by step

Content audit: Why?

But why do we go to all this trouble in the first place? Why is it so important to know exactly what the current status of a website is?

The content audit helps us to find out which existing content already contributes to the company's strategic goals. After all, keeping all content - including unnecessary ballast - and starting from scratch simply because no content strategy has been pursued beforehand only leads to avoidable damage in the end.

Content analysis is therefore an important tool for improving a website on a data-based basis and aligning it with corporate and marketing objectives, regardless of whether you:

• plan a relaunch
• Pursue a content strategy for the first time
• the company's objectives have changed
• a regular check of your content is due

Prevent keyword cannibalisation

We want to prevent keyword cannibalisation at all costs. Keyword cannibalisation is when two or more pages on the same website have been optimised for the same keyword.

In this case, the Google algorithm cannot assess which of these pages offers the more relevant content for this topic. The result? None of the pages get a good ranking. So if we produce new content without knowing the existing content, we cannot identify whether pages on this topic already exist.

A case study on the optimisation of a large real estate website from the USA shows just how much influence this can actually have. In order to combat keyword cannibalisation on their client's website, an American SEO agency deactivated no less than 15 million URLs. The result? The website's traffic increased by 110%!

Of course, this is a particularly spectacular case that cannot simply be transferred to other projects to this extent. Nevertheless, it clearly shows how important a content audit is in order to know all the content on a website and prevent keyword cannibalisation.

Benefit from well-performing content

A content audit also provides important insights into which pages may already have a good to very good Google ranking. After all, even without strategic planning, it is not impossible that one page or another will rank quite well for a certain keyword - after all, even a blind hen finds the proverbial grain.

These can be pages that are already in the top 5 or at least top 10 - positions that we definitely don't want to give up. But it can also be content that is perhaps just barely scratching the first page of Google search results and can therefore provide initial help to achieve a push into the top positions with a little optimisation work.

So if you decide to take a strategic approach to content production in the future and plan a relaunch, it is not advisable to simply start from scratch and rigorously delete everything that has been produced so far. No, it is essential that you first check which existing pages you can build on. A content audit is also invaluable for identifying this content.

Conduct a content audit

So if we are to produce user-centred (SEO) content for a client that contributes to the company's strategic goals, we will always first carry out a content audit to determine the status quo.

Quantitative analysis

The first step is simply to collect data. Before we can evaluate the content according to certain criteria, we naturally have to identify it first. However, there is one important point to start with:

Step 1: Understanding corporate goals

Only those who know and understand the company's goals can also assess which content already contributes to them. And this applies not only to us at Moccu, but also to our customers themselves. You wouldn't believe how often a company is unable to define its own goals precisely. "Hm ... well ... just make sales," is then mumbled with a shrug after a while. This is a legitimate goal, and most commercially operating companies aim to maximise their profits. For a corporate and website strategy, however, this is still a bit low.

Rather, it is about which short, medium and long-term goals should serve to achieve this overriding maxim. What forms the core of the brand? Which target group should be addressed? Are there ecological or prestige goals in addition to the economic goals, for example?

If not already in place, our customers must first define and understand their business objectives and communicate them to us. We can then derive corresponding KPIs for the website, which we can later track with our performance tracking - and which help us to identify the content that contributes to these goals in the upcoming content audit.

Step 2: Crawling

Now it's finally time for the actual content audit. In order to identify all existing pages, we start a so-called crawl. You may have heard this term in the context of search engine optimisation. The Google bot crawls through the web day after day and in this way creates an inventory of the entire accessible World Wide Web.

And that's exactly what we do on the website for which we carry out a content audit - albeit within a framework that is fortunately somewhat more manageable than the Google bot. For this purpose, the SEO tool with the illustrious name Screaming Frog SEO Spider has proved its worth for us, but there are also other providers, such as Ryte or SearchVIU.

So we start the tool, enter the URL of the website to be analysed - and the crawler sets off, crawls through all the pages belonging to this domain and spits out the corresponding data at the end.

Step 3: Integrate data from the Google Search Console

To prevent us from overlooking content that cannot be crawled at the moment for various reasons, we now also add all URLs from the Google Search Console. We also pull important data from there, such as clicks and impressions (= how often the page was displayed in Google search results). Screaming Frog offers the option of accessing the Google Search Console via an API interface.

Data from Google Analytics - traffic, conversions or other elements that have already been tracked - can also be included in the list of our content audit at this point using an API interface.

Depending on the time or purpose of the content audit, SEO aspects such as page speed, internal links, backlinks or metadata can also be optionally taken into account at this point. This is particularly important if, as discussed above, the audit carried out is more of a classic website audit that is intended for on-page optimisation.

Step 4: Topic clusters and content format

In the final step of the quantitative analysis, we now prepare the following qualitative evaluation. To do this, we categorise all the content found into suitable topic clusters, which can also be helpful later when creating the semantic information architecture. We also identify and define the content formats found. For example, is it a guide, an inspirational article or a product category?

In this step, our SEOs work closely with our UX designers.

Qualitative analysis

All pages have been found, supplemented with corresponding data and finally clustered according to topic and format - now it's time to evaluate the results according to qualitative criteria.

Step 5: Define criteria and create filters

Now we define various criteria and create corresponding filters in our audit table so that we can later use a corresponding evaluation matrix to select which content we want to keep, which we can optimise - or which content simply has no strategic added value at all.

These can be various criteria: Do the pages generate particularly high traffic? Do they lead to many conversions? What is the product fit, i.e. the possibility of product placement? Does the content fit the target group at all? Does it promote the brand experience?

These exemplary factors alone show that we at Moccu take a holistic approach to SEO, UX and UI - and this starts with the content audit. From an SEO perspective, for example, we also look at headline hierarchies, structured data and image alt tags. But the UX and UI perspective must not be neglected either.

Step 6: Consider the UX and UI perspective

We don't just look at a content audit from an SEO perspective. In the next step, our UX and UI designers therefore also look at design and usability aspects (as an example for some page types). This means that we go down to the "template level", so to speak, and evaluate which layout modules are already available or where there is still a need. Are there also CI-compliant images that can be reused?

Our performance approach always takes SEO, UX and UI into account - so it is important to look at and evaluate these criteria when analysing content. This is also important here: What can continue to be used, what needs to be redeveloped?

Step 7: Evaluate results and make decisions

The final step involves analysing the results of the content and making appropriate decisions depending on the company's objectives and website KPIs. It is important not to fall into the trap of over-engineering, i.e. not trying to solve a problem with excessive complexity. Of course, this danger exists when we are sitting in front of a huge Excel spreadsheet full of data and filters.

That's why, despite all the figures, we ultimately attach great importance to using common sense - and sometimes simply listening to your gut feeling.

The next steps are then initiated on the basis of the analysis results and the decisions made regarding the existing content. Specifically, we first answer the following questions:

• Which content do we take on?
• Which content should be optimised, merged or rewritten?
• Which content do we part with because it is not relevant?
• Where do we have relevant thematic gaps that have not yet been addressed?

On this basis, we then design a semantic information architecture taking SEO and UX into account, define technical and design requirements - and tackle the SEO topic research for the upcoming content production.

If you commission us to support you with the strategic direction of your website and to oversee content production, we will also carry out the content audit for you. Would you like to carry out the audit yourself? Then the following checklist will help you not to lose track:

Define and understand corporate goals
Perform website crawl
Retrieve further data: Google Search Console, Analytics etc.
Form topic clusters, define content formats
Define evaluation criteria
Consider the UX and UI perspective
Evaluate results