Measuring the ROI of a Content Audit

Content audits provide a way for brands to see what they have on their site and how it aligns with different business functions. They also help to identify areas where content could be improved.

To get the most out of a content audit, you must first understand what you're looking for and how you want to quantify success.

1. Traffic

As the name suggests, content audits are a way to measure the ROI of your content marketing efforts. This can help you make changes to your content strategy and ensure it is aligned with your business goals. It can also allow you to take an in-depth look at how your content is performing and identify areas where it needs improvement.

To conduct a content audit, you should define your objectives for the audit. This will help you determine which metrics to track and how to divide up the work. It can also keep the process focused and productive.

Next, categorize each piece based on how it performed or what it needed to improve. This could be based on its performance, composition, or optimization.

For example, if an article is getting high-quality traffic but doesn't have a lot of links or isn't getting any search engine rankings, it's likely time to refresh it or remove it from your site altogether.

This can include updating the post with new information or rewriting parts that aren't working. It can also mean removing outdated images or links and adding new visuals to the post that help explain its content better.

After you've completed this step, it's time to review the data you've gathered and begin analyzing your results. This is when you will use your data to decide which pieces of content you want to update or repurpose and what to do with the rest.

When you've identified the content pieces you'd like to work on, you can now assign a priority to each one. This can be as simple as placing it higher on the list if it receives a lot of organic traffic or as complex as determining how to revamp your entire content library.

After deciding what to do with each piece, it's time to record your plan in the audit. Whether you add a new image, change a headline, or make other adjustments, this is the most important part of the audit and the most time-consuming.

2. Conversions

Content audits can be a great way to measure the ROI of your content marketing efforts. They help you fine-tune your strategy to create content that will attract the right audience, generate traffic and conversions, and increase revenue.

To conduct an effective audit, it is important to set goals. You should have clear objectives for the audit to ensure you are gathering the data you need to decide about your content.

First, you should start by cataloging your existing assets. This can be done manually or through a tool that makes it easy to locate and document your content.

Once you have gathered all of the URLs for your content, it's time to analyze your data. This is where you'll assess how each piece of content performed, including its SEO rankings and meta information.

For each piece of content, you should also track its engagement metrics. This includes bounce rate, time on page, and click-through rates. You can collect these metrics from Google Analytics or another website or content analytics tool.

Next, you can compare your pieces of content against each other and determine which assets are performing well and which ones need improvement. This will help you make informed decisions about keeping, updating, improving, expanding, or discarding.

You can also use a spreadsheet to gather this data and then categorize each asset into one of several different categories. These can include content under-performers, contest winners, and content assets that need to be updated or rewritten.

It's also a good idea to add columns for these categories in your spreadsheet to see how each asset performs and what opportunities exist to improve it.

Finally, it would help if you also track any changes to your content marketing strategy based on your audit results. This can include whether you have decided to create a new content strategy or tweak your current content strategy. This will allow you to understand better what type of content is working for your brand and how you can adapt to the changes that come with trends in content marketing and search engine optimization.

3. Leads

A content audit is a great way to measure the ROI of your content marketing efforts. It can help you determine which pages on your website generate the most conversions and which areas need improvement. It also helps you determine how well your content performs at each stage of the buyer's journey, which can help you focus future content creation efforts.

A good content audit should cover every type of content that your website offers. This can include anything from a blog post to a product page or an e-book. It can be a lengthy process, but it will pay off in the long run when you clearly understand your current content and what you need to do to improve.

Gathering previous material URLs should be one of your initial steps. This might be a time-consuming effort, but it will provide valuable insight into the material that has historically performed well for your firm.

Following that, you should examine your traffic metrics. This data can be used to determine how much traffic your website receives, where it originates from, and what keywords people use to locate your site. You should also look at your bounce and exit rates to see if your visitors spend enough time on your sites.

Check out your social media sharing data if you're evaluating organic traffic. This can indicate what posts are performing well on Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms.

You should also check out how your site is structured. This can be not easy, especially for big sites, but it's necessary if you want to assess your website properly.

You can use a spreadsheet to keep your audit organized and easily managed. You can create tabs to separate the different content formats, or color code the data to sort it easily. You can add instructions and checklists to make the process efficient.

4. Revenue

A content audit can be a large job. Thus, it is critical to establish clear project goals. These objectives must be explicit, measurable, and attainable. They should also be connected to your company's overarching aim.

One of the most popular reasons for doing a content audit is to calculate your content marketing efforts' return on investment (ROI). This allows you to measure how well your content converts leads, increases website traffic, and nurtures leads into customers.

However, there are many other things to consider in a content audit. These include content quality, onsite engagement, and even conversion rate optimization. The data you collect will help you make sense of your content and determine how to improve it.

It would help if you started by identifying all the content on your site. This includes blog posts, product pages, category pages, and social media posts. Once you have a list, create a spreadsheet and categorize all its content.

It's a good idea to break down the content into sections and add the page title tags to your spreadsheet. This will help you determine your site's main sections, making it easier to understand how the pieces of content fit together.

Once you have all of the pieces of content grouped in a spreadsheet, it's time to start collecting the data associated with each piece of content. This will take some time, but gathering the most accurate information is necessary.

For instance, if you're looking at your content for SEO purposes, check out each post's word count and image size. This can give you a better idea of the post's length, which helps you optimize it for search engine rankings.

Another useful metric to track is the bounce rate of each piece of content. High bounce rates can indicate that someone is clicking on a link to your website but not engaging with the content.

A high bounce rate can also mean a person has found your content through a different source, such as a Google search. This could indicate that the content could be more valuable, and it might be time to change the strategy.