What's the most painful thing you have to do as a marketer?
You can probably write a long list without prompting. The chances are that doing an audit, identifying content inventory performance, and proving content ROI is on that list somewhere.
As a content agency, we know that audits are the bread and butter of content and digital strategy. You can't deliver effective marketing without them. You can deliver marketing; but the likelihood is you could be burning budgets, you may not be reaching the right audiences, and you may not be getting the most from your team and resources. Or even worse, you may not even know what you don't know.
So content audits are necessary. It's just they are PAINFUL.
We know this from our own experience. Trawling through data, coordinating spreadsheets, and using subscriptions to multiple tools to try to extract insights to direct your content strategy. #painful.
So we did something about it.
We developed proprietary software called SiteSeeer™. It has become the secret sauce in our agency's success, helping us deliver global award-winning work. But most importantly, it has removed a huge amount of painful work for our team allowing us to focus on strategy, while SiteSeeer™ does the heavy lifting and sifting through the data.
Smarter audits faster, improved ROI, and unlocking value – these all sound like the things every marketer dreams of, but what does this actually mean for you and how can SiteSeeer™ help you do it?
We’re here to break through the jargon and show you exactly why you should care about content audits with ten real-life use cases that we can all relate to.
From getting insights that everyone can understand to shining a light on content gaps, and everything in between - let's jump in.
1. Actionable conversion insights
The problem
Content is generating loads of traffic, but not a lot of conversions.
Why conversion insights matter
If the traffic is flowing easily to your website but you’re not seeing an increase in conversions, it might be that your content is attracting the wrong users. The reason for this could be that the page copy doesn’t target a specific buyer persona, or doesn’t address your target audience’s needs or interests. It could also be down to the content not being persuasive enough or failing to clarify what action the user should be taking.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
With SiteSeeer™, you can find pages that are generating traffic but few last clicks or assisted conversions to identify whether or not the content is aligned with your content strategy and if its performance could be improved by adding CTAs or internal links to other pages.
What it means for you
You can fine-tune existing content so that it now works for you and your reader while also improving the click-through rates.
2. Plug those content gaps
The problem
Diagnosing content gaps is tricky and your content strategy may have gaps in it.
Why diagnosing content gaps matters
A SiteSeeer™ content audit highlights areas where your site lacks the information your audience wants. By pinpointing your site’s content gaps, you become better equipped to create new content that adds value to your site and your brand.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
SiteSeeer™ identifies the search queries people use in Google to land on your website and whether or not you're lacking content that addresses that topic, enabling you to fill those gaps in your content inventory.
What it means for you
Your website now has no content gaps making it perform better on search and answering all your visitor’s queries, keeping them on your site for longer.
3. Maximise your content's full value
The problem
You lack the resources to create new content.
Why maximising value matters
Valuable, up-to-date information contributes to site usability, search ranking and visitor loyalty. However, it’s not always necessary to create content from scratch when you have blog posts, contributed articles and other marketing collateral that can be repurposed to accomplish specific objectives.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
Using SiteSeeer™ you can easily identify content that is performing well in terms of traffic and engagement, this can be repurposed in other ways to create social media graphics, short videos, presentations, podcasts, guest blog contributions and anything else that you can dream up. Filtering your SiteSeeer™ content audit by social shares and backlinks also helps you to understand what topics your audience is more likely to share on their platforms.
What it means for you
You're able to squeeze more value from your marketing budget and your customers have the choice of viewing the content they like on their favourite platform.
4. Improved site structure and on-page SEO
The problem
Your site structure is unclear and on-page SEO optimization isn't as good as it could be.
Why site structure and on-page SEO matters
Your website structure can help or hinder the performance of your content. It can group related articles together and make it easy for readers and search engines to access and understand your content — or it can bury your content a dozen pages deep.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
SiteSeeer™ allows you to identify pages with limited or broken internal links, lack of content categorization, orphan pages, and so much more, allowing you to improve your overall website structure for both users and search engines.
What it means for you
Your website is now more user-friendly and Google-friendly. Expect more time spent on pages, improved rankings on search and better click-through rates.
5. Fast content audits
The problem
You lack the time, technical knowledge and resources to regularly keep on top of your content inventory's performance.
Why fast content audits matter
Content optimisation shouldn’t stop after just one audit; it should be an ongoing process that continues throughout the year. However, conducting a content audit can be time-consuming and is reliant on having access to a number of enterprise-level tools and APIs which are expensive.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
SiteSeeer™ schedules recurring content audits to run daily, weekly and monthly - enabling you to keep track of how changes you've made have affected performance. Our platform pulls in hundreds of different data points to give you a full picture of your website's content health, without the manual data gathering required of a standard content audit.
What it means for you
You save time and money, allowing you to focus your resources on your content.
6. Keep your best content
The problem
You’re overseeing a website redesign but unsure what needs to be kept or removed during the migration.
Why a migrating good content matters
If you’ve recently taken on the huge task of rebranding your company or redesigning your site, you can have a completely fresh start by carrying out a content audit to find out which content was and wasn’t successful on your old site.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
SiteSeeer™ gives you a snapshot of your best performing content that should be migrated to your new website. You can filter your audit by pages with the highest volume of backlinks, social shares, traffic, conversions and more - allowing you to easily identify the content that NEEDS to be moved over to the new website, and content that is past its sell-by date that can be deleted.
What it means for you
You now have a fresh start with only the best performing and most important content on your new and improved site.
7. Laser-focused backlink targets
The problem
You're consistently publishing content but it's not attracting backlinks like you'd hoped.
Why backlinks matter
Backlinks or inbound links connect one website to your web page or site. They are also known as a “vote of confidence” and are one of the most valuable factors for SEO. The higher the domain authority of the site linking to you, the better the ranking your site gets on search engines. That’s why it’s important to create content that will attract more backlinks.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
SiteSeeer™ reports backlink data for each page on your website allowing you to identify the 'Top Linked' pages and trends about what content resonates with your target audience.
What it means for you
You now have the basis for a link building strategy that, once executed, can boost your page's domain authority and improve visibility on search.
8. Publish quality content only
The problem
You have been publishing content for years but you suspect a lot of the legacy content is low quality.
Why quality content matters
A website content audit evaluates the quality of your existing content. Is it high, medium or low quality? Is it lengthy, rich content or short, light content? Google’s website crawlers are aware of content that is repetitive, short and invaluable, and can penalize your site in search rankings for inferior content.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
SiteSeeer™ uses its own proprietary page score metric to determine if content should be kept, updated, removed or redirected to another page, allowing you to quickly identify content that's assisting or hindering the overall performance of your content inventory.
What it means for you
Now that you've removed your underperforming content, you've reduced your index bloat, lowered your carbon footprint and the content that remains is of true value to you and your visitors.
9. Speed up page load times
The problem
Your website and content inventory loads slowly but you're not sure where to start with improving its performance.
Why a page load times matter
Loading times are still one of the most common issues flagged up in SEO audits and the search penalty for page speed is about to get heavier. Google rolled out a new page experience signal this year, which includes a new signal, measurement and benchmark for loading times, as part of the Core Web Vitals initiative. Pages that fail to load in 2.5 seconds or less after the update will miss out on a small ranking boost, meaning pages that take too long to load could fall down the SERPs as faster pages climb above them.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
SiteSeeer™ uses Google's Page Speeds Insights API to pull Core Web Vitals performance data for each URL into its content audit reports - making it easy to determine what pages require rank-boosting optimisations like image compression, reducing the number of external scripts and so on.
What it means for you
You know exactly what elements on each individual page need to be changed to improve load times and reduce bounce rates.
10. Stop keyword cannibalization
The problem
Your content has been published without any thought of SEO which has resulted in keyword cannibalization.
Why a page load times matter
Keyword cannibalization happens when you have too many identical or similar keywords spread throughout the content on your website. As a result, Google doesn't know what content to rank higher. So sometimes it will give a higher ranking to the web page you don't mean to prioritize. It may also lower the rank of all the pages that share these keywords.
How SiteSeeer™ solves it
SiteSeeer™ identifies the keywords each piece of content is ranking for, making it easy to determine what content can be consolidated or deleted altogether.
What it means for you
You now have a plan to create cohesive content that doesn't inhibit the performance of your other pages.
As more and more brands are realising the power of *great content marketing* now is the time to hone your strategy, unlock value and boost your ROI with a pain-free content audit from SiteSeeer™.
Get in touch with us today and take control of your content chaos for good.
