When should a content audit be implemented?

To make sure that your website performs well online there are a number of different aspects to consider. One of these is a content audit. But what is this and when should a content audit be implemented?

What is a content audit?

A content audit is an exhaustive study and assessment of all the information on a website or within a particular section of a website. The goal of a content audit is to understand the current state of the website’s content and identify areas that require improvement or additional work. Large websites with a lot of content can benefit most from content audits because this can help to find and rank areas for optimization. However, smaller companies can find that a content audit will bring a range of benefits too. 

So, when should a content audit be implemented?

A content audit is something that should be undertaken on at least an annual basis, if not more frequently, depending on the size of your website and the amount of content you regularly produce. There are also a number of circumstances when a content audit can be particularly effective. These include:

• If information needs updating- One of the most important reasons to undertake a content audit is to ensure that the content on your website is accurate, up-to-date, and relevant. This is especially crucial if your website aims to provide customers or clients with quality information, and is regularly used as a source of industry information. You can identify any information that needs to be updated or removed by doing a content audit, and the schedule updates or changes to reflect the most up to date information.
• If you want to improve the user experience- improving the user experience on your website is important for a number of reasons, including boosting customer or client satisfaction. This can even lead to an increase in sales or sign ups. Implementing a content audit can be useful for improving the user experience on your website. This is because a content audit can highlight areas where your website’s navigation is unclear, or where the information is challenging to find. You can raise the possibility that visitors will stay on your website longer and visit again in the future by improving the user experience.
• If you want to improve the SEO – Additionally, content audits can be used to pinpoint places where the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website could be strengthened and improved. You can identify duplicate material, broken links, and other problems that could harm the search engine rankings of your website by doing a content audit. This can even result in an increase of your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and an increase in traffic and conversions, once the problems are fixed or resolved.

What are the benefits?

There are a number of other benefits to implementing a content audit and these include:

• Identifying gaps in your website’s content- implementing a good content audit can help to find wsak content, or content that needs to be improved, as well as gaps in your content completely. By identifying these gaps, you can then develop new relevant content which will make use of more keywords, increasing your websites page ranking and driving more traffic to your website. This also helps to provide a more comprehensive and useful experience for your visitors.
• Improving the quality of your website’s content- high quality content is essential for any website and a good content audit can help to identify areas where your website’s content does not meet standards. This may be content that  is poorly written, poorly formatted, or now out of date. By improving the quality of your website’s content, you can make it more engaging and more likely to meet the needs and requirements of your website users.

Here at Pumpkin Web Design we are Preston’s leading web design and web marketing professionals. We provide a wide range of high quality, effective SEO solutions and content marketing services across Preston and the North West, from Southport to Wigan, as well as Manchester. For more information or advice, why not get in touch today?