How many leads and sales are you generating from your company website every week?
Unless you’re skilled with the written word, chances are the content that resides on your website is thin, ineffective, or currently decaying. This is where a content audit can help. It will identify pages that have low-to-no content, those that completely miss the mark in terms of persuasively selling a product or service, and those that used to drive traffic—but no longer do. We’ll show you what a content audit is and what it can improve.
What is a Content Audit?
An audit takes an intelligent look at all of the content that resides on your website to determine if it meets your goals. For example, perhaps you want to use your website as an informational resource on your products and services. Does your current content accomplish that goal? Or maybe you want to sell your products on internal product pages—does the content on your blue widgets page provide your website visitors with valuable information that will allow them to make an informed buying decision? Or does it just have a picture of the blue widget and a short 4-5 word description? Your website analytics will also help you audit your site—maybe you wrote an excellent blog post in 2018 that drove a lot of traffic every day, but lately, it seems like less and less people are coming to your website to read it. This is called “content decay” and is a natural part of any website.
Content Decay
The term “content decay” refers to content that is old and aging. The Google algorithm prefers freshly written and relevant content and is intelligent enough to determine if a particular web page or blog post is getting old. Over time, Google will send less and less organic traffic to that page as other web pages appear with newer, fresher content. Content decay can also happen to your internal web pages, not just your blog posts. Maybe the information on your product or service pages is out of date, or perhaps you’ve updated your company policies and have neglected to update the website as well. To fix content decay, simply add new content to the existing blog post or web page. Remove any old or irrelevant information and then upload it to your site. In the next few days to a few weeks, Google will discover these changes and could send more traffic your way due to the updated content.
Other Benefits of a Content Audit
Auditing the content on your website can take a while—it can take even more time if you realize you have a ton of web pages and blog posts that need updating. However, the benefits far outweigh the work involved in doing so: Plug Your Content Gaps—One of the most significant benefits of an audit is that it can help plug your content gaps, that is, information that your users are looking for but unable to find. Auditing your site will allow you to find ample opportunities to improve. This has an added benefit as the more value you provide to people, the longer they will stay on your site, which can lower your bounce rate significantly. Google will take notice and reward you accordingly. A competitive analysis can help you plug your content gaps. Look at what your top competitors are doing on their website and see what information you’re lacking. You can also identify and incorporate their content strategies, and that will allow you to remain competitive. Improve Conversions—If you have internal pages that are not converting, a content audit can help figure out why. Once you’ve fixed the problems, you might notice an increase in conversions as you’ve added relevant and persuasive information that will convince people to convert. Improve Your SEO—Google considers website pages with thin-to-no content as a “poor user experience” and will not show much favor to them. By identifying which pages have thin content and then adding some more, it will improve the user experience and increase organic traffic thanks to Google now viewing your website as a good user experience.
Content Marketing and SEO Help in Raleigh
A content audit is a great way to identify poorly performing pages on your website. It may take some time, but the end result is a website that will provide a great user experience and generate new leads and sales. To learn more about how AlphaGraphics of Downtown Raleigh can help with your content graphic design and marketing needs, you may
email us,
request a quote, or call us at
(919) 832-2828.