When was the last time you audited the content that resides on your company website?
If you’re like most Alexandria and Arlington businesses, the answer lies somewhere along the lines of “rarely to never.”
A content audit is one of the most important things you can do to help optimize and improve your website—from both a conversion and SEO perspective.
Thin-content pages and websites that are rife with grammar and spelling mistakes do nothing to help instill trust in both the eyes of your customers and the various Google algorithms that are responsible for how much organic traffic you receive.
Read on to learn more about how a content audit can benefit your business and why this is the first thing you should do come Q1 2021.
What is a Content Audit?
A content audit takes a good long look at the information that resides on your website and then determines if it’s meeting your marketing and business goals.
For example, maybe you want to use your website as an informational resource so prospective and current customers can get more information about your products or services (and cut down on customer support phone calls). Does the content that’s currently on your site accomplish that goal?
Or perhaps you’re trying to sell various products—do the internal product pages provide a good user experience that’s chock-full of information and persuasive reasons that someone should make a purchase?
In addition to looking at your goals, your website analytics can also play an essential part in helping you audit your content. Maybe you wrote a blog post a year ago that drove a lot of traffic, but over the past few months, it’s slowed to a trickle. This phenomenon is often referred to as “content decay” and can be fixed with an audit.
What is Content Decay?
Google loves to see fresh and relevant content added to a website. Over time, your pages will become stale in the eyes of the various algorithms that power Google. This leads to lowered organic rankings and decreased traffic.
To revive these once-popular pages, perform a content audit, and look to see if you can add anything new that would increase the value of the page for the reader. You don’t have to rewrite the blog post or page completely—just add a few hundred extra words and make updates where necessary.
Content decay also happens on internal pages. Company and employee information can change, and you should keep these pages updated. Have you changed any internal policies due to COVID? If so, it’s important to list these changes on your site to keep people informed.
Benefits of a Content Audit
The act of auditing and editing your content can take a while—especially so if you have more than a handful of pages and blog posts to go through. However, you stand to benefit from increased traffic and sales in the long run. There are several other benefits, such as:
Improving Sales—Do you have internal product pages that don’t seem to generate a lot of sales? Look at the content that’s on the page. Is it informative? Does it provide valuable information? If not, try adding what’s missing—by doing so, it can help persuade the website visitor to make a purchase.
Improving SEO—Google ranks certain webpages higher than others in the organic search results because they feel that they offer a much better user experience. Internal web pages with thin-to-no content provide for a poor user experience.
You can get ideas on optimizing your pages by looking at local and national competitors’ websites. Check out the information they offer and try to include something similar. After you’ve updated your pages, chances are Google will reward you with extra traffic and improved organic rankings.
Plugging the Content Gaps—A content gap is best described as information that a user seeks but cannot locate. For example, let’s say that your website sells blue widgets but lacks comprehensive information about them.
Google can tell that people are visiting your website but ultimately backing out and going to another site to retrieve the info they’re looking for.
By performing a competitive analysis, you can quickly determine where your content gaps are and then begin the process of filling them. Once done, it can significantly help lower your bounce rate and subsequently improve sales.
Content and Marketing Help in Alexandria and Arlington
While it may seem like a lot of work, a content audit can help improve the value of your website—and that can translate into increased sales, improved user trust, and better organic SEO rankings.
If you need help with your content or marketing, give the professionals at AlphaGraphics Alexandria and Arlington Va. a call at (703) 549-2432 or
contact us via our website.
We’ve helped countless Alexandria and Arlington businesses and organizations over the years design and create the perfect window graphic. We’re experts in both signage and marketing and can provide invaluable advice to help your business achieve its marketing goals.