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By now it goes without saying that it is essential to make sure the content you’re producing is effective, engaging, and is getting you the best results possible with your audience, which is why it is so important to conduct content audits from time to time. By taking inventory of the content you already have created, you can assess what you are missing and figure out what does really well.
Some Background Information on Content Audits
In order to understand why tools are helpful, it’s important to understand how you would go about doing an audit manually first to really understand how it works. To get started, you will need a spreadsheet or some kind of electronic log of your information (which you can setup in excel, Google Docs, or another program (discussed below). I suggest including the following details:
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Page or article title.
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The full URL.
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Date originally posted.
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Date last updated (for some, this is going to be the same date as the original—but it is still important to keep track).
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The number of page views for the past 1-2 years (It is anticipated that your newer content will have less data, in theory).
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Bounce rate – This determines how many people leave your page, usually in 10 seconds or less.
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SEO keyword(s).
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SEO Meta description.
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SEO title – Is the SEO title distinct from the page title? If so, definitely keep a log of this!
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A description of what’s on the page:
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What are the topics covered?
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Who is the intended audience?
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What is the message you’re trying to communicate on the page?
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Any files associated with the page:
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Do you use any images or video content? Are there separate statistics for them?
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Who is the content owner?
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Content status – Is this content that will stay as is, be updated, deleted, rewritten, or planned?
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When does the page need to be checked again?
Of course, this list is not extensive, while at the same time you may not feel it necessary to include all of the information above. What you log will really depend on what kind of website you have. Some sites will require more and some will require less. We talked with Jason Hawkins, President of No Risk SEO, who focuses on franchise SEO and he added, “Franchise companies, for example, will need to have extra columns for different locations and potentially different managers. You want to make sure you know who is publishing and where it’s published, which can get confusing when dealing with a franchise company.”
The important thing to make clear is that conducting an audit, while important and completely necessary, also requires a lot of work. For this reason, content audit tools are a must.
6 Content Audit Tools To Try in 2015
Below are some of the top content audit tools that will work well in 2015:
The Online XML Sitemap Generator can be a powerful free tool if you want to get a list of all of the individual pages on your website and check for any broken links. Online XML Sitemap Generator works by crawling your site and creating a sitemap of every individual page (up to 50,000 URLs and 10 megabytes).
This tool is helpful because it will catch any of the pages you have on your site and give you the ability to put into a spreadsheet. It will also provide a list of any broken links on your website so that you can check and fix them.
Pretty much anyone who runs an SEO consultancy or works as an in-house SEO has probably heard of this tool. The reason this tool is so well known is because it produces a report on the SEO qualities of a particular page, and because SEO rankings are based on a page’s relevance to a specific search term (better known as a keyword), this tool evaluates a given page for the presence of a specific keyword and runs a report. Its report presents the results, either through a PDF or via email.
Additionally, SEO consultants can integrate the MySiteAuditor service into their websites, which allows them to capture email addresses of enquirers and follow up with a sales pitch to any casual visitor who tries the tool on their site. This is a paid app, but they often run specials, and it is well worth the cost of auditing for SEO purposes.
Another SEO tool is Quick Sprout, which is a good one for people who want to analyze SEO on their websites. You will receive an SEO Score based on each page, and recommendations for improving your site. Another great aspect of this tool is that you can see how your content is performing on social media. The will help you to look back on what you have shared (any what you haven’t) in order to improve your efforts. The best part about Quick Sprout and its extensions is that you can download all the information in PDF and Excel format so that you can refer to it at a later time.
Another free tool called Kapost has a content audit program that crawls through your website and pulls up all of the page links from it (Similar to Online XML Sitemap Generator, but free). The downside to the free app (vs Online XML Sitemap Generator, which is a paid tool) is that generally it takes longer to run than the others in this list, but it’s definitely still worth checking out. Again, one of my favorite aspects is that you can save your content audit so that you have a backed-up electronic copy after you run the reports.
Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider is a desktop application that installs directly to your computer. As a bonus, it is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. There is also a paid OR free version of the program. The program’s free version will only crawl 500 URLs (pages). Instead of having to compile titles and URLs into a program on your own, this program will create an Excel document for you that has many of the key SEO insights necessary for a content audit.
Similar to Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider, HTTrack Website Copier is another free desktop application. HTTrack Website Copier really simplifies the whole process of developing your site map, and it allows you to download your website to a local directory. What this means is that you will not only be able to create a copy of your site’s hierarchy, but it also functions to back-up your website like a hard-drive, which I recommend that you do on regular basis, before you start your content audit. This means that if anything goes wrong, you have a copy of the previous content to work from.
What Are Your Favorite Tools?
Once again, this list of 6 is not extensive by any means. It is a mix of my favorite free and paid apps that are rated very highly for their performance. As I described in the beginning of the article, you can do an audit manually (and it is important that you understand how it ultimately works); however, having tools like these can really help the entire process.
Are you familiar with content auditing? If, so what are your favorite tools to use? If you are new to the game, which of the tools look most appealing? We’d love to hear your thoughts and recommendations in the comments below.