What Is a Content Audit?
A content audit is an analysis (quantitative and qualitative) of all your organization’s digital content—from product pages to blog posts to white papers and videos, and sometimes even offsite content such as social media. It’s different from a content inventory, which is simply a catalog of all your content.
An audit, also known as a content scorecard, goes a step further by evaluating your content on criteria such as accuracy, findability, SEO, audience served, and whether it meets user and business goals. With these findings in place, your organization will be positioned to improve its content.
Need content audit services for your B2B website? Talk to Tendo about our exclusive Scorecard methodology.
Content Audit Best Practices
Be sure to define your goals before embarking on this project, because the criteria for your audit and the categories you’ll document depend on those goals. Do you want to generate a content gap analysis? Decide which pages to keep during a content migration? Find out whether your content is serving your business goals? These questions will determine what information you capture about each piece of content. (According to Lisa Maria Martin at A List Apart, a content audit can even help improve your site architecture!)
A completed audit typically has two deliverables: a spreadsheet containing information on each piece of content, and a summary of findings and detailed content recommendations.
Examples of Criteria
Qualitative criteria:
- Accuracy (Is the content up to date and accurate?)
- Relevance (Is the content applicable to your target audience?)
- Branding (Does the content conform to your brand voice and tone guidelines?)
Quantitative criteria:
- Exposure (page views, search traffic, backlinks)
- Engagement (time on page, shares, comments)
- Conversion (clickthroughs, sales, registrations)
How a Content Audit Supports B2B Marketing
An audit is a powerful tool for improving your B2B marketing content. It helps you see what’s working well and where you’re falling short. It uncovers gaps in your content (e.g., lots of awareness/top-of-funnel assets, but not enough at the decision/bottom-of-funnel stage), identifies old content to be repurposed, and ultimately informs your organization’s content goals.
Until you’ve examined existing content, your future creation efforts will be less effective. Afterwards, however, you’ll have a wealth of information to focus your B2B content strategy and ensure you’re creating marketing content that gets results.
Talk to Tendo
Tendo Communications has performed content audits for some of the world’s best known B2B brands. We have pioneered an exclusive Tendo Scorecard methodology to provide deep insights for our clients. If you need content audit services, tap our expertise. Contact us today.
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