Today’s Ask An SEO question comes from Nick, who asks:
“Which period is the most useful for a content audit?” My traffic changes based on Google algorithm updates and there is also some seasonality. Should I use a year of performance data to influence my strategy or would it be better to use smaller blocks of data? »
There’s no right or wrong answer for when to do a content audit because every site is unique, but there are signals that it’s time to do a content review.
And an annual performance audit doesn’t hurt either.
One thing to be careful about is switching things up just because you have a temporary ding, a C-suite executive is freaking out over seasonality, or there’s fluctuation during an update. search engine day.
Often when search engines like Google update, they will restore, and good content and pages will come back.
Don’t rely on updates as a sign that it’s time to audit your content exclusively.
Plateaued Traffic
When traffic levels off, but you’ve been adding content consistently for a while, it’s a good idea to step back and look at the content you’re posting.
If you’re not getting new traffic, do you already have a page that’s getting the same kind of traffic from SEO?
If so, change the subject and find new things that can appeal to your audience while still being relevant to your core products, services, and offerings.
You don’t want to cannibalize the page(s) that work. But don’t just look at SEO traffic and keep writing about the same topic – look at your user base and your audience.
Have people on social media stopped sharing and clicking on your pages?
When this happens, you’re probably posting topics that aren’t interesting to your user base, or you’ve exaggerated on those topics, and they’re fed up with the same thing.
Consider other types of content that meet the needs of the same user base.
For example, if your target audience is single dads with younger daughters and you sell books, consider other “single dad issues.” It could be hair styling, planning birthday parties, shopping for clothes, introducing your daughter to your new partner, etc.
Each of these topics will have corresponding books that can sell your content and provide solutions to your audience’s needs. And topics allow you to work with influencers in your niche and create cross-promotional marketing campaigns with complementary businesses.
This, in turn, builds exposure and can lead to natural backlinks.
This is a big win and can help boost your traffic again for relevant audiences while powering other channels and helping your business grow across the board.
As an SEO professional or copywriter, you become the hero and can earn a seat at the marketing planning table.
Pages And Categories That Are Slipping
If you notice any pages or categories on your site slipping, now is a good time to audit them.
But don’t just start pulling, pruning, and rewriting. First, take a look:
Around Six Months Out From Seasonal Traffic
When you’re about six months into your busy season, check to see if you’re currently showing up for your most important terms.
If not, do the same exercise as above and start looking for ways you can improve your copy.
I start about eight months in advance, but that’s because I like to do more testing than necessary – six months is enough time that you can freeze content and code three or four months before the start of your busy season.
Pro Tip: Don’t separate organic traffic and test pages.
It goes wrong in many ways. Instead, create a plan, test copy, and phrasing for conversions through PPC, then roll out the best experience over time to see how it indexes and ranks.
Annual Evaluations
It’s always a good idea to do an annual review.
You probably know what your best performing copy is, but maybe your site category is not exposed. This is easy to find in most analysis packages.
Sort by SEO traffic, then view by category folder (collections if you’re in Shopify), and you’ll see how categories work.
From there, you can modify the site structure, create internal links, and find missing areas.
You can also more easily detect whether copy and H-tags work on categories and find categories that have been skipped.
Another big discovery in this exercise is when messages that were working well dropped, but others took their place. You can see this with a temporal comparison, then redo the pages that fell if needed.
When you discover that traffic is stable because one position has taken over an acquisition on another, you now have the opportunity to double your traffic.
Work to recover the pages that have fallen and maintain the current page. Fixing older pages can sometimes be more efficient than creating new ones, and it’s easier to save you time.
There’s no one size fits all when to do a content SEO audit, but these are four good times to do one.
Featured image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
What are the 3 pillars of content management?
What should my content pillars be? Ideally, your main content pillars should be the topics you want to be known for and that are of most concern to your audience. Start by parking the topics that are not on both lists. If you find four or five overlapping categories, that’s a great place to start.
What are the 4 effective content pillars?
Four Pillars of Effective Content Marketing
- Understand the profile of who you want to consume your content. …
- Have a publishing plan. …
- Make your content meaningful, useful and interesting. …
- Keep building your brand.
What are the 4 pillars of content?
The answer lies in four pillars of content creation that will help you create high-quality content that ranks well in search engines: originality, relevance, engagement, and relevancy.
What are the main content pillars?
Three key types of content pillars. There are three main types of pillar pages: “Guide”, “What is it”, and “How to”. We’ll look at examples of each type and see how they work.
What are the 4 steps of content strategy?
The content marketing process has four stages: strategy, content creation, distribution, and conversion.
What are the content pillars?
A content pillar is a substantial and informative piece of content on a specific topic or theme that can be broken down into multiple sections, elements, and derivative materials. Examples of content pillars include e-books, reports, and long web pages.
What are the 3 content pillars?
When developing a content marketing strategy that will produce positive business results, keep the three pillars in mind: value, relevance, and consistency. Take the time to understand the issues that concern your customers and prospects.
What are the types of content pillars?
There are many types of content pillars, the most common being “How to”, “What is”, “Guide”, and “Resource”. In order to get the most out of your SEO pillar strategy, your pillar page should align with the type of content your audience appreciates.
What are the 3 content pillars?
When developing a content marketing strategy that will produce positive business results, keep the three pillars in mind: value, relevance, and consistency. Take the time to understand the issues that concern your customers and prospects.
How do you conduct an SEO content audit?
How to Run a Content Audit
- Think about your goals. First, think about what you want to accomplish. …
- Gather your content. What content will you be auditing? …
- Categorize your content. After you receive your audit, categorize it on the spreadsheet. …
- Analyze your data. …
- Create action items. …
- Optional: Choose a content audit tool.
Which SEO tool is used for the SEO audit? Overview: SEOmator is one of the most powerful SEO technical audit tools available on the market today. While most digital marketers use up to four different marketing tools to audit their SEO performance, SEOmator promises to provide technical, on-page and off-page SEO auditing in one platform.
How long should a website audit take?
Depending on the size of your site, a proper audit can take 2-6 weeks. Due diligence is required when making major changes to a website, and an SEO specialist should conduct a thorough investigation to make accurate and impactful recommendations.
How much should a website audit cost? Whether you’re a small or medium-sized business (SME) or an established business, you can expect to pay between $650 and $14,000 for an SEO audit. Certainly, if you are a large company with a larger website, you will have higher SEO audit costs than a startup with a small site.
How often should a website be audited?
I recommend conducting SEO audits two to four times a year. If you have a small business and a small website, doing them twice a year is enough. For large companies or large websites with lots of new content every month, try to review your site quarterly – this makes more sense.
Why a website audit is required?
A website audit is an on-page performance review before a large-scale search engine optimization (SEO) or website redesign. Auditing your website can determine whether or not it is optimized to meet your traffic goals and give you an idea of how you can improve it to meet those goals.
How often should you do a content audit?
Content Consideration â Audit every 3-6 months Auditing this content every three to six months gives you time to react and adapt to changes in user behavior or needs. If you audit every three months, predictive analytics can consolidate shallow pools of data and allow you to make more informed decisions.
How often should you audit your business?
Audits can be done monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or once a year. It is important to understand the criteria that should be considered before setting an internal audit frequency because not all processes should be considered on the same timeline.
How often should you do an SEO audit?
I recommend conducting SEO audits two to four times a year. If you have a small business and a small website, doing them twice a year is enough.
How many hours does it take to audit SEO?
These SEO audits can take me between 40 and 60 hours depending on the size of the website. These audits are divided into three distinct parts and presented with Google Slides. Technical: crawl errors, indexing, hosting, etc. Content: keyword research, competitor analysis, content maps, metadata, etc.
What is an SEO audit checklist?
An SEO audit is where you find opportunities to improve a site’s search performance. This involves finding technical, page, content, and link issues to fix or improve. Everyone’s SEO audit process differs, as there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
How long does a technical audit take?
A decent technical SEO audit should take 15-20 hours in most cases. Of course, this largely depends on the size and complexity of the website.
What is a full website audit?
Website audit is a comprehensive analysis of all factors that affect website visibility in search engines. This standard method gives a complete overview of any website, overall traffic and individual pages. The audit of the website is carried out for marketing purposes only.
What is included in a website audit?
An SEO audit measures how well your website is optimized for search, this can include analysis of keywords, link profiles, traffic behavior, goal conversions, metadata and optimization pictures and videos. Many technical aspects will also have to be audited.
Why do you need a website audit?
A website audit will help you optimize your website for SERPs and users. Every marketing manager wants to generate leads and increase conversions. A website audit helps you identify and close gaps in your website, which results in a great user experience and therefore increased conversion rates.
How often should I audit my website?
To ensure the sustainability of your online store, it is strongly recommended to audit your site regularly (on a weekly or monthly basis). This guarantees you to constantly follow the evolution of your online sales. So you can optimize your customer acquisition strategies and sales journey.
How often should you audit your business? Audits can be done monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or once a year. It is important to understand the criteria that should be considered before setting an internal audit frequency because not all processes should be considered on the same timeline.
How often should you do a content audit?
Content Consideration â Audit every 3-6 months Auditing this content every three to six months gives you time to react and adapt to changes in user behavior or needs. If you audit every three months, predictive analytics can consolidate shallow pools of data and allow you to make more informed decisions.
How often should you conduct a social media audit?
Social media audits should also be done quarterly, so you can easily track data for any new businesses.
Why should you do a content audit?
Content audits are an extremely valuable part of any content strategy and can help you evaluate your content marketing strategies, giving you the chance to organize everything you’ve recorded and clarify your plans for additional content.