2. What is a Content Audit?
A content audit is the
process of taking inventory
and evaluating the quality
and effectiveness of the
content your company has
created for a specific
purpose within a certain set
of content mediums. Often,
content audits are restricted
to online mediums, but
content audits are useful
across all mediums.

3. Online Content Audit
Quantitative audit: We take stock of your entire
site’s content inventory and analyze the
hierarchical structure of your content to ensure
that you have enough content about your
topics.
Qualitative audit: We analyze your content’s
relevance and the quality of the content that is
provided, while identifying your key content as
well as highlighting any issues such as
duplicate, out-dated or stale content.
Gap analysis: We benchmark your content
against your top competitors for target search
terms and provide a graded report
demonstrating areas for improvement.

4. What is the Purpose of a
Content Audit?
Content
inventories
and audits are
essential
weapons in the
content
strategist’s
eternal fight
against
purposeless
and neglected
content.

5. Content Audit Goals:
1. Catalog the content your company
has and where it lives, so it can
easily be repurposed, resurrected,
and updated for future needs.
2. Evaluate the quality and
effectiveness of each piece of
content, so you can determine
which content is important and
should be kept, and what content
can be removed and archived. This
identifies which content tactics
have been the most effective and
which have not been so we can
incorporate this into planning out
your content marketing strategy.
3. Track the repurposing process to
ensure that content is being
adequately repurposed and to
make it easier to update this
content over time.

6. What is a Content Matrix?
A content matrix is a tool that prioritizes content production on the content
production activities that matter.
Additionally, it helps keep the marketing strategy properly targeted on the
few factors that matter to a given buyer at a given stage in their buyer journey,
thus maximizing the return on your company’s content creation investment.

7. Trends & Patterns Revealed
What comes out of an audit is evidence of what works and what
doesn’t.
Analysis gives us an idea about which sections and content users
have been accessing. We can also see what’s being avoided. Which
content is being used? Can it be expanded? What needs to go?
What patterns are developing? Are there content-types that
should be nixed or integrated more? Once patterns become clear,
we can make copy and graphic design choices based on real facts.
In some cases, a content audit will reveal that users have never
accessed entire sections of the website or even bothered to read a
particular blog. Perhaps your target audience didn’t need that
content. On the other hand, maybe they can’t find it, it wasn’t
promoted well enough or it was published on Christmas day and
no one saw it.

8. What an Audit Gets You:
 Inbound leads. This is done by building awareness of a problem
and aligning this problem with products or services that can help,
while at the same time making a buyer aware of your company
and how it can help resolve each of these issues.
 Speeds up the buying process and increases the conversion rates
between each stage of it. Targeted content helps each buyer
through each stage of their buying journey and ensures that they
have learned the key factors about your product that resolves their
problem.
 A tool that tells us which pieces of content should be shared
with specific buyers at a given point in the buying journey. This
increases the effectiveness of online marketing and creates an
audit trail to determine if different pieces of content are not very
effective in the process.

9. Accountability & Direction
There’s really not a better way to show all the company
owners the scope of a marketing “problem” than with a
content audit. The audit itself creates accountability and fact
based understanding to be sure, but it also provides a spring
board for new campaign direction.
The content audit helps us develop a plan to move forward,
and give everyone an idea about how much time, money,
and effort a complete content strategy is going to require.
Without it, everyone is just guessing.