How to build your brand using content marketing

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Building your brand with content marketing

The biggest benefit of using content marketing is that it allows you to gradually build your brand and makes it easier for your prospective customers and clients to recall what product or service you provide in their hour of need.

Most of the businesses relate content marketing with improving search engine rankings and creating a vibrant social media presence. In itself it is not a misplaced priority, but it means under-utilizing the power of content marketing.

The greatest power of content marketing is building and strengthening your brand and make it more recognizable and relatable.

Why it is important to build your brand even if you are a small business

Brand building isn’t just for big businesses.

What is brand building? What is branding?

Branding is a mix of a message, an emotion, an experience and a memory that is immediately recalled when people come across your business name or your logo.

Your brand represents the entire essence of what you provide.

Even as a small business you want people to recognize you when they come across one of the entities that represent your business, whether it is your URL, your logo or your blog.

Your website faces lots of competition on the Internet. It is primarily because it is very easy to set up shop on the web. All you have to do is, register a domain name, set up a website, create the necessary pages and then start working at improving your  search engine rankings and social media presence.

People who have money to spend can create and expand their online presence faster and those who don’t have money, can spend time and effort to achieve the same.

This makes it difficult for people to distinguish your business from other businesses.

Another problem is, you are not just competing with other businesses, you are also competing with other people to gain people’s attention.

If someone searches for a product or service that your business provides, it is not just businesses that appear in the search result pages, even the personal webpages and blog posts created by individuals show up in the search results that may end up confusing your prospective customers and clients.

This is why it is very important to create a very strong brand presence for yourself on the Internet so that people can immediately distinguish you from your competitors and from thousands of distractions that are constantly vying for the attention.

Using content marketing to build your brand

To build your brand using content marketing first of all you need to know what is content marketing?

Many people will say that content marketing means marketing your business on the Internet using your content. Theoretically this definition is correct. You ARE marketing your business using content instead of conventional advertising.

But it is more than that. More than marketing, you are creating a presence for yourself.

On the Internet it is all about creating a presence. People don’t like advertisements. In fact, the use mechanisms to avoid coming across advertisements.

Useful, educational content or the other hand, is appreciated.

Building your brand with content marketing

Therefore, content marketing involves publishing lots of useful, relevant, entertaining and sometimes even controversial content to grab people’s attention and actively participate in a global conversation.

People on the Internet recognise you with the sort of help you provide them with their content. The biggest gripe people have with businesses is that it is very difficult to get help.

What does help me?

How to educate people with your content?

Take for example my own blog. Take for example this blog post. In this blog post telling you how to build your brand using content marketing.

You must have already known that you need to promote your business on the web in order to get business. You have always known that something is lacking and this is why your website is not generating the sort of business you deserve. Maybe you are not promoting enough? Maybe you’re not spending money on advertising? Even if you are spending money on advertising, maybe you’re targeting is not working. Or maybe the messaging is not working.

The thing is, you know that you need to make an effort.

Then suddenly you come across this blog post that tells you that you need to build your brand to get more business. How can you build your brand without spending a ton of money on advertising? This blog post tells you that you can build your brand with content marketing. There.

You have been educated.

Even if you have no idea how to build your brand without advertising, you at least know now that there is a concept called content marketing that can be used and it doesn’t even involve spending lots of money.

This is just one example of some sort of content being helpful.

An example from a bigger company could be the Open Forum from American Express. They have thousands of blog posts helping business managers and even small-business owners with premium business advice. Some of the blog posts are so insightful that you can get such help only from paid consultants. On Open Forum this premium advises available free of cost.

What is American Express trying to achieve? It is a financial services company after all.

When it provides free advice business executives, business managers and small business owners, it generates lots of good will.

There are different credit cards available in the market but there is a great possibility hat people who regularly use Open Forum go for an American Express credit card even when they can easily go for another credit card. Similarly, if the needs of financial services that are provided by American Express, they would rather get them from American Express then from another financial services company.

Aside from that there might be millions of customers who don’t know anything about American Express but to come to the Open Forum website for the wealth of information it contains. There, the find about the American Express financial services and since they already love the content on the website and they know who is providing the content, the go with American Express the next time they need such services.

This is one big example of building your brand with content marketing.

The relationship between familiarity and buying decision

If people are familiar with your brand they are more comfortable doing business with you.

There is a psychological concept called the “mere exposure effect“. According to this effect, people feel a preference for people or things (or businesses) because they are familiar with those people or things (or businesses). This is also called the familiarity principle.

Add to this the usefulness of your content and the effect is doubled. Now, people are not just familiar with your brand, they also find your brand useful.

Familiarity and likability breeds trust and trust is what is needed the most when doing business online. When you are selling products and services online, people to people interaction is almost missing. All you have is your content.

And the trust that you have built over time with helpful and educational content.

When people trust your brand, people not just buy from you, they buy more from you (source). They become loyal to you. They recommend your business to others.

So, whenever you think of content marketing visible your business, don’t just think in terms of increasing your search engine rankings for creating a constant buzz on Facebook and Twitter. It’s mostly about building your brand and creating a sustainable brand presence.

 

 

10 fundamental qualities of effective SEO content writing

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fundamental-qualities-of-SEO-content-writing

Effective SEO content writing involves writing content for the search engines as well as human beings. SEO content writing has some fundamental qualities. If you stick to these qualities, you experience a significant improvement in your search engine rankings.

With a big share of search engine traffic coming from Google, whenever we talk of search engines and SEO content writing, we normally assume its Google.

Over the years Google has evolved its ranking algorithm in such a manner that it isn’t just the the fundamental qualities of your written content on your web page or blog post that has an impact on your search engine rankings. Social proof of the quality of your content is as important as the content itself.

No matter how advanced the search engine ranking algorithms become, it is going to be very difficult for them to match human intelligence because human intelligence doesn’t just depend on mathematics and logic.

Human intelligence depends on past experiences, emotional biases and future expectations. So, when people access your content, when they view your content, an entire ecosystem of emotions, experiences and bits of knowledge is used to evaluate your content.

Effective SEO content writing takes into account all these factors when creating optimized content for your website. SEO content writing takes into account the needs of humans and the factual information that the search engine algorithms need to process the nature of your content.

Where is your audience coming from? What problems your visitors are trying to solve? What information they already have? What are their backgrounds?

SEO content writing needs to understand where your visitors come from

There can be hundreds of such attributes that can only be thought of by human beings, and only professional SEO content writing can achieve this feat.

Therefore, in its ranking algorithms, Google has incorporated user behavior also. So, no matter how great your SEO content writing is, unless it earns social validation, unless people react to it positively, it is not going to enjoy good search engine rankings.

Fundamental qualities of effective SEO content writing may include

  1. A compelling title
  2. Main keywords in the title
  3. Keyword and search phrases within the body text
  4. Focusing on a problem and its solution
  5. Quality of SEO content writing
  6. Ease of reading
  7. Linking to other internal webpages and blog posts
  8. Strategic use of images
  9. Formatting and arrangement of the text
  10. Length of web pages and blog posts

These fundamental qualities of SEO content writing may be described differently on different websites and blogs, but the underlying features never change.

Universal concepts of SEO content writing remain the same

I repeatedly say on my blog that there isn’t much difference between quality content and SEO content. Quality is of utmost importance.

The only thing that changes in SEO content writing is that you arrange your content in such a manner that it’s easier for the search engine crawlers to access the main part of the content, analyze it, and then rank it for the right keywords.

Below I’m discussing in detail the points listed above

A compelling title for your web page and blog post

Your title is so important that it has a direct impact on the rankings of a particular URL. Some people also call it the “headline”.

Why is your title important?

The concept takes its cue from the traditional printing business. Ever heard the phrase “screaming headlines”?

importance of headlines in SEO content writing

People used to buy newspapers and magazines after reading the headlines. If the headlines were not compelling or interesting enough, those newspapers and magazines wouldn’t sell.

On the Internet, people don’t click your link if you don’t have an interesting headline.

Whether your link appears in search engines or on social networking websites, it’s the headline, your title, that prompts people to click your link.

Your title is the promise you make to your visitors, of what you are going to deliver. Headlines and titles are so important that many SEO content writing services charge extra money for coming up with creative and optimized titles.

Main keywords in the title

Main keywords in the title in SEO content writing

In terms of effective SEO content writing, what does a keyword mean?

A keyword isn’t just a random word or expression to lure people to your website through SEO content writing. It is an expression being used by your prospective customers and clients to find you.

It’s important that your keyword phrase appears within your title or headline. People tend to click your link more if your hypertext contains a search term they have just used.

Keywords and search phrases within the body text – most important part of SEO content writing

Although a greater number of SEO experts discount the overall importance of keywords in the body text of your web page, they matter for effective SEO content writing.

Keywords and search expressions, when used naturally through SEO content writing, convey to the search engine algorithms what you are talking about.

If keywords didn’t matter, how would the search engines distinguish one link from another?

The use of keywords within your body text also keeps your SEO content writing focused. Writing SEO friendly content doesn’t mean going on a rampage with your keywords.

Just make sure you don’t overuse them. After a certain number of times, their appearance in your content writing begins to have a negative effect on your SEO. High quality SEO demands a judicious use of keywords while professionally dealing with the topic.

Effective SEO content writing means focusing on a problem and its solution

Why do people use search engines?

They are mostly searching for solutions to their problems. They are seeking answers to their questions. They are looking for opinions and reviews. They are looking for suggestions.

They want answers to their questions. They want solutions to their problems.

A quality SEO service knows that.

Are you solving their problems? When they visit your link, do they find what they are looking for?

Google has a way of finding whether you are delivering the promise you have made through your headline or not.

Web pages in the form of questions and answers, problems and solutions and lists of tips fare better on Google.

When people ask, “What do SEO writers do?” I tell them SEO writers convince search engines that they have exactly the answer people are looking for.

Quality of SEO content writing

Quality SEO content writing

The quality of your SEO content writing is as important as the keywords and search phrases that you use. In fact, the quality of your content is MORE important.

Effective SEO content writing these days involves writing optimized content as well as highly engaging content. Unless your writing is able to engage people, it is not going to enjoy higher search engine rankings.

Quality SEO content writing means

  • It is well-written
  • It is written in a conversational style that is easily understandable
  • It does not have factual errors
  • It delivers on the promise made in the title
  • It does not have spelling and grammar errors
  • It is unique and not a rehash of something published somewhere else
  • People feel encouraged to share with and engage with it
  • Ultimately, it convinces people into doing business with you

Ease of reading

SEO content writing and ease of reading

As mentioned above, your SEO content writing should be conversational and easily understandable, and this is one of its fundamental qualities.

Avoid using complicated jargon. Use simpler and shorter sentences. Use shorter paragraphs.

When you are writing SEO content, you are not aiming for a Pulitzer prize. You just want better search engine rankings along with creating engaging content.

This is not just important for your human readers, it is also important for search engine algorithms because when you use simpler language and a simple structure, it’s easier for them to analyze your content.

Many SEO and content experts recommend that you follow the Flesch–Kincaid readability criteria, though, I wouldn’t advise you to over-obsess with it. Just use your natural style.

The Flesch–Kincaid readability grade followers recommend that use a writing style that is easily understandable to a 6th-8th grader.

simple SEO content writing doesn't mean writing for dumb and dumber

Again, there is no need to over-simplify content because on many blogs I have seen people go to ridiculous lengths to create even single-sentence paragraphs.

Having said that, I sometimes use single-sentence paragraphs these days when I feel that a paragraph has said what it means to say.

Try to capture one thought in one paragraph.

When you are trying to find SEO writers for your SEO content writing job, make sure that your writers are not obsessed with their writing styles and understand your need.

Linking to other internal web pages and blog posts

This technically may not be a part of the fundamental qualities of effective SEO content writing. Linking to already existing web pages and blog posts on your website makes it easier for search engine crawlers to access an index content.

This also helps you avoid creating duplicate content. If there is a concept that you have already explained in another web page or blog post, why rewrite it? Using the appropriate hypertext, link to the web page of the blog post, instead. Linking to appropriate content within your website and outside of it, is an integral part of SEO content marketing.

For example, read this if you want to know what is SEO content.

Strategic use of images

Importance of images in SEO content writing

Aside from the cliché that “one picture is worth a thousand words” visuals actually help you keep your readers focused on your content.

Including images these days is an integral part of effective SEO content writing.

Most of the SEO tools advise you to maintain a particular ratio of text and images and if you don’t maintain that ratio, you get negative markings for your SEO score.

Formatting and arrangement of the text

Of course, text is important for meaningful SEO content writing, but you also need to make it easier for people to read and comprehend your content.

To achieve this, you need to format and arrange your text in a user-friendly manner. Most of the people will be accessing your content from their mobile devices. So, make sure that your content is easily readable on mobile phones.

Use headings and subheadings to organize various sections of your web page or blog post. If you need to list multiple points, use a bulleted list.

Also use the bold font type to emphasize in particular sections or words of your text.

Basically, make your text easily scannable. The information should be organized in such a manner that if a visitor simply goes through the headings, subheadings and the bullet points, he or she should be able to get the gist of your entire web page or blog post.

Length of web pages and blog posts

Google these days prefers longer web pages and blog posts. This is to weed out what they call “thin content”.

Longer web pages and blog posts are difficult to write and hence, they act as a deterrence for spammers and people who just want to create junk content to generate search engine traffic.

Try to write normally 1100-1500 words.

Does it matter?

My personal observation is, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on the sort of web pages and blog posts you are competing with.

Longer web pages and blog posts are preferred, yes, and they definitely have a positive effect on your SEO, but there is no need to go on and on if you have got nothing to say.

Remember that ultimately it is the quality of your content writing that makes the difference, not how long or how short it is. Make it relevant. Try to provide as much information as possible. Try to make it as comprehensive as possible.

So, these are the 10 fundamental qualities of effective SEO content writing. The way they are presented may change, but their inherent implication remains consistent.

Content writing for video marketing: text content is thriving in videos

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content-writing-for-video-marketingWhen you think of video marketing, you think of, well, video. Content writing isn’t exactly on your radar. This Marketing Profs blog post says that text content is thriving in video marketing, video in a mobile-first world.

Video is everywhere. YouTube obviously is a video streaming website where everybody wants to upload videos, but even Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram these days encourage you to upload videos.

Wherever there is content, there is marketing. The same is the case with video marketing. Since it is so easy to record and upload videos, it is a channel nobody wants to leave untapped.

But does everyone wanting video mean that there is no place for content writing or written text? As the above link suggests, text doesn’t just exist among videos, it thrives, and it makes sense.

Why is there so much video being consumed?

A simple reason might be that it’s easier to watch videos on mobile phones and most of the people access content on their mobiles these days. It is difficult to read just text, especially for long.

Watching the video is very easy. Your mind doesn’t have to process anything. Images, sound, storyline, narrative, everything is there. You just need to keep your mobile phone in front of you and the message is delivered.

Since millions of people are watching video every minute, video marketing these days is one of the biggest components of content marketing.

Content writing for video marketing

Ever seen written text in the videos that you watch on your mobile phone? There is rarely a video that does not contain text.

Text is especially important when people in the video are not talking. Some videos are totally mute. The entire message is delivered through content writing or through the text randomly existing or appearing in the video.

This text often tells you a story about a journey, about a brand, about the struggle of a human being, or any other compassionate topic. The above link says

Popular publishers like Buzzfeed, NowThis, and The Dodo have perfected this type of text-reliant video content. They create it regularly and successfully. They truly “speak” video on the mobile social media feed.

In fact, every second video that goes viral these days has written text in it and the entire message of the video depends on that text. So, it is very crucial how the text is written.

When writing content for video marketing one just has to make sure that very small phrases are used. People don’t want to read long strings of text when watching the video. The text should be a part of the video, not cover the video entirely.

Why written content does well in video marketing?

The concept of video making has gone through a change. Any media that animates is video. You don’t need your conventional handy cam or even the video mode of your mobile phone.

You can simply put together a few images, make them glide or merge into each other and use some interesting text with them and there you have it, a nice video.

Even if you use a PowerPoint presentation to create a video you can creatively use text to enhance your message. Take for example this video I created to explain what is content marketing:

Although there is animation and there are moving objects in the video, the underlying message is delivered with written content. Everywhere you see words.

This happens in every video. When you go to YouTube, you don’t feel like looking at video unless the text around the video convinces you (or if the thumbnail is irresistible).

So, in the age of video marketing, if you think content writing is not required, think again. It is required more, actually.

4 attributes that make your content marketing successful

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4-attributes-of-content-marketing-success

Successful content marketing rests on 4 attributes

  1. Alignment with your organizational goals: What exactly do you want to achieve through content marketing?
  2. Team collaboration: All the people who are responsible for content marketing use the same tools, use the same language and communicate the same message. They also know what are the success metrics.
  3. Content distribution: Content publishing should always be complemented with content distribution so that your target audience can access your content and respond accordingly. If there is no method of content distribution, your job is half done.
  4. Ongoing analytics: Always know what you’re doing and what you are achieving, and this can be best done by analyzing your effort and results.

How do you keep track of these four attributes for successful content marketing?

You need a documented content marketing strategy.

The word “strategy” may seem like a highfalutin word, but it is not. In the realms of content marketing it means

1
Clearly articulating, in writing, the overall aim of your content marketing. What do you want to achieve ultimately? In how much time?

2.
Whom are you going to target? This is very important. For whom are you going to publish and distribute your content. How should they react? What should they do after getting exposed to your content?

3.
What sort of content you want to create? Do you want to establish yourself as an expert or an authority figure? Do you want to become an information hub? Do you want to educate people? Do you want to make people aware of a new technology or a better way of doing something? Do you want to provide better support to your existing customers and clients?

4.
What content format your audience prefers? Does your audience prefer blog posts? Infographics? LinkedIn? Slides? Videos? E-books? White papers and case studies? Email newsletters?

It is very important to know where to focus your energies otherwise you will be wasting lots of time on creating content that people are not interested in, or don’t want to access simply because they don’t like the format.

5.
Content creation process and scope. In many organizations, especially larger organizations, individual employees are supposed to create content and take care of it. In some organizations there are dedicated content teams.

In multi-layered content marketing teams there are content creators, content editors, content publishers and content distributors. Assign the right people to the right jobs for successful content marketing.

6.
Editorial calendar. Once you set your content marketing in motion you will need to stick to a schedule. Publishing consistency is very important. If you publish two blog posts every week, you must publish two blog posts every week. If you publish one infographic every 15 days, you must publish one infographic every 15 days.

An editorial calendar also allows you to prepare a list of topics that you can cover in the coming days, weeks and months. This way you are never at a loss. You always have something to publish.

7.
Content distribution. The high-quality content that you are publishing needs to reach the right audience to be effective. You have to proactively promote and distribute your content. You can use your social networking profiles. You can make sure that your content is search engine optimized so that people can easily find it on Google and other search engines.

8.
Tracking ROI and analytics. This is one of the most important aspects of a documented content marketing strategy. You need to constantly track your ROI and analytics.

Is your content marketing helping you achieve your goals? Are you attracting the right traffic? Are people doing the right thing when they are on your website or blog? Is the level of engagement fruitful on social media and social networking websites?

The good thing about tracking constantly is that if some structural and directional changes need to be made, they can be made in a timely manner.

So, these are the eight vital components of a documented content marketing strategy that can ensure the success of your content marketing.

5 benefits of auditing your website content regularly

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benefits-of-auditing-your-existing-website-content

Surprisingly, very few businesses and individuals realize the overwhelming benefits of auditing website content regularly. A big reason is that content isn’t yet considered as a valuable asset. It simply exists because, well, every website needs some text, some images and in many cases, some videos.

Or, people get website content for better search engine rankings. They hire an SEO writer or a regular content writer, get content written for their chosen keywords and search terms, and then move on. End of the story.

They don’t realize that they need to audit their website content regularly. Just like they need to take care of other business assets like machines, software applications, computer hardware, stationery and even human resources, they need to take care of their website content. They need to make sure that it is up-to-date, relevant and topical.

What is content auditing and how to do it on your website?

What is content auditing and how to do it on your website

Content auditing means going through your existing content and streamlining it according to your content marketing needs.

You have been publishing a business blog for many years now, right? Even if not a blog, you must have created many webpages for your business website in order to describe your various products and services.

You have your homepage.

Then there is a company profile.

Even an FAQs section.

You may also have the testimonials page.

And maybe many more pages talking about various aspects of your business and the sort of projects you have undertaken.

The basic point is, there might be lots of existing content that needs to be revamped.

Content auditing means creating a list of things that you need to do in order to bring your existing content up to the mark.

Is content auditing needed for every website and blog?

It depends.

If you have always been careful about your content, then perhaps you don’t need content auditing.

The need arises when you have been creating content without paying much attention to exactly what you are trying to achieve, what sort of audience you are trying to target and what sort of results you are striving for.

If you take your content marketing seriously it doesn’t matter whether you have 5 pages, 50 pages or 500 pages, you need content auditing.

Unless you have audited your existing content, you cannot claim to be taking your content marketing seriously.

Is there a precondition to auditing your content?

Totally understanding your content marketing is a precondition to auditing your existing content.

For this purpose, documenting your content marketing strategy is of extreme importance because once you have started documenting your thoughts you know

  • What sort of audience you’re going to target
  • What sort of content you’re going to produce and distribute in order to target that particular audience
  • Which content distribution channels you’re going to use

Once you know what sort of content you need in order to make your content marketing effective you know what changes to carry out in your existing content.

What is the procedure of carrying out a basic content audit of your website?

What you need:

  1. Google Analytics
  2. A Spreadsheet Tool (Microsoft Excel, Google Docs or Zoho)

Although you can do content auditing on your website without using any tools, if you have got many pages and blog posts, using tools definitely helps and it also gives you a sense of things that need to be done.

You can begin with Google Analytics.

Of course, if I suggest Google Analytics I assume that you have been using its tracking script on your website for some time and there is sufficient data in your Google Analytics dashboard to give you a picture of what sort of traffic your website is getting.

What if you don’t use Google Analytics?

Install the script onto your website and let it gather some data for at least a month.

Assuming you have some data in your Google Analytics account, go to the website that you need to audit (in case you are tracking multiple websites from your account). On the left-hand side, you need to go to the following section:

This will give you a list of the page views of all the pages.

If your pages are arranged in descending order, you will be able to see which pages are getting the maximum traffic on your website.

These are the pages that you need to audit first.

In the “Page” column click the pop-up window link:

The page will open in a new window from where you can get the URL and then copy/paste the URL in the Excel sheet.

This way, one by one, you can transfer all the URLs to the Excel sheet. Mind you, if you have many URLs it may take lots of time so if possible, get someone else involved.

Once you have transferred all the URLs to your Excel sheet, you can start auditing them one by one. Again, it makes sense to audit the content of those pages that get the maximum page views.

Here are a few things you can change while auditing individual webpages and blog posts:

The web page title

Your web page title should preferably contain your primary keywords and it should be within the recommended length.

For example, the Yoast SEO plug-in suggests that your title should not contain more than 70 characters.

Remember that it is your web page title or your blog post title that people see appearing as a hyperlink on search engine result pages and even on social networking websites updates.

Make your web page title compelling enough.

The web page description

The description of your web page must be around 157 characters.

Try to include your main keywords in the beginning of the description but make your description, logically, is as descriptive as possible.

The body text

Is your body text over-optimized?

Is it under-optimized?

Is there too little text on the web page or blog post?

Can you include more links to other pages?

Can you create more sections?

Can you describe your products or services in a better manner?

Is your content badly written?

Are there typos, spelling mistakes in grammar mistakes?

The use of keywords

No matter what people say, the keywords still matter.

So keep your list of keywords nearby while auditing your content.

Make sure that your primary and secondary keywords are used in the body text strategically.

Create multiple sections under headings and subheadings and make sure that these headings and subheadings contain your keywords.

Create bulleted lists and make sure that these bulleted lists contain your keywords (at least a couple of times).

Use your keywords in the hyperlinks.

Make sure you don’t over-use your keywords.

The most important thing is readability and quality of your content.

Alt tags for your images

Alt tags are very important – to make your website and blog more accessible to people with visual impairments, and also to tell search engines what these images contain.

If you have omitted including alt tags with your images, now is the right time to go through all the images and add alt tags, while you are auditing your content.

Interlinking of webpages and blog posts

Interlinking means linking to webpages and blog posts that add more value and description to your existing web page or blog post.

Suppose I’m writing this about content auditing.

Above, I have mentioned that in order to audit your content, you also need to document it.

Recently I wrote a blog post documenting your content marketing strategy, which is a totally different topic.

So instead of explaining it again, I have simply hyperlinked to it.

It is not just good for usability, it also directs the search engine crawlers to this link in case this link hasn’t been crawled yet.

When the search engine crawlers crawl your links, they also crawl the links present on those links.

Auditing your existing content can be a lengthy process so be mentally prepared for it.

It is not something that you can do in a day or two.

If there are 100s of pages of content on your website or blog, you may need months to go through individual links and audit them.

You may also need to hire external help.

Go ahead, do it. Before you hire a content writer to write new content for you, it’s better to hire someone to audit your existing content first.

6 ways to audit your content

From time to time you should audit your existing content.

You don’t always have to write new content because after a while, it is difficult to come up with original and compelling content writing ideas.

I’m not saying that you altogether abandon the thought of publishing new and original topics, but you can make a mix of new content and existing content and keep on giving fresh content to Google.

Google doesn’t like stale content.

It can make out if you posted something a year ago and ever since then you haven’t updated it or refreshed it.

Auditing your existing content allows you to do that.

What does auditing mean?

Auditing doesn’t just mean updating your existing content (web pages and blog posts, and sometimes even videos and images, that you have already published).

It means individually going through different pieces of content and analysing them to find out whether they are still relevant or not or whether they’re solving the purpose for which they were originally created and published.

Auditing is an exercise that is carried out to find whether something complies with conditions or parameters for which that thing was created.

In terms of your existing content, you may want to find out

  1. Does it enjoy higher search engine rankings for relevant keywords?
  2. Was it fully optimized or is there still some scope for optimization?
  3. Does the content need to be rewritten because in its current state, it doesn’t read well?

… so on and so forth.

You may like to read Improve your SEO with content auditing that I published just a few weeks ago.

As I have mentioned in the above-linked post, while auditing I was trying to find out whether my web pages are search engine optimized or not, and if not, using the SEOPressor plug-in I have been trying to optimize them.

Along the way I have learnt something else and hence, changed my approach, but that’s another topic.

This Content Marketing Institute blog post suggests 6 questions that you should ask yourself to be able to audit your existing content meaningfully.

To be able to properly audit your existing content, the CMI blog post suggests that you should ask the following questions:

  1. Is the content still relevant?
  2. How many people visit the post?
  3. What engagement is the post receiving?
  4. How strong are the SEO indicators?
  5. Is the post converting?
  6. What content is missing?

Let’s quickly go through these questions and try to find some brief answers.

Is the content still relevant?

Your content grows old.

This is especially applicable to those blog posts and web pages that were relevant to the time during which they were created.

Remember there used to be a time when getting featured on the homepage of Digg used to be a big thing, to the extent of launching new businesses with just a single instance of getting featured?

Prolific Diggers were in big demand and sometimes they were paid heavily just to share links among themselves.

What about StumbleUpon?

Just as we have share buttons for Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook, we also used to have share buttons for Digg and StumbleUpon.

Now, these two services are almost gone. As websites they may exist, but very few people know about them or care about them.

So, if you have written a blog post on how to promote your content on social media and you have taken these content sharing platforms as one of your central points, you may want to revisit your blog post and make it more relevant by removing what is not used these days and adding what is used.

Maybe Instagram didn’t exist at that time but now it’s a big thing. So, you can replace StumbleUpon with Instagram and write something about it.

Similarly, if you think there are some issues that were relevant in 2008 but are not relevant now, you can rewrite those blog posts and web pages to make them relevant and then resubmit them to Google as fresh content.

How many people visit the post?

Google Analytics can tell you that.

GA, through appropriate filtering, can tell you how many visitors you are attracting from Google and other search engines and how many from social networking websites, or even directly from other websites and blogs.

For some web pages and blog posts, you don’t want the traffic to go down.

For example, Website Content Writing Services is one of my main web pages and I don’t want its traffic to go down no matter how old it becomes.

I should regularly audit this page and keep a tab on what type of traffic it is attracting and then make changes accordingly.

What engagement is the post receiving?

What is engagement vis-à-vis the relevance of your content?

The engagement level tells you how important or relevant people find your content.

Are they still sharing it?

During the past month, how many people have shared this particular piece of content, let’s say, on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?

How many comments has it generated?

How many times has it been shared on various social media and social networking websites?

How much time are people spending on this blog post and what is its bounce rate?

Then, if this piece of content is found wanting, you can take appropriate steps to make improvements.

How strong are the SEO indicators?

As I mentioned in my own blog post on content auditing, I have been reviewing my individual web pages for SEO indicators or to find out how well they have been optimized.

The SEOPressor WordPress plug-in that I have installed on my website and my blog immediately tells me my SEO score.

The SEO indicators may include:

  1. The presence of your primary keywords and phrases in your blog post or web page title.
  2. The presence of your primary keywords and phrases in your blog post and web page description.
  3. The ALT text of your images.
  4. The number of images in the blog post.
  5. Keyword density (under-optimized or over-optimized).
  6. Content length (the more the merrier, preferably more than 1200 words).
  7. The readability score.

These indicators tell you how well you have optimized your existing content.

Is the post converting?

Different blog posts and different web pages may have different metrics for measuring conversion.

For example, the purpose of your blog post might not be increasing your sales.

It can be getting more subscriptions for your newsletter or encouraging more people to download your e-book or increase your social media engagement (how many people are sharing this blog post or web page).

Again, in Google Analytics you can set conversion goals and track the conversion rate of your individual blog posts and web pages and if you think that certain blog posts and web pages are not converting well, you can make changes as you deem fit.

What content is missing?

Sometimes you want to incorporate more keywords. For example, the SEOPressor WordPress plug-in allows you to optimize your content writing for three keywords or search phrases.

To accommodate extra keywords and phrases you may like to add more content.

Is auditing your existing content absolutely necessary?

If your content matters, if content marketing matters, then I must say, it is important.

Whether it is absolutely necessary or not depends on your ambition and your ability to take care of your content assets.

The more blog posts and web pages you have, the harder it is to audit repeatedly.

It is always better to have a dedicated content writer, or even a team of content writers who regularly audit your existing content.

If this is something you cannot afford right now, then there is a big chance you don’t even have those many blog posts and web pages.

It means your existing content can be audited within a week or two and you can hire someone for that period, or if you have time, you can audit yourself.

Why does a website audit seem like a daunting task?

website-content-auditing

We like new things. New things are full of possibilities. New things are free of judgments. This is why we continuously want to create and publish new content while totally disregarding existing content.

Another reason why a website audit may seem like a daunting task is that normally there are too many web pages and blog posts to audit.

If you have been publishing content, in whichever manner you have been publishing it, over a period of years, you must have published hundreds of them. As you publish more, their number increases.

So, the mere thought of revisiting all those web pages and blog posts that you have published over all these years seems daunting. You know that it may take weeks, even months, to audit all those web pages and blog posts.

Undoubtedly, the process can be tedious and time-consuming. But given the fact that it can tremendously improve your organic search engine rankings and on-site conversion rate, not auditing your website content is a big waste of the opportunity that is lying right in front of you. You need to take the plunge. The benefits overwhelmingly outweigh the effort involved.

How to kickstart your website content auditing plan?

kickstart-your-website-content-auditing-process

First of all, you have to get hold of all the URLs present on your website. If you are using WordPress to manage your website or blog, you can use a plug-in that exports all the URLs onto a web page or into a comma separated file.

For a non-WordPress website, you can try the various URL crawling tools available on the Internet.

Then you can save these URLs into a spreadsheet.

In WordPress, there is also a plug-in that gives you a ready-made interface for content auditing but I prefer tracking your auditing progress in a spreadsheet because it is more flexible and you don’t have to install a dedicated plug-in for that.

Although you may have your own way of organizing data in your Excel sheet, I prefer that for every auditing exercise you create a separate worksheet in a single spreadsheet. For example, if you decide to start your content auditing in January 2018, you can have a “January 2018” worksheet.

In this worksheet you can have the following columns:

  • URL title (page title or blog post title)
  • Complete link
  • SEO keywords – keywords for which this particular link should be ranking high or is already ranking high
  • Conversion goal – why was this webpage or blog post created
  • Suggested changes – more content to be added, more optimization to be incorporated, old information to be updated, more or new images to be added, SEO tweaks to be done, and so on
  • Audit status – to be audited, being audited or audited, or whatever
  • Audit date – when the current audit is complete
  • Recheck date – decide the date on which you should check whether the changes that you have made are showing up or not. For example, whether this link is ranking for the right keywords or not or whether its conversion rate has improved or not

Having such a spreadsheet will allow you to track individual links, and also their progress.

If multiple employees or multiple content editors will be working on your content auditing project, you can also have another column titled “Assigned to” where you can put the names of people responsible for that particular link.

5 benefits of auditing your website content

website-content-auditing-benefits

Benefits are a great motivation. Unless you understand the true motive of a thorough website content audit, you won’t be able to carry it out in its true spirit.

Listed below are 5 benefits of auditing your website content:

1. Make your content up-to-date

Are you still giving examples of MySpace and Google Wave? Are you still suggesting your clients to blog using Blogger.com? Are you still giving examples from companies that no longer exist? Is one of your web pages still telling people that Obama is the President? Is your web page copy still making references to Blackberries?

Then it’s time to update your content. The world these days changes very fast. The information that you used a couple of years ago doesn’t matter. The business tools you referred to 5 years ago are no longer available or they have gone through monumental changes.

2. Resubmit to Google

When was it the last time Google crawled and indexed your important links? Although most of the search engine crawlers do this automatically, you are never sure when your website’s turn is going to come.

When you audit your website content and make changes you can manually resubmit your link through the Google search console. This shouldn’t be done without making changes because if you try to submit content that has already been indexed, Google begins to ignore your resubmission requests.

3. Optimize your content for targeted keywords

Perhaps originally when you were creating/writing your content you didn’t pay much attention to its optimization aspect. Maybe now you have gained more experience. Your new links are faring well. You can use that experience to optimize even the older links.

Or maybe you have over optimized.

The Google ranking algorithm has gone through many changes over the years and SEO practices that were legit 5-6 years ago can get your content penalized now.

Maybe you have, unintentionally, overused your keywords. Maybe you have done lots of interlinking. Maybe you have used some black hat SEO tactics to gain better search engine rankings – back then you didn’t know that those were black hat SEO tactics.

Recently when I was auditing my own website content I realized that on many web pages I had stuffed my content with keywords even without realizing it. A few changes, some inclusion of LSI keywords, and suddenly my rankings began to improve for the same keywords.

4. Improve the overall quality of your content

Maybe you hired an ill-trained content writer back then because of budgetary constraints. Or you didn’t have much time to pay enough attention to the quality of your content.

When you audit your website content – provided you have assigned enough time to it – you get the opportunity to improve the overall quality of your content.

You can take care of grammar and spelling mistakes. You can simplify over-complicated sentences. You can organize various bits of content under headings, sub-headings and bullet points. You can link to other web pages and blog posts that can provide additional information.

You can also update the images. Is there a scope that you can reduce the size of the images? Can you use better images? Did you forget to insert the ALT tag information the first time?

5. Get new content ideas out of existing content

Getting new content ideas on an ongoing basis can be a big problem. Around 60% of content marketers re-purpose existing content. According to statistics present on this Smart Insights blog post, 60% content marketers find it very difficult to publish engaging and good quality content on an ongoing basis.

You may also like to read 15 ways you never run out of blogging ideas.

So, these are the 5 basic benefits of auditing your website content on a regular basis.

How regular you want to be, depends on your content marketing strategy, your budget, and the resources that you can employ to audit your existing content.

Having said that, auditing doesn’t always mean you need to change every single web page or blog post. You can also quickly check whether a particular link needs to be updated or not and you can leave it as it is if it does not need any sort of update.