A Guide To Running A Site Audit
As websites grow larger, they can become overwhelming and confusing for both the site owner and visitors.
Outdated or underperforming content can negatively impact search results and user experience. To avoid this, it's important to conduct regular site audits. At Brightspark, we conducted a significant blog content audit in the summer of 2021, as our blog had been running for 18 years and some posts were cringeworthy, to say the least!
If you're a website owner or manager, follow these steps to conduct a site audit and ensure high-quality content that drives conversions.
Step 1: Categorise Posts
Download a list of blog post titles and categorise each one based on general categories, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Then group each category by theme. For instance, for Facebook, we categorised posts under Pages, Ads, Content, etc.
Finally, categorise individual posts based on 24 unique themes. This step is time-consuming but necessary to determine which posts should be deleted or kept. We uniquely identified 24 themes of blog posts and categorised them accordingly. We had approximately 20 blog posts under our smallest theme and over 100 for our most popular themes.
Step 2: Evaluate Engagement
Use a tool like Ahrefs to analyse organic search traffic and backlink profile for each post. Note engagement levels to determine which posts generate enough traffic to keep or to delete. We were able to remove or redirect over 500 posts through this process.
It was interesting to see how the nature of the blog posts changed since 2007! Before the advent of social media, all the short form posts were done through the blog. Nowadays many of these would just be status updates on social.
Step 3: Update and Tidy Up
Identify high-performing posts that need updating and tidying up. This step ensures that valuable content remains current and relevant to users.
Conclusion
By following these steps, you'll end up with a cleaner, leaner and much more navigable website that offers clear and consistent content. Regular site audits help maintain a positive user experience and search engine rankings. Though the process can be tedious, it's well worth the effort.
In conclusion, a site audit is essential to keeping your website relevant and user-friendly.
We hope this guide helps you conduct a successful audit and improves your website's performance.
