Audit existing content

Auditing your existing content is a crucial step in content marketing. It allows you to assess the effectiveness and relevance of your current content assets, identify opportunities for improvement, and determine which pieces can be repurposed or updated. In this exercise, we will utilise the "Content Plan & Budget Template" to conduct an audit of your existing content. We will focus on the second tab, "2. Audit," which provides a table to categorise and evaluate your content assets based on various metrics.

Goal:The goal of this exercise is to audit your existing content and gather insights into its performance and alignment with your marketing objectives. By the end of this exercise, you will have a clear overview of your content inventory, including key metrics related to SEO, user behavior, and sales impact.

Instructions & Resources

Copy the Content Plan & Budget Template

1. Open the "Content Plan & Budget Template" Google Sheet and navigate to the "2. Audit" tab.
2. Review the provided table structure, which includes columns for URL, date published, author, buying stage, level of intent, format, SEO metrics, behavior metrics, sales metrics, status, priority, and notes.
3. Export the XML sitemap of your website, consult your engineering team, or use an SEO tool like www.screamingfrog.co.uk to gather all the URLs of your website pages quickly.
4. Starting from the first row of the table, enter the URL of each existing content piece in the "URL" column.
5. Fill in the corresponding information for each content piece, such as the date published, author, buying stage (awareness, consideration, decision), level of intent (cold, warm, hot), and format (blog post, video, infographic, etc.).
6. Use SEO metrics to evaluate the performance of each content piece. This can include organic traffic, backlinks, and any relevant SEO indicators you track.
7. Assess user behavior metrics for each content piece. Consider the number of sessions, average time on page, and any engagement metrics that are meaningful for your goals.
8. Evaluate the sales impact of each content piece. Track the number of leads generated and the number of won deals directly attributed to the content.
9. In the "Status" column, indicate the current status of each content piece (e.g., active, outdated, needs updating, repurpose opportunity).
10. Assign a priority to each content piece based on its importance and alignment with your marketing objectives.
11. Utilize the "Notes" column to capture any additional observations or comments related to each content piece.

Note: You can customize the table structure or add additional columns based on your specific content audit needs. But be aware that column E:E and F:F are used on the next exercise and tab “3. Gaps” to identify your content caps.