If you've been business blogging for a while, have you ever completed a website audit? I created a content marketing audit template because I knew if I was ever going to invest time into building these assets (ie blog posts) on my site, then I better make sure the return is worth the effort and not miss the little things.
You see, last week while typing away in my office, I looked out the window to see a turtle walking across the neighbour's driveway. It's not something you see every day in the suburbs.
After the neighbour and I popped on our wildlife warrior capes, we headed off to return him safely home. On the walk, I discovered the neighbour was a copywriter, ran her own business and was open to collaborating. Who knew!
I could have easily been too fixated on the screen in front of me and missed this amazing little creature outside its usual environment and the opportunity to meet a like-minded business owner.
Question is: What's going on around YOU? Or are you too focused on the same ol' tasks and missing amazing moments and opportunities around you?
Instead of always creating new content for your blog, how about stepping back and taking a look at all the gems you already have that could be further polished.
As part of the 1000 Subscriber Project, to grow my email list 1000 subscribers at a time, I'm looking for ways to grow my database without always doing big campaigns or launches that can lead to burnout. It's about making the most of what I've already got... and not missing the little things!
I can create new pieces of content (which I'm doing with this blog post), but to be able to get faster results, we need to look at doing an audit of the content we currently have.
There are three steps in this content marketing audit. Watch the video, or keep scrolling, to find out what they are:
You can start using the content marketing audit template mentioned in the video by downloading a copy below.
Connecting Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Don't be overwhelmed by how techie that sub headline sounds. Stick with me...
An important task to tackle before we even get onto the three steps is to set up Google Search Console. If you haven't done this already, it's important to either get your web developer or marketing consultant to do it, or learn how to do this yourself. It's a pretty quick and simple task to do.
It not only helps us answer the questions we have when we're doing this audit, but it also allows Google to send notifications when there are issues with our website that we need to fix.
Once Google Console is set up, then connect it to your Google Analytics account. If you don't also have Google Analytics setup, look at doing this as a matter of urgency. The sooner you have it, the sooner you can start analysing what people are doing on your website and make changes accordingly.
When Google Analytics and Google Search Console are connected, the keywords people use to find your website via Google search will appear. This gives you clues as to what to do next with your content marketing.
High traffic and low opt-ins
The first of the three steps is to look at how you get traffic to your website every single day - or at least on a regular basis.
To do this, look at the Landing Pages section under the Google Search Console in Google Analytics to see which blog posts are ranking well.
If we click on the link for that blog post, it shows us the individual keywords or search terms that people are using to find that specific blog post in Google. This will be useful to know later in our audit.
For now, we're just looking for the blog posts that attract clicks to our website.
The next step is to look at whether those blog posts:
- Have an opt-in offer on them
- Are getting people signing up to that opt-in
One blog post that gets a lot of traffic from Google for me, but unfortunately has an opt-in attached that isn't converting at a particularly high rate.
So my first task is to find a better opt in offer to increase the email subscribers from that blog post.
I need to be asking:
- what is a better opt-in offer for this particular blog post?
- Or what would be next best step after somebody read this blog post? What do they want to do next?
Don't stress about whether it's a PDF, audio, video, webinar or challenge at this point, but rather first focus on creating something that takes them to the next step that they're hungry for so they can keep moving through your client pathway.
How to increase our website traffic from Google
So we've just found all the blog posts that get clicks, which is great. Now what about all those blog posts that get lots of impressions, but no clicks?
That's what we're looking at in the second step. Look into your Google Console section under Pages again to see which are getting high impressions, but they're getting no clicks.
What this means is that people are seeing your blog post in the results of Google search, but they're not clicking because it's not enticing enough.
To fix this, what you need to think about is that headline and the meta description that someone sees inside of their Google search results. It needs to read like an ad, aiming to be really clickable to get them through to the next step. Everything in a sales funnel needs to be about "what is the next step and how do I get them there?".
In this case, we're getting our blog post to be seen in the Google search results, we're just not getting them to go to the next step - ie, visiting our website.
To change this, go into the back end of the blog post if you're in WordPress. Look for the SEO plugin you have at the bottom of the blog post. I use All In One SEO and another I'd recommend is Yoast.
What we're looking for is the headline and whether it's "Google friendly" - that is, that it grabs people's attention when they're searching for the keywords you're ranking for and entices them to click through.
It can be different to what is on the post itself and what gets shared on social media, but ensure it's still relevant. What you input into the SEO plugin is what's seen in search results.
The other part is the meta description. This is the couple of sentences that sit underneath that headline. It's important that our main keyword is in the title, but it doesn't matter if it's in the meta description. However, I've always felt it's good to incorporate it. It's not a ranking factor, but it is important for someone to see it bolded within your meta description as it's more enticing to click.
And the number of clicks you get from people going from Google to your website is actually a ranking factor. So, if people are clicking through and going to the next step, then Google is more likely to rank that one blog post higher for us.
Look at how you can increase the clickthrough rate from Google on your own blogs.
Ranking your keywords higher
The third step of our audit is to rank the keywords higher in Google.
Firstly, back in Google Analytics in the Search Console, look at the keywords and rank them by the position they rank in Google.
We need to know which blog post this keyword is attached to. That's as easy as putting the keyword into Google and putting your website address after it to see what the actual page is.
You can switch this step around and first look at the Pages, then clickthrough to find out the keywords attached to that blog post. Either way is fine.
What we're looking for is the keywords that are on page two, three or four that we could realistically move up to page one. Sometimes we may not be aware we're ranking for a particular keyword. If you look at that blog post, maybe you haven't even used that specific keyword. This is a great opportunity to go back and edit the blog post by placing the keyword in the post to help move it up the rankings. If it's already in there once, either put it in again or bold it (avoid stuffing the keyword throughout the post).
You can also take blog posts that are low on keywords and look at how you can include keywords that are related that might be more likely to rank - and rank higher. This will help the blog post rank higher overall.
Your Content Marketing Audit Template
You now have three different things you can be looking at inside Google Analytics and the Google Search Console to grow your traffic and email subscribers.
Instead of writing that new blog post, first go back and see what opportunities you already have to get more email subscribers from what you've got.
If we're:
- getting impressions but no clicks, we're never going to get email subscribers.
- getting clicks, and they are going to our website but the opt in on that blog post isn't working, then we're still not getting email subscribers and building that database.
So this is a really great way to help you get to 1000 emails subscribers, if you've already got a blog and you've got existing content. Look at how you can improve the content that you've already created.
There are other things you can look at too. While the list is quite extensive, here's a start:
- The content just needs to be longer, because it's shorter than 500 words
- Improve the quality of the blog post by looking at other blogs that rank for the keywords you rank for. Find out why those pieces of content might be better than what you've created and see how you can improve your piece so it outranks them.
- Add more media to the blog post with alt text, like photos, inforgraphics and videos.
Download the free content marketing audit template to help you manage the blog posts you're working on, detail what you're doing and follow the steps.
If you're:
- not really sure how to do the whole Google Analytics and Google Search Console part
- unsure how to properly audit your content as an ongoing system,
- feeling a bit overwhelmed about how to set up your opt-in offers, landing pages and complete sales funnel
step inside the Client Pathway Library, which has a tutorial on how to do all this with step by step videos, workbooks and image-based tutorials to make it easy for you to set up this strategy yourself.
Access Client Pathway Library.
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