Today’s Ask An SEO question comes from Nick.
“Which time period is most useful for content audits? Traffic changes based on Google algorithm updates and is also seasonal. Should I use a year of performance data to influence strategy? Would it be better to use smaller chunks of data?”
Good question, Nick!
Since every site is different, there is no right or wrong answer as to when to conduct a content audit, but there are signs that it is time to conduct a content review.
Also, the annual performance audit is no problem.
One thing to watch out for is changing just because of a temporary problem, executives panicking due to seasonality, or fluctuations during a search engine update. am.
Search engines such as Google often rollback on updates, returning the correct content or page.
Don’t rely on updates as a sign that it’s time to audit content exclusively.
Use these instead.
- If your traffic is stagnant and you are not seeing good pages that should be ranking. (after technical and structural issues are resolved)
- The content that was always at the top shifts and starts shifting, and your content is the same as the page that replaced you.
- If it’s a busy season 6-7 months ahead and you don’t have a ranking.
- Annual evaluation by category, by page.
stagnant traffic
If your traffic has been stagnant but you’ve been adding content regularly for a while, it’s a good idea to take a step back and see what you’re publishing.
If you’re not getting new traffic, do you already have pages that are getting the same type of traffic from SEO?
If yes, change the topic to find something new that can engage your audience while remaining relevant to your primary product, service or offering.
I don’t want to cannibalize a working page. But instead of just looking at SEO traffic and continuing to write about the same topic, focus on your user base and audience.
Have social media users stopped sharing or clicking through your page?
When this happens, you may be posting topics that aren’t interesting to your user base or going overboard on those topics, and your users are fed up with the same.
Look at other types of content that meet the needs of the same user base.
So, if your target audience is single fathers with younger daughters and you’re selling books, think about other “single father issues.” This includes styling hair, planning a birthday party, shopping for clothes, and introducing her daughter to a new boyfriend.
Each of these topics has matching books that allow you to cross-sell your content and provide solutions to your audience’s needs. Topics also allows you to work with niche influencers to create cross-promotional marketing campaigns with complementary companies.
This can increase your exposure and lead to natural backlinks.
This is a big win and will help feed your other channels and help you grow your company as a whole while driving traffic back to your relevant audience.
As an SEO pro or copywriter, you can be the hero and get a seat in your marketing plan.
Pages and categories sliding down
If you notice pages or categories on your site lagging behind, now is a good time to audit them.
But don’t just pull, prune, and rewrite. First, look at:
- What replaced you in search results?
- What topics do they cover that you don’t? If they are relevant, think about how you can incorporate them naturally into your content.
- How many backlinks and internal links does the page have if it receives “real” media coverage? Why do they get it and you don’t? When should you prioritize content? Send additional signals via internal links (especially pages with quality backlinks) Are you boosting your site by doing
- Do you have the right schema and site structure, fast page loads, and a solution?
- Has anyone published similar potentially conflicting content on your site? Use an SEO tool to group your keyword clusters and see if multiple pages on your site are all showing up with those keywords. If you have conflicting pages, you can combine some, remove some, and rewrite some so that the benefits are more apparent to your visitors.
Approximately 6 months after seasonal traffic
Approximately six months after the busy season, check to see if you are attending the most important term.
If not, do the same exercises as above and consider ways to improve your copy.
I start about 8 months in advance because I like to do more testing than I need to. Six months is enough to create content and freeze code three to four months before the busy season begins.
pro tips: Don’t split organic traffic and pages in tests.
This goes wrong in many ways. Instead, create a PPC conversion plan, test copy, and copy, roll out the best experience over time, and see how it gets indexed and ranked.
annual evaluation
It’s always a good idea to do an annual evaluation.
You may know what the best performing copy is, but your site’s categories may not be exposed. This is easy to find in most analytics packages.
Sort by SEO traffic, then view by category folder (or collection if you’re using Shopify) to see how your categories are performing.
From there, you can change your site structure, create internal links, and look for areas you’re missing.
You can also more easily detect if copy and H tags are working on your categories and find skipped categories.
Another big discovery in this exercise is that previously well-performing posts dropped out, while other posts took their place. Check this with a time comparison and redo any pages that fell off if necessary.
If you find your traffic steady because one post replaces another post’s acquisition, you have a chance to double your traffic.
Work on getting the fallback page and keep the current page. Fixing an old page can sometimes be more effective than creating a new page, and it’s easier and saves time.
There is no one size fits all for when you should do a content SEO audit, but these are four good times to do one.
Hope this helps.
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Featured image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
