The Simplest Way to Audit Your Blog Post Performance (EP19)

And How to Improve Them

In this episode, I walk you through a super simple method to conduct a content audit, nay, review… using Google Analytics and Google Search Console. I get into how to sort landing pages by key events, choosing appropriate date frames, and analyzing impressions and click-through rates. I also provides tips for updating blog posts to make them more appealing and effective, including improving the layout, updating the call to action, and adding testimonials.

Resources

Content Audit Workshop

Content Calendar Template

The Really Big Guide to Content Marketing

Download the Free Workbook – How to Get 1,000 More Website Visits

Fave video tools:
Wave.video
Vidyo.ai
Lumen5

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Raw Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the small business sweet spot. I’m your host Barb Davids, and this show is dedicated to helping small business owners like you get more organic website traffic and also to help create and distribute content and analyzing the numbers so that we can make better informed marketing decisions. It is action oriented, direct, and conversational. And if you’ve been looking for SEO or content marketing help, please stick around to the very end where I share about the group coaching program, small business sweet spot. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s go. ​

 Welcome back to the sweet spot. So I do this podcast as an audio and a video, and I had some really fun, challenging trouble trying to set it all up. If you are interested in some behind the scenes, I will share that at the very end with you, but we are here to talk about content audits, what they are and how to do one very simply.

And content audit sounds a little icky, like an audit. Who wants an audit, right? So let’s reframe it into maybe, what is an audit? It is an explanation, or no, it’s an examination. Okay, that doesn’t even sound any good either. So let’s call it a review, a content review.

And a content review can feel a little overwhelming when you don’t know where to start or what pages to look at or what constitutes what to keep or what to get rid of. And how do you know what numbers are good? So I’m going to give you a super simple way to just do a quick audit for your website so that you can see if something is generating website traffic and if it’s converting.

So this short method feels like it shouldn’t even work. It just seems so simple. But I did this with a client and we did an update to one of the blog posts and it actually doubled the lead she had. Now I’m not really fond of giving numbers because everybody’s in a different , journey and the numbers don’t necessarily mean one thing for one person doubling at 10 to 20 is a big deal.

Whereas somebody else might say 1000 to 2000 is a big deal. So doubling was a big deal in this particular case, and we did it using this short method that I’m going to go through.

Go into Google Analytics. and go into the generate lead section on the left hand side. In there, you’re going to see landing pages. Once you click landing pages, there’s a column that says key events. When you hover over there, there is going to be a little arrow that can go down. And if you click that, it’s going to sort by.

The most to the least. Then you’re going to go up to the upper right hand corner and choose the date frame. So you’re going to choose whatever date frame you feel comfortable with. Typically, I like year over year and a lot of the times I like to do one two or three months. It is going to vary based off of what i’m doing at the time or whose reports i’m looking at.

So if you just want to start with something start with the last 30 days and then do that year over year. And that is going to show you the biggest decline in terms of leads per page. If you have your key events set up inside of Google analytics.

So what if you don’t have a lot of leads coming in, just generally speaking, like you’re just starting out another way to look at your content, to see if it’s working or not working is to go into Google search console.

When you go into Google search console, you can see all the pages that Google can see and where people click to your website. Okay.

So if when you go in there, you change your date again, it’d be last 30 days, year over year, if that’s an easy way to start or even do three months over last year, just because of how much up and down there can be with Google search. I tend to like. Three months on the Google Search Console side

and then there’s a thing called pages So you’re gonna click pages and then you’re gonna sort by impressions if you don’t see impressions in the column There’s a box up at the top that you can toggle it on and then you’re gonna click impressions and have it sort Descending so the most to the least As you’re looking through those pages, then take a look and see if the click through rate is over one or two percent.

If it’s under one percent and it has a lot of impressions, then it might be something that you can consider working on. Maybe it just needs a tweak in the meta title or the description so that more people can see it. Especially if the ranking position is on page one, two, or three.

It’s that easy, right? It feels almost too easy. There are different methods to doing this and you can use spreadsheets, you can use tools, there’s a plethora of AI tools that can do content audits for your website. I do feel like a lot of the times if you go in manually and you take a look at these numbers, it’s much easier to decide if something needs to be updated or not.

A lot of the tools are not going to be able to give you context of what you meant to write for. So keep that in mind as you use tools . Now, let’s say this is maybe too easy or you do have a lot of pages and you’d like a more logical way to go about doing your content audit. I do have a content audit workshop.

It’s a replay of a live that I did and that does have a spreadsheet so you can do all the conditional formatting you want and it gives you some numbers and ways to format the sheet so that you can say, okay, The first one that shows that’s the one I should work on first. It also prepares you for, okay, should I do a consolidation of blog posts?

Should I remove the blog post? So it gives you some criteria to go on for that as well. If this is something that you’re interested in, you can find that at compassdigitalstrategies.com/EP19.

Okay, so now you’ve found the page that you want to improve, what exactly do you improve on it?

The copy is a gimme, right? And so are the photos, but whatever you intend to update, just keep in the back of your mind that this is for the person who’s reading it, who’s landing on the page from Google.

I’ve gone through a lot of refreshes with blogs and I feel like I’ve kind of like tore them up from like start to finish and it was almost like a complete redo. Some businesses you have a change in sentiment or you can find some things from testimonials that you might want to add in and change the angle some.

But here are some other things that you might not have considered.

The layout. Is it visually appealing? I think there’s some debate about whether or not people are holding their attention with the blog post or if they’re just skimming. However, it should still be visually appealing. So perhaps as you scroll through on mobile or desktop, depending on how your audience most looks at your website, Does it feel like it flows well?

Is it keeping them engaged? And if not, consider pulling out even just some quotes. So if there’s a great sentence inside of your blog post that you want to call attention to, just make it bigger and bolder. Put it on a colored background or something.

Check the call to action at the end of the blog post. Maybe you have a new lead magnet, or maybe there’s something new in your business that you’d like to refer people to versus when it was first written.

Related to what I was talking about with testimonials, maybe there’s a new testimonial that you can add into the blog post that relates to what you’re talking about.

And remember, you don’t have to put the whole testimonial. You can put just a portion of it and still be ethically correct with what you’re putting there. It’s very nice also to, if you can, put a photo with the testimonial, maybe first name, last initial. It doesn’t have to give away the privacy of the person listing the testimonial.

Here’s one that might take a little bit more work. Can you add a quote from someone in the industry? Or someone that might be willing to share the article with their audience? Perhaps you can get a quote from them or even refer something of theirs that they did. They may be willing to share and then that way you can get some more exposure on your blog post.

Is there a download that you could provide? Something that would make the reader’s audience so much easier. Like if they needed a checklist or a guide or something that relates to the topic that you’re writing about.

Consider even adding maybe a video or your podcast if you have one to the blog post. Is there something that you can add that would support the topic? And if you’re not comfortable getting on camera, there are lots of tools that will take your blog post and create a video for you from it, and then you can use stock images from that tool.

I do have a couple of faves and I’ll put those in the show notes for you.

Okay, that ends my super simple way of looking at how to look at the performance of your blog posts and what to do for improving them.

You can find more info on content strategy guide, and even a workbook about how to get more website visits in the show notes,

stay tuned for more episodes to help your business thrive online. We’ll see you in the next sweet spot. Cheers.

Thank you for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you’re looking for SEO and content marketing help, consider joining the small business sweet spot. It’s a group coaching program where you can get answers to your questions about your business directly and clarity around the marketing strategies that you would like to implement in your business.

You can find all kinds of information at compassdigitalstrategies. com. And if you liked the episode, please tell a friend. Cheers.

 Okay, so if you stuck around this long, then you wanted to hear some more behind the scenes and I did share a little bit of behind the scenes. I think it was like at the beginning of June. There was a episode that came out. Then I was in Portland downtown and I showed my setup. I was in a studio and it was quite cramped and I was trying to use the light.

One of the challenges that I have is the setup because I go from place to place and I do have a few things. I haven’t quite found my like tech stack in terms of like how to hold the phone and the lighting and not get the lighting to show and have it be consistent as much as possible. Like right now I have this beautiful tree right here and maybe Once at some point a squirrel, well, there’s a spider in there, but maybe a squirrel will come up and down.

It’s kind of fun. They are, are like putting stuff away, you know, like they’re traveling with stuff in their mouth. It’s really cute. But today I had a trouble because I didn’t have the right height and trying to get the right angle. So the background wasn’t busy and then also so the ring light wasn’t like shining in my glasses because I have that as well.

So it was sort of a challenge. If you have any Tips on super simple tech stack. I would love to hear it. This obviously too, if you’re listening to this, you can’t see all of this information. Um, the video has obviously the video, right? The screen that what’s happening, but, um, I’m trying to minimize as much as possible because I am a digital nomad, I go from place to place and having all the pieces to carry with, it’s just a pain in my butt, right?

And there was one video I saw I think once on Instagram and somebody said they had a whole suitcase and a half of tech and I’m like, no, that is not happening, I’m not doing that. So, I think I already still have too much stuff. And it’s just a comical way to try to do the podcast. The audio one is obviously easier, although you will hear differences from the first one to this one just because of the different, um, what do you call these, uh, microphones that I’ve been using and stuff.

So it’s interesting. Um, yeah. Anyway, so let me know if you have any Tech tips in terms of simple ways to set up. Like I use my camera from my phone. It’s a camo app, and then I use zoom to record and I have a ring light that sits on the floor and then I have the tripod holding my phone. But the funny thing is.

I haven’t gotten something that like sits on a desk and I think that’s what I’m missing so far. So because my desks are always different or like my chairs, if I could have something that goes, it can sit on my laptop, but the problem is then it’s too low, right? Like I’m like looking at it down weird. And so I want something that’s a little bit more eye level, but anyway, that was my challenge this week.

So a little behind the scenes for you. All right. Have a great day. Cheers.

*I am a tool geek. I love me a useful tool. I personally use, have used or review every tool recommended in my articles. I am an affiliate of some and earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Barb Davids - SEO Consultant

Barb Davids is an SEO consultant and owner of Compass Digital Strategies. Driven by data and analytics, she works hard to get business-changing results for her clients, such as 256% more website traffic and 22% more leads. Connect with her: Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter
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