There was a time when every SEO blog would tell you that “Content is King” >> Creating content is the way to become visible in the search engines, and get traffic to your website.
And so every business that took SEO seriously started to create content. Lots of content.
Today Content Marketing is still a good strategy. But it has become much harder to succeed with the overload of content available nowadays. And search engines must decide what content to rank, and what content to ignore.
Good Content Marketing involves more than ‘just’ creating content, that is why every strong content marketing strategy thrives on a content audit deep-dive.
a 360-degree review of all your content
A content audit is a way to analyze all the content on your website. It will help you understand how to improve your content to rank higher, and how to optimize your content team’s resources.
The questions a content audit needs to answer are;
- What is the overall quality of our content
- What are the traffic trends for our content
- What content is currently driving traffic
- What content was driving traffic in the past
- What content makes sense to update
- What makes sense to remove
- What content is currently ranking
- What content is working well for your competitors
In this article, we list the tools we like to use when doing our content analysis. Many of these tools offer a wide range of features that allow you to audit different aspects of your content.
Note, that while most of these tools have a free version you can use, their use is often limited when only using the free version.
Tools to Analyze Traffic and Engagement Metrics
These tools use metrics like traffic, rankings, engagement, conversion rate, and backlinks to help you understand how your existing content performs.
- Google Analytics: This tool is essential for analyzing website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates. It offers insights into what content attracts the most visitors (and what content does not attract any traffic), how long people stay on your site, and the paths they take through your content. To use it, integrate it with your website, set up goals to track conversions, and regularly review reports to understand user engagement.
- SEMrush: SEMrush provides a broad range of data, including traffic metrics. For example, SEMrush shows you organic search traffic, keyword rankings, and the performance of various content pieces. Use it by entering your website or a specific page URL to get an analysis of your traffic, keywords (and your competitors!).
- Ubersuggest: Similar to SEMrush this tool, developed by Neil Patel, offers insights into traffic and SEO metrics such as keyword rankings, domain authority, and backlink data. Use Ubersuggest by entering your website's URL to see traffic estimations and top-performing content.
Content Analysis Tools with a Technical Angle
We like to use the tools below when we focus more on the technical SEO performance of the content; are all SEO elements used properly, are they optimized for the right keywords and is the content loading fast (enough)?
- Ahrefs: Provides insights on content quality through its "Content Gap" feature and gives an overview of the website's backlink profile, organic keywords, and content performance. Use Ahrefs to analyze your top-performing content, find content gaps, and explore keyword opportunities.
- Surfer SEO: Focuses on on-page optimization by analyzing content against hundreds of on-page signals. It suggests improvements based on what's working well for competitors ranking for the same keywords. Use Surfer by entering your target keyword and analyzing the content suggestions it provides.
- Morning Score: Offers a unique way to quantify your SEO efforts into a single score, making it easier to track progress over time. It also provides keyword research, competitor analysis, and link tracking. Use Morning Score by entering your domain and keywords to track and follow the guided suggestions to improve your SEO score.
- Page Optimizer Pro: An on-page SEO tool that gives specific recommendations for improving content based on the analysis of top-ranking competitors. Input the URL of the page you want to optimize and the target keywords, and the tool will provide detailed recommendations.
- WooRank: Provides an SEO score for your website, along with insights into technical SEO issues, usability, mobile-friendliness, and social media engagement. Use WooRank by entering your website’s URL to get a detailed report and actionable recommendations.
- Distilled.net (now part of Brainlabs): While not a tool, Distilled.net has offered resources, training, and consultancy in SEO. Their methodologies focus on best practices for content quality and technical SEO. For practical tools, look to their recommended resources or the services offered by Brainlabs.
Multi-Functional Content Audit Tools
As mentioned earlier, many of the mentioned tools offer a broad range of features for all types of specific audit tasks.
- Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Ubersuggest all offer similar features that allow you to do a full-scale content audit. They include a mix of performance metrics, technical analysis features, and keyword & competitor analysis options. If you only have time or budget to work with 1 tool, these are a good choice to start with.
- DeepCrawl and Screaming Frog primarily focus on the technical SEO aspects of your content. But when used well they can also offer insights that can indirectly impact content quality. The Screaming Frog blog has tons of articles to help you do so.
When we perform a content audit we like to use a combination of these tools. Even though they offer similar features, some of the features work better in one or the other.
If you need help auditing your content you can schedule a free SEO consult with one of our content specialists.
