The new year is ripe with opportunities to hone your content marketing strategy. One of the best ways to keep your content fresh and relevant is to perform an annual pruning called a content audit. This time of year is the ideal time to take stock of your old blog posts, articles, and landing pages to ensure they are up-to-date and pertinent. 

2023 is outta here – it’s time to dust off the out-of-date material and enhance your content with fresh and updated seedlings that blossom into eye-catching content. Although content auditing is relatively simple, it often goes overlooked, leading to an unruly. Here’s how to take a long, hard look at your website and cut out the dead weight. 

What in the World is a Content Audit?

While the IRS may be the first thing you may think of when you hear “audit,” we are not talking about taxes. Although tax and content audits involve some of the same principles, thoroughly examining your website content and copy is nothing to be afraid of. 

When you take an extensive gander at your website material, the goal is to comb through each piece of content and determine if it is still worthy of a spot on your site or blog. A content audit involves meticulously examining your website material to ensure it remains relevant to your audience. This process may include scrutinizing blog posts, articles, marketing material, social media posts, or any other content you published throughout the previous year. 

As you scour your published materials, you’re looking for red flags that may mark your content as outdated, irrelevant, offensive, or potentially problematic. We are not just discussing material that mentions a specific date or timeframe but subjects that may no longer apply to your audience’s needs or pain points. 

Once you’ve combed through the vast libraries of material in your publications, it’s time to apply a pinch of strategy to your material. This is when you’ll decide if your content makes the cut, needs to be updated, or thrown out altogether. 

A content audit aims to streamline your material to optimize your performance, maximize your audience engagement, and enhance your value from a consumer and marketing standpoint. 

Like Fish and Houseguests

You’ve likely heard the phrase. “houseguests are like fish; they start to stink after three days,” Well, your website material can be in that category. As market trends change, consumer needs evolve, and social climates transition, content that becomes dusty or uncouth can cause stench for your audience. The last thing you want on your blog post is outdated content that sticks out like a sore thumb, detracting from your content value and user experience. 

As you prune the stale content, you optimize your website to perform at its best without all the extra fluff weighing it down. Think of your content as a tree; when you carefully prune the branches, the rest of the tree can thrive and produce healthy and delicious fruit. On the other hand, if you let every branch grow without trimming or care, your fruit will wither, and your tree won’t be able to supply its branches with the nutrients they need to flourish. 

The Value of a Fresh Start

Starting your year with a content audit is a healthy practice for properly maintaining your material. An audit comes with many benefits to help lay the foundation for a successful and engaging content marketing strategy. 

When you filter your material annually, it can lead to some of the following benefits:

• Better performing content 
• Relevant and engaging material 
• Greater authority and credibility
• SEO-rich development 
• Understanding your content’s performance
• Identify missing elements of your material
• Provides information on what content should remain, be edited, or pruned. 

According to the content marketing educators at Semrush, a content audit helps your SEO performance and drives up your ranking on search results. For this reason alone, an annual content audit can be an invaluable New Year’s resolution.

How to Prevent Stale Content 

When you make a habit of an annual content audit, you set your future self up for success. If you constantly weed your virtual garden of content, next year’s process will not be as arduous. Remember, the focus is on optimization, so taking inventory once a year can prevent years of material piling up. Of course, be my guest if you like painstakingly combing through everything you’ve ever produced with hypersensitive scrutiny. Speaking on behalf of the rest of us, though, why not make it easier on yourself? 

In addition to an annual reaping ceremony, there are a few ways to prevent content from growing like an unwanted fungus on your website. Here are a few tips and tricks to keep your content perennial:

• Stick to your content calendar and scheduling
• Only publish evergreen content from the beginning
• Update when necessary
• Revitalize old material to give a new spin or perspective 
• Keep your audience in mind when creating material
• Monitor and analyze your performance
• Graft in your SEO elements for easy searchability
• Be flexible and adapt to meet the needs of your audience 
• Don’t be afraid to prune ill-performing pieces

The more evergreen you create your material from the beginning, the easier your content audits will be in the future. 

Let Us Keep Your Content Evergreen

We are excited to see what the new year has in store for Bizwriters. You never know what content will walk through our door, so we stay on our toes. If you’re looking for a content writing agency to help your website stay fresh and relevant, get in touch with our team to learn how we can put our green thumbs to work for you.