How do you analyze website content?

1 Define your objectives

Before you dive into the content itself, you need to clarify what you want to achieve with your website. What are your business goals, brand values, and key messages? How do they align with your user needs, expectations, and behaviors? You can use tools like SMART goals, SWOT analysis, or content vision statements to define your objectives and measure your success.

2 Audit your content inventory

Next, you need to take stock of what content you have on your website. A content inventory is a comprehensive list of all your web pages, along with their metadata, such as title, URL, format, word count, date, etc. You can use tools like Screaming Frog, Content Analysis Tool, or Google Sheets to create and organize your content inventory. This will help you identify gaps, duplicates, or outdated content.

3 Evaluate your content quality

Once you have your content inventory, you need to assess how well your content meets your objectives and user needs. A content quality evaluation is a systematic process of reviewing your content for various criteria, such as accuracy, clarity, relevance, consistency, tone, style, readability, etc. You can use tools like Hemingway, Grammarly, or Yoast to check your content quality and get suggestions for improvement.

4 Analyze your content performance

Another important aspect of analyzing website content is measuring how it performs in terms of traffic, engagement, conversion, retention, etc. A content performance analysis is a data-driven approach to track and evaluate your content metrics and KPIs, such as page views, bounce rate, time on page, click-through rate, etc. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or Hotjar to collect and visualize your content performance data.

5 Compare your content with competitors

To gain a competitive edge, you also need to analyze how your website content compares with your rivals. A content competitive analysis is a strategic method of identifying and evaluating your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and best practices and gaps. You can use tools like SEMrush, Moz, or BuzzSumo to research and compare your competitors' content in terms of keywords, topics, formats, quality, performance, etc.

6 Create your content action plan

Finally, based on your content analysis, you need to create a content action plan that outlines the steps you need to take to optimize your website content. A content action plan is a detailed document that specifies your content goals, strategies, tactics, resources, timelines, and responsibilities. You can use tools like Trello, Asana, or Airtable to create and manage your content action plan and track your progress and results.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?