How can you analyze the results of a content audit?

1 Set clear criteria

Before you start analyzing your content audit data, you need to have a clear idea of what you are looking for and why. What are your content goals and how do they relate to your business objectives? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure your content's success? How do you define high-quality, relevant, and engaging content for your audience? By setting clear criteria, you can filter and prioritize your content audit data and focus on the most important aspects.

2 Categorize your content

One way to analyze your content audit data is to categorize your content into different groups based on your criteria. For example, you can use the four-quadrant model to classify your content into four categories: update, keep, consolidate, or remove. Update content is content that has potential but needs some improvement, such as adding keywords, updating information, or optimizing for SEO. Keep content is content that performs well and meets your goals, such as generating traffic, conversions, or engagement. Consolidate content is content that overlaps or duplicates with other content and can be merged or redirected to avoid confusion or cannibalization. Remove content is content that is outdated, irrelevant, or low-quality and can be deleted or archived to improve your site's usability and authority.

4 Make recommendations and action plans

The final step of analyzing your content audit data is to make recommendations and action plans based on your findings. You should summarize the main takeaways and insights from your analysis and suggest specific actions to improve your content strategy. For example, you can recommend creating new content to fill gaps, updating existing content to boost performance, consolidating similar content to avoid duplication, or removing unnecessary content to enhance user experience. You should also assign priorities, responsibilities, timelines, and resources to each action and track the results and impact of your changes.

A content audit is a valuable tool to evaluate and optimize your website's content. By analyzing the results of a content audit, you can gain insights into your content's quality, relevance, performance, and alignment with your goals. You can also identify gaps, opportunities, and areas for improvement in your content strategy and make recommendations and action plans to achieve them.