In episode #619. Eric and Neil discuss how you can audit your content in 5 minutes. Tune in to hear how you can quickly improve your content.
TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:
- [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Audit Your Content in 5 Minutes
- [00:34] Eric likes to use Screaming Frog Spider, an SEO tool that allows him to crawl his website like a search engine would.
- [01:06] There’s an annual fee, but it’s a great way to audit your content.
- [01:12] Neil likes to make a list of all his WordPress content, see which topics are duplicates, then plugs that into Google Search Console. Once he sees which ones are ranking, he will combine the similar posts and update his links.
- [02:04] This is the quickest way to audit your content and this will increase your rankings.
- [03:05] Using a tool like AHREFS allows you to do content gap analysis, while also offering a look at your competitors.
- [03:25] Content auditing doesn’t take long!
- [03:43] Click flow helps to optimize organic click-through rates to drive your traffic up.
- [04:12] That’s all for today!
- [04:15] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway!
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The post How to Audit Your Content in 5 Minutes | Ep. #619 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.
Full Transcript of The Episode
Voiceover: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the gile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Siu.
Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.
Neil Patel: I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Siu: Today we're going to talk about how to audit your content in five minutes. I'll go ahead and kick this off. The tool I like using to look at my entire website if Screaming Frog Spider. It's an SEO tool. It allows you to crawl your website like a search engine would, and then you can also spot issues with the site as well. I also like you can look at the structure and there's a whole host of things you can do. I like looking at that thing first.
Yes, it's a little more complex, but you layer Screaming Frog in with another tool like a Google Search Console for example and you're armed with a lot of data, and you're not paying that much money to begin with. I think Screaming Frog is maybe $99 or $199 for the year. It's not bad.
Neil Patel: Isn't that a one time product or is it yearly?
Eric Siu: I think it's yearly now.
Neil Patel: That's yearly? Either way it's amazing. The way I audit my content is I go and I go through WordPress. I make a list of all the content. I go see which ones are on duplicate topics. I go then plug that into Google Search Console. I go see within Google Search Console which ones are ranking for similar terms, and I just start combining those posts. I combine them into the most popular version. I then adjust my internal links to point and update to the new URL. In addition to that, I go look for all the posts that are out of date, whether it's the URL has an older date in it or whether the content is just nonexistent.
It could be like you have posts on FeedBurner, which no one uses anymore from Google. You don't want to just update that. You want to crush it, or you want to look at posts that hey, the information is a few years old, or YouTube updated their interface, I need to change up my images, whatever it maybe, and update the content. The quickest way to audit your content is you look for duplicate content. You combine them. You make the one that gets the most traffic, the main post when you're combing. You look at all the old content you updated. You look at all the irrelevant content, and you delete it.
By doing that, yes, it takes more than five minutes to implement the changes, but when you do that over time, your rankings will go up. That's what most people got wrong because years and years ago, Google's algorithm was hey, if you just keep writing content on the same topic over and over, that's fine. Now they're like, "Hey, we don't know which page to rank, so you should kind of figure your ish or your situation and maybe you combine them."
Eric Siu: Neil's exactly right, but here's the thing, I mean in terms of making these recommendations, you can do it within five minutes after you do it a couple of times. This framework is something that's proven to work both for Neil and myself. You can even look at I think for Pat Flynn. He had a guy on his podcast and he deleted a lot of content and his traffic went up by three times. I'm not saying that's going to happen for you. Your mileage may vary.
The other thing you can look at, and I'm not going to try to add to much stuff here, I think Neil has already hit the nail on the head, but using the tool like Ahrefs allows you to pull up a content gap analysis and look at you versus your competitors. Then you can also look at the top pages for keywords that you have and then decide what you want to focus on more. Neil, anything else?
Neil Patel: No. Content auditing doesn't take that long. Don't think about it as, "Oh, my content needs to be 10,000 words or 5,000 words or 2,000." There is no right word count. When you're going through the text, just make sure the content's thorough, actionable, someone can read it, they're getting step-by-step insights. You can also, last but not least, Eric has a tool. What's the tool's name?
Eric Siu: Click Flow.
Neil Patel: Click Flow. What does Click Flow help them do?
Eric Siu: Optimize organic click-through rates to drive your traffic up.
Neil Patel: The point I'm bringing it up right now is when you're auditing your content, look at what keywords are driving your traffic. A simple tweak to make is make sure the most popular keywords that are relevant to that article are in the title tag in the meta description. It'll increase your rankings over months. You won't see an instant result, but by doing that, you'll get more clicks, more traffic, and more rankings. That's the last thing I'll do when auditing your content.
Eric Siu: All right. Go get your marketing goodies at SingleGrain.com/giveaway and we'll see you tomorrow.
Voiceover: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. Don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.
Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.
Neil Patel: I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Siu: Today we're going to talk about how to audit your content in five minutes. I'll go ahead and kick this off. The tool I like using to look at my entire website if Screaming Frog Spider. It's an SEO tool. It allows you to crawl your website like a search engine would, and then you can also spot issues with the site as well. I also like you can look at the structure and there's a whole host of things you can do. I like looking at that thing first.
Yes, it's a little more complex, but you layer Screaming Frog in with another tool like a Google Search Console for example and you're armed with a lot of data, and you're not paying that much money to begin with. I think Screaming Frog is maybe $99 or $199 for the year. It's not bad.
Neil Patel: Isn't that a one time product or is it yearly?
Eric Siu: I think it's yearly now.
Neil Patel: That's yearly? Either way it's amazing. The way I audit my content is I go and I go through WordPress. I make a list of all the content. I go see which ones are on duplicate topics. I go then plug that into Google Search Console. I go see within Google Search Console which ones are ranking for similar terms, and I just start combining those posts. I combine them into the most popular version. I then adjust my internal links to point and update to the new URL. In addition to that, I go look for all the posts that are out of date, whether it's the URL has an older date in it or whether the content is just nonexistent.
It could be like you have posts on FeedBurner, which no one uses anymore from Google. You don't want to just update that. You want to crush it, or you want to look at posts that hey, the information is a few years old, or YouTube updated their interface, I need to change up my images, whatever it maybe, and update the content. The quickest way to audit your content is you look for duplicate content. You combine them. You make the one that gets the most traffic, the main post when you're combing. You look at all the old content you updated. You look at all the irrelevant content, and you delete it.
By doing that, yes, it takes more than five minutes to implement the changes, but when you do that over time, your rankings will go up. That's what most people got wrong because years and years ago, Google's algorithm was hey, if you just keep writing content on the same topic over and over, that's fine. Now they're like, "Hey, we don't know which page to rank, so you should kind of figure your ish or your situation and maybe you combine them."
Eric Siu: Neil's exactly right, but here's the thing, I mean in terms of making these recommendations, you can do it within five minutes after you do it a couple of times. This framework is something that's proven to work both for Neil and myself. You can even look at I think for Pat Flynn. He had a guy on his podcast and he deleted a lot of content and his traffic went up by three times. I'm not saying that's going to happen for you. Your mileage may vary.
The other thing you can look at, and I'm not going to try to add to much stuff here, I think Neil has already hit the nail on the head, but using the tool like Ahrefs allows you to pull up a content gap analysis and look at you versus your competitors. Then you can also look at the top pages for keywords that you have and then decide what you want to focus on more. Neil, anything else?
Neil Patel: No. Content auditing doesn't take that long. Don't think about it as, "Oh, my content needs to be 10,000 words or 5,000 words or 2,000." There is no right word count. When you're going through the text, just make sure the content's thorough, actionable, someone can read it, they're getting step-by-step insights. You can also, last but not least, Eric has a tool. What's the tool's name?
Eric Siu: Click Flow.
Neil Patel: Click Flow. What does Click Flow help them do?
Eric Siu: Optimize organic click-through rates to drive your traffic up.
Neil Patel: The point I'm bringing it up right now is when you're auditing your content, look at what keywords are driving your traffic. A simple tweak to make is make sure the most popular keywords that are relevant to that article are in the title tag in the meta description. It'll increase your rankings over months. You won't see an instant result, but by doing that, you'll get more clicks, more traffic, and more rankings. That's the last thing I'll do when auditing your content.
Eric Siu: All right. Go get your marketing goodies at SingleGrain.com/giveaway and we'll see you tomorrow.
Voiceover: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. Don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.
