How to Do a B2B Content Audit
A content audit is a little like spinach.
It isn’t the sexiest part of a B2B content strategy, but it’s the plate of veggies that powers your content results. A content marketing audit sets the stage for everything that comes after—from the Popeye punch of content mapping to the 12% body fat of topic generation.
If you haven't done one before and are wondering if you should, here's a quick test:
Do you create blog or other website content? Have you audited that content in the last 3-6 months to prioritize your next steps?
If your answers are yes and no, in that order, then congratulations! You're a great candidate for a content audit.
What is a B2B content audit?
A B2B content audit is a list of the content pieces belonging to an organization and an analysis of each piece's features and performance. It’s used by marketers to gain a high-level view of what content exists and how that content is strategically positioned to achieve marketing goals.
Is that blog post from four years ago collecting dust? When’s the last time you really looked at it? Should you delete it, or with all of that good authority it’s built up could it be generating leads with just a few tweaks?
A content audit can help you decide.
Performing an audit gives you an idea of what content exists so that you can fill your content map and identify opportunities. It makes it easier to identify what content types and topics fit best with each stakeholder at each journey stage. An audit also provides insight into what content is performing well—and what isn’t. Armed with that information, you can identify trends, make better decisions, and set priorities for new content and optimizations.
Why content marketing audits matter
The B2B buyer journey is complex, with a long sales cycle and many stakeholders along for the ride. Each stakeholder has their own concerns, goals, agendas, and objections. And each experiences their own evolution in thinking along that buyer journey.
But that evolution relies first on content. For example, a typical B2B SaaS company might create hundreds of pieces of content a year, including the following:
Blog posts and webinars and how-tos for primary users
Whitepapers and case studies for decision makers
Security documentation and knowledge bases for other vested stakeholders
And with all the content that B2B organizations produce, it's often hard to keep track of what exists, let alone what's working.
As a B2B content strategist, an audit is often my first glimpse into how my clients' content is performing. It's a process I know very well and do all the time.
In this guide, I'll take you through what a content marketing audit is and how to do it well. Done right, an audit will help you set priorities, fill in gaps, and make sure your content is working as you intend.
Content auditing tools you'll need
You don't need a lot of tools to perform a content audit (and the ones you do need are mostly free). What you do need is consistent data collection. If you haven't set up Google Analytics or Search Console yet, you'll want to do that and have them running for at least a few months before you begin the audit.
Here's what you need:
Your positioning strategy (marketing personas/ICPs) and an idea of your buyer journey. If your buyer personas or customer profiles have been gathering dust, now’s the time to use them! (Try not to sneeze.) Don't have personas or an idea of your buyer journey yet? Start there before you worry about auditing. Content is only a good investment if you already have brand positioning in place.
Your CMS for pulling dates that content was last updated if it’s not public on your site.
Google Analytics (free) for pulling blog content and performance metrics.
Google Search Console (free) for pulling data on internal and external links. You can also do this from any SEO tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush.
A content audit worksheet for the actual audit. I've created a free one I use that you can copy here, which conveniently follows my process below. (You're welcome!)
Got all that? Great. Let's get started.
The step-by-step content audit guide
Content marketing is holistic—and so is a complete auditing process. I evaluate content based on many different criteria: SEO. Performance. Audience persona and journey stage.
So my approach takes all of these into account, but it trades some of the breadth for depth. There are certainly other factors you can consider if they’re important to your decision making; if time-on-page is a metric you can’t live without, include it. I’m like the Bob Ross of content strategists. Here’s what works for me; do what works for you. Happy little trees.
My worksheet has five main sections, and I'll break each of them down, one at a time.
Part 1: Content overview
Each line in your worksheet is one piece of content: one blog post, one whitepaper, one video asset. For this section, you can use Google Analytics to export a list of blog posts and then add other content pieces manually.
Page title. Your main SEO title tag as it shows up in search results. This may change over time if you change your target keyword, but for now, it’s a good way to identify each of your pages. Tool used: GA.
URL. Does the slug contain your primary keyword? Is it relatively short and descriptive? Is it free from anything that would age it out of search results (like dates)? Tool used: GA.
Content type. The majority of pieces in a content audit are likely to be blogs, but this process is also a great way to track and inventory gated content like whitepapers, e-books, and recorded video assets.
Last published date. Especially in tech, it’s a good idea to review your content often for wrong, out-of-date, or newly irrelevant information. Even evergreen posts may need periodic updating and optimization to keep them performing well against competitors. Tool used: CMS.
Content features. Does the post include features that increase the time a reader wants to spend on the page? Ideas for this include original research, interviews, roundups of products or insights, or embedded videos.
Relevant product. In cases of product-led content, it’s helpful to know if a product is mentioned or featured (or if there are opportunities to include one).
Part 2: Metadata
Now that we’ve got the “fast facts” about the content up and running, it’s time to dig a little deeper. Metadata is the main information that you are communicating to search engines, often through your CMS. We’ve already touched on page title in the previous section, but here are the rest of the elements worth examining:
H1 tag. Do you have only one H1 tag? Is it the same as your page title? Do you want it to be? Historically search engines have given greater weight to title tags, so often page titles will be more keyword-focused than the user-facing H1. Tool used: CMS
Primary keyword. Having a list of primary keywords allows you to check at a glance what you’re already trying to rank for. This is helpful when you’re identifying new opportunities and trying to avoid keyword cannibalization. Tool used: CMS
Meta description. While the meta description doesn’t affect Google search rankings, it can affect click-through rates. A good meta description including the primary keyword gives your reader a sense of what to expect from your content on the SERP.
Part 3: Audience
While SEO metadata is important, the rise of machine learning across search engines makes content relevance to the audience even more critical. Now more than ever, successful content is matched to user search intent, uses natural language (like semantically related keywords), and contains CTAs that are highly relevant to what the reader is looking for.
Quality content shows empathy for the audience’s needs and deep understanding of the stages in a typical buyer’s journey. Because all of this matters—a lot—these factors are essential during a B2B content audit:
Persona or ICP. What category of user is this piece of content written for? Tool used: Positioning strategy
Journey stage. Knowing who the content is written for is only half of the equation. At what stage should this piece offer the most value? Is it “problem-aware” content educating readers about types of solutions? Is it “solution-aware” content that compares the product to competitors and communicates a value proposition? Tool used: Positioning strategy
Call-to-action or offer. What is the primary offer or call-to-action communicated on this page?
Part 4: Performance
Content performance is an important part of an audit because it surfaces historical, quantitative data. This can help determine what type of content is actually resonating with your audience. It’s not a perfect indicator of content ROI, but it definitely helps you identify larger trends and distinguish weaker pieces from stronger ones. Here are the key metrics to pull:
Internal links. Enter the number of internal links (from other pages of your website) to this piece of content. Tool used: GSC or SEO platform.
Backlinking external domains. How many external websites are linking back to the piece? Tool used: GSC or SEO platform.
Organic pageviews. For blog posts, how many pageviews are coming from organic search? How has it performed this quarter compared to last quarter, and why? Tool used: GA
Downloads. For gated content assets, how many times have they been downloaded in the last quarter? How does this compare? Are there more or fewer links driving to these assets? Tool used: GA
Call-to-action conversion rate. How is the conversion rate for your CTA on this page? Does it fall in line with industry benchmarks? Does it outperform or underperform offers on other pages? Tool used: GA
Part 5: Actions
Once you’ve filled in each of the four sections above, now you have a pretty good birds-eye view of your content and what it’s doing. Now that all of this good information is in one place, here are just a few of the activities you can perform to find best next steps:
Create a content map. What content exists right now for each persona’s stage of the buyer journey?
Find content gaps. Is there content missing for a primary user in the solution-aware stage? Have you built out sales enablement assets for third-party stakeholders?
Optimize for empathy. Is each piece written specifically enough for one persona’s needs, concerns, or goals? Is its CTA appropriate for the buyer persona and journey stage?
Check performance by persona. Does content designed for one persona drive more traffic or conversions than content designed for another?
Identify outsized opportunities. What’s your best-performing blog post for traffic? What’s your best offer for lead generation? Can you design A/B tests with new variations on this theme? Can you repurpose and redistribute this content in new channels?
Find new blog topics. Knowing the primary keywords you’re already targeting can help make your dives into Google Search Console more fruitful. What search queries aren’t you covering yet?
Determine what blog posts are underperforming. Do they follow SEO best practices and target the right keywords? Are they receiving authority from internal and external links? Do they—or should they—contain content features like video or research that will increase the reader’s time on page?
See positive and negative trends at a glance. Does a post have fewer backlinks than it used to? Has it been replaced or outranked on SERPs? If the number is low, could the piece be updated and improved with more content features or expert insight to offer more value? If it’s trending upward, can you optimize the CTA on this page so that it drives more leads from the surge in traffic?
In the last few columns in your worksheet, you can indicate what the next step for each content piece is: optimizing it, deleting it, or leaving it as-is. This is also a handy place to leave notes with detailed instructions for yourself or for the writers you hire to manage optimization, along with a status field to track your progress.
(Pro tip: after you’ve updated a piece of content, update the “Last Published Date” field to save yourself some time for your next audit.)
Content audit FAQs
How many blog posts should I audit at one time?
Everyone’s favorite answer ever: it depends. There are really two factors in estimating how much effort you need to put into a B2B content audit: the size of your blog and the amount of time and resources you have to devote to the project.
For larger organizations and larger websites, content auditing is truly never done. Agile marketing teams adopt a “continuous improvement” mindset where there is always some measure of assessment and optimization going on. Many companies do content audits in batches. But in smaller organizations with less than 100 blog posts, you’re probably better off auditing them all at one time and then deciding which ones you’ll prioritize for changes.
How do I prioritize optimizations?
Marketing loves the old cliche about “low hanging fruit,” but this is a great example of why it applies. Make the optimizations that the data suggests will have the greatest impact.
If you have limited time and resources (and please let me know if you don’t, because I would like to come hang out with you on your yacht), don’t waste time tweaking the CTA on an eight-year-old blog post with two views in the last year. Do something that will move the needle. Fix the copy on a page that doesn’t match well with search intent. Add more examples to a high-converting post that recently slipped from page 1 to page 2 and took a lot of traffic with it.
How often should I do a content audit?
Again, it depends on your resources, but best practice for smaller company blogs is at least once every 6 months. For bigger blogs, it can be as often as every three months (but again, that’s often part of a continuous improvement/agile approach to content management).
What if I don’t have the bandwidth to do a content audit myself?
There’s a solution for that! An audit is an essential part of a B2B content strategy. If you don’t have the resources to handle those in-house, consider working with a content strategy consultant to help you perform this analysis and create a roadmap for implementing changes to gain more traffic, more leads, and more revenue.
In the meantime, don’t forget my free (ungated) content audit template! It will help you get started in the process.
