Web Content Audit Web Support Team Terminology Web content: is the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Web Content Audit Web Support Team Terminology Web content: is the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Jan 09, 2024 266 likes •412 views

Web Content Audit Web Support Team Terminology Web content: is the textual, visual or aural content on websites. It may include: Text Images Sounds Documents videos and animations Content inventory is the

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Web Content Audit

Web Support Team

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Terminology

  • Web content: is the textual, visual or aural content on
  • websites. It may include:
  • Text
  • Images
  • Sounds
  • Documents
  • videos and animations
  • Content inventory is the process and the result of cataloging the

entire contents of a website

  • Content audit is the process of evaluating that content
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What is a content audit?

“A content audit is the process of taking a complete inventory of your site and identifying how to improve it in terms of site structure, SEO and overall content quality” Liendgens (2012) “Conducting a content audit is the best way to optimize all your current and future content to serve your audience better.” Smart insights (2014) “One of the more underrated benefits of a content audit is that it can empower your contributors to create better, more targeted, more valuable, and more effective content.” Liendgens (2012)

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Why do a content audit?

  • Better user experience which can improve engagement
  • Better service to site users so that users can find what looking for
  • Refreshes your site
  • Improve your content quality
  • Improve your page SEO
  • Increase in traffic and visitor loyalty
  • Helps you understand the true scale of the site
  • Identifies opportunities for repurposing content
  • Helps generate ideas for new/future content
  • Improves the structure of the site (information architecture)
  • Helps you identify where to focus your efforts
  • Potential changes to Identify ways to improve organic search performance
  • Determine which content type your audience prefer
  • May help when you migrate content into a content management system or new

design

“It’s easy to forget about your website’s old content, especially if it’s getting buried under your newer posts and pages.” Smart insights (2014)

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Considerations

  • Why am I conducting an audit?
  • What resources are available for my content audit?
  • What do I hope to get out of the exercise?
  • What are the goals of audit?
  • What are the audit factors and their measurement criteria?
  • What is the scope of the audit (what areas of the site and why)
  • How are you going to rate the quality of each factor (A to F / Traffic Light)
  • Review content structure – relevant categories
  • How big should the sample size be?
  • small sample
  • 50% of top 70% pages

“You need to start by understanding the context in which your content is created, published and maintained” Alexander (2013)

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How to choose pages to audit

  • Identify the main pages / sections of the site / microsite
  • Get a page list (content inventory)
  • Create a spreadsheet of all your content assets
  • Gather asset data e.g. page title, keywords, etc.
  • Tackle the pages that you know need improving (pain points)
  • High performing pages (high page views)
  • High impact pages (messages that have high impact on students)
  • Look at your search terms
  • Determine content gaps
  • Identify prominent entry and exit points on your site
  • Once you have chosen the page to start with work through it methodically
  • If that page has sub pages list and repeat the process

“When performed correctly, a good content audit will help you to answer questions about the content pieces on your site that are performing best and which subjects your audience is most interested. ” Single Grain Team

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What is the purpose of a content audit?

“In website governance, a content audit is the process of evaluating content elements and information assets on some part or all of a website.” Wikipedia

  • Identifying content for revision, removal, and migration
  • Understanding and evaluating the performance of your content against:
  • business goals
  • user needs
  • templates
  • editorial standards
  • style guidelines
  • search engine optimization
  • Gap analysis: content you have vs content you want
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What should we audit?

  • Page Title
  • Page subject / topic
  • Sub headings
  • Page summary
  • Primary navigation
  • Secondary navigation
  • URL (search engine optimisation)
  • Page views
  • Target audience
  • Conversational style
  • Keyword count
  • Voice and tone
  • Internal links
  • External links
  • Links (total)
  • Link description
  • Chunking (length of paragraphs)
  • PDFs
  • Broken links
  • Back link descriptions (referral traffic)
  • Word count (page and paragraph)
  • Image count
  • Image format / size
  • Page size (load speed)
  • Date last updated
  • Social buttons
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What should we measure against?

  • Standards
  • Style guide
  • Icon usage
  • Guidelines
  • Page Titles, Headings and Summaries
  • Using Links
  • Using pdfs
  • Using Images
  • Google Analytics
  • Traffic
  • Page length / time on page
  • Bounce rate
  • Page size
  • Using website content audit software
  • url
  • headings
  • Keywords
  • Broken links
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Page Navigation Audit Factors

Audit Factor Measurement Primary and secondary

  • Break up pages into clearly defined areas
  • Ensure that labels are descriptive of their destination
  • Use conventions – e.g. alphabetical order, popular
  • rder

Links (total) Too many can cause confusion; too few and the user may not get to the information they really need. External links

  • Use if the add value to your content
  • Name the site the link will lead to
  • List the best quality external sites

Link descriptions

  • Use keywords in links
  • Start with a verb
  • Don’t use URls e.g. www.sheffield.ac.uk/history
  • Avoid links with similar names
  • Launch and land on same name

Broken links Any broken links on the page

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Page Content Audit Factors

Audit Factor Measurement Page Title

  • Descriptive of the page content
  • Using site visitors keywords

Page subject / topic The page relates to a single subject Page summary

  • 30 words or fewer
  • Sell: encourage the reader to read more
  • Quickly cover who, what, when, where, how

Sub headings

  • Put your headings in order
  • Have a good heading style (e.g. questions, statements, etc.)

Target audience, Conversational style and Voice and tone

  • Writing in the active voice
  • Engaging with the audience - use "you" and "we"
  • Be positive
  • Use of plain English

Word count (page and paragraph) Words on page / reading speed vs google analytics time on page Chunking (length of paragraphs)

  • Sentence: 20 words or fewer
  • One point per sentence
  • Paragraphs: 70 words (roughly 4 sentences)
  • Start sentences with keywords
  • Start paragraphs with strongest sentence
  • Start paragraph by setting the context
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Page Performance Audit Factors

Audit Factor Measurement URL

  • Accessible to search engines
  • Descriptive of the page content

Page views Google analytics annual page views PDFs Single version documents published on the site Page size (load speed) Google analytics Images use and count

  • Limit the use of images
  • Use images only when they are critical to the success
  • f a web page

Image format / size

  • Photograph of people are good (if they're real people)
  • Feel-good images are largely ignored
  • Make sure images do not severely decrease download

speeds Date last updated CMS

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Reporting the results

  • A summary of overall conclusions and recommendation
  • A description of each audit factor
  • Data summaries per factor
  • Graphic depiction of results
  • Factor based themes with examples if possible
  • Key findings:
  • Out of date
  • Duplicated
  • Badly written
  • Unused
  • Establish a set of recommended actions (5-10 actions)
  • After the Audit
  • Create an editorial calendar
  • Considering a rolling audit (annually?)
  • Develop a publishing workflow
  • Offer web writing training
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References

  • Halverson K and Rach M (2012) “Content Strategy”, New Riders, 2nd edition
  • Rockley A (2003) “Managing Enterprise Content”, New Riders
  • Why and How To Do a Content Audit, Thursday, May 10th, 2012 at 11:00am -- Kat Liendgens

http://www.hannonhill.com/news/blog/2012/why-and-how-to-do-a-content-audit.html

  • Content auditing: Why, When and How? June 17, 2014

http://www.smartinsights.com/content-management/content-marketing-creative-and- formats/content-auditing/

  • How to Conduct A Content Audit - Posted on October 16, 2014 by Donna Spencer

http://uxmastery.com/how-to-conduct-a-content-audit/

  • The Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Content Audit by Single Grain Team

http://singlegrain.com/blog/the-step-by-step-guide-to-conducting-a-content-audit/

  • Content audit guide and template

http://www.4syllables.com.au/resources/content-audit-template/

  • Beyond the content audit written on June 18th, 2013 by Dey Alexander
  • http://www.4syllables.com.au/2013/06/beyond-content-audits/