I've always dreaded the task of a full content audit. It's one of those tasks that seems straightforward in theory but quickly turns into a mountain of work.
You know the drill: collecting data, analyzing performance, and then spending hours sifting through it all to figure out what's working and what isn't.
I was constantly torn between managing ongoing campaigns and setting aside the time for a comprehensive audit—often, the latter would get pushed to the back burner, risking serious decline of my content.
But what if there was a way to turn this dreaded task into a seamless, automated process?
I found an automated content audit solution that transformed my entire approach. Not only did it slash my auditing time by 75%, but it also helped me prioritize and take immediate action on what really matters. Ready to see how it works?
Table of Contents
- The traditional content audit process (100% manual)
- The new approach to content auditing (100% automated)
- New content ideas
- Page losing traffic
- Underperforming CTR
- Content gap
- Content expansion
- New content pillar
TL;DR
StoryChief helps you save time and money with its automated content audit, continuous monitoring, research tasks, and task prioritization. You could save hundreds of dollars on multiple tools and cut content auditing time by 75%.
- Cut content auditing time by 75%: StoryChief's Content Audit automates keyword research, brainstorming, and data analysis, saving you days or even weeks of manual effort.
- Continuous monitoring to prevent irreversible damage: Traditional audits are done 1-2 times a year. StoryChief’s real-time monitoring identifies underperforming content immediately, preventing lost traffic and revenue.
- Automates complex research tasks: Spotting trends and optimizing keywords manually takes a lot of time and requires a lot of skill. StoryChief automates keyword research, competitor analysis, and content gap identification.
- Save hundreds of dollars monthly on your tool stack: Instead of paying for multiple tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs (starting at €229/month), access Content Audit features with StoryChief starting at just €50/month.
- Prioritization of tasks: Manual analysis can waste time on low-impact pages. StoryChief highlights high-impact opportunities so marketers can focus on what matters most.
Why Content Audits Matter More Than Ever
A content audit is essential to ensure that your content is performing at its best, attracting as much traffic and generating as many leads as possible.
Despite this, research shows that 37% of marketers have never carried out a content audit. This means that your content is at risk of declining, missing out on traffic, and being outperformed by competitors.
Here's what a well-executed audit can do for you:
- Boost engagement: Discover which content captivates your audience.
- Spot ineffectiveness: Identify what’s not working and adjust accordingly.
- Leverage top content: Maximize the impact of your best-performing articles.
- Improve underperformers: Revamp content that’s not meeting expectations.
- Optimize keywords: Track and refine the keywords driving traffic.
- Generate ideas: Keep a steady flow of content ideas that align with your audience’s interests.
The Traditional Content Audit Process (100% manual)
Conducting a content audit manually is a lengthy, meticulous process that demands dedication and time.
Here’s what it typically involves:
- Set your content audit goal: Define a clear goal for your audit, such as improving SEO, increasing engagement, or boosting conversions.
- Identify the content to include: List the types of content you want to audit and organize them in a spreadsheet. Gather details like page titles, word count, and meta descriptions.
- Categorize your content: Group your content into categories like blog posts, product descriptions, or media.
- Determine success metrics: Establish metrics like traffic, conversions, and page speed to evaluate your content's performance.
- Analyze your data: Examine patterns in your data, such as popular topics or successful content formats. Look for content gaps and ensure you have content for all stages of the buyer's journey.
- Prioritize your next steps: Based on your analysis, determine actions for each content piece, such as keeping, updating, or deleting. Prioritize improvements based on success metrics.
For a marketer juggling multiple responsibilities, this process takes way too long.
You would only be able to perform this audit 1-2 times a year (if at all). By then, you might have missed out on critical opportunities or, worse, lagged behind competitors. 💀
For reference, here is a step-by-step guide to conducting a manual content audit:
The Automated Content Audit Process
StoryChief's Content Audit has become my secret weapon. It simplifies the audit process and provides insights that were previously out of reach, and would take me days or even weeks to discover and implement.
In what follows, I’ll explain the effort required for a marketer to come up with these recommendations on their own.
StoryChief’s automated Content Audit suggests 6 types of opportunities:
- New content ideas
- Page losing traffic
- Underperforming CTR
- Content gap
- Content expansion
- New content pillar
All of these are categorized as having either high, medium, or low traffic potential.
This makes it easy to prioritize certain tasks based on opportunity type and traffic potential, allowing you to focus on what matters to you.
Here’s a 1-minute walkthrough video of how it works. 👇
Now, let’s explore how StoryChief comes up with these recommendations and what you need to do to generate them on your own.
1. New Content Ideas
What StoryChief does: Offers fresh content topics based on recent trends and competitor analysis.
The content idea includes details on:
- suggested content title
- summary of the article (that could be used as an editorial brief)
- keyword driving the most traffic
- associated content pillars
- targeted audiences
- potential traffic increase
- data points on the relevancy, uniqueness, and difficulty of this keyword
Here is an example of what a new content idea would look like in the automated Content Audit:
Cool detail: After clicking on ‘Create’, the article is automatically created and our AI Power Mode jumps into action, writing the article for you and taking into account the target audience, keyword, and summary generated in the previous step. 🤯🤯 Mindblowing, right?!
🕵️♀️ What would it take to come up with this content idea yourself?
- Trend research: Utilize tools like Google Trends, BuzzSumo, or social listening platforms.
- Competitor research: Analyze the topics they cover, their top-performing content, and the keywords driving traffic to their sites using tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs.
- Keyword research: Identify keywords with a balanced search volume and competition.
- Audience targeting: Understand the audience to shape the tone, style, and substance of the article.
- Traffic projections: Estimate the potential traffic increase from new content.
- Mapping your content pillars: Align new content with your existing content strategy.
- Title, summary, and editorial brief creation: Craft a compelling and SEO-optimized title based on identified trends and keywords.
- Writing the content: To automate content creation like StoryChief does, integrate AI tools that use your editorial brief, keywords, and audience data to generate a first draft.
2. Page Losing Traffic
What StoryChief does: Identifies content experiencing traffic decline and estimates the cost to regain lost positions if you were to use Google Ads on those keywords.
This is what the recommendation ‘Page losing traffic’ looks like in StoryChief:
It includes details on:
- The top keyword that drives traffic
- Current CTR, position, clicks and impressions
- Cost estimation for regaining lost positions
- The suggested keywords to include in the article, based on content gap analysis of your competitors
🕵️♀️ What would it take for you to come up with this recommendation yourself?
Identifying pages losing traffic involves continuous traffic monitoring, pinpointing declining articles, and investigating causes.
- Traffic and performance monitoring: Regularly monitor your website's traffic data using tools like Google Analytics or Google Search Console. Pay attention to pages that show a significant drop in traffic over time.
- Analyzing CTR, position, clicks, and impressions: Use Google Search Console to track the click-through rate (CTR), average position, clicks, and impressions for the top keywords associated with the declining page.
- Comparing historic keyword data: Identify the top keyword(s) that have historically driven traffic to the page. Compare its current performance metrics (CTR, position, clicks, impressions) to past data to determine the extent of the decline.
- Cost estimation for regaining lost positions: To estimate the cost of regaining lost positions through Google Ads, use tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner. Input the declining keywords to see the suggested bids and estimate the cost per click (CPC) for those terms.
3. Underperforming CTR
What StoryChief does: StoryChief detects when your page isn't getting as many clicks as competitors for similar searches. Improve this by optimizing your meta descriptions, crafting more engaging titles, or boosting your page's search ranking.
This is what the recommendation ‘Underperforming CTR’ looks like in StoryChief:
It includes details on:
- Current CTR, position, clicks and impressions
- Top keyword that drives the traffic
- Details on the SERP of that keyword (including SEO titles, meta descriptions and positions)
🕵️♀️ What would it take for you to come up with this recommendation yourself?
To identify and address an underperforming click-through rate (CTR), you would need to analyze Google Search Console data, keyword positions, and industry benchmarks.
- SEO metrics examination: Collect and analyze data on your current CTR, average position, number of clicks, and impressions for each keyword, using tools like Google Search Console.
- Compare historical data of your CTR: Comparing your current CTR to past performance helps to pinpoint when and where declines began, and whether any previous optimizations had a positive effect.
- SERP analysis: Examine the search engine results page (SERP) for the keywords associated with your underperforming pages. This involves manually searching for these keywords or using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to analyze what other results appear alongside your page.
- Competitor SERP analysis: Analyze the performance of competitors who rank for the same keywords. Identify what sets their pages apart—whether it’s more engaging titles, more detailed meta descriptions, or higher-quality content.
4. Content Gap
What StoryChief does: A content gap occurs when your content is missing or lacks depth on topics that users or search engines expect. StoryChief detects missing or shallow content topics and recommends keywords to fill these gaps.
This is what the recommendation ‘Content Gap’ looks like in StoryChief’s automated content audit:
It includes details on:
- Current CTR, position, clicks and impressions
- Top keyword that drives the traffic
- Potential impressions increase
- The suggested keywords to include in the article, based on content gap analysis of your competitors
🕵️♀️ What would it take for you to come up with this recommendation yourself?
To identify and fill content gaps effectively, you would have to analyze the top 10 SERP results and compare where your content lacks depth.
- Competitor analysis: Conduct a thorough analysis of your competitors’ content using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz. Look for topics they cover that are missing from your site, as well as keywords they rank for that you do not.
- Keyword gap analysis: Use SEO tools to perform a keyword gap analysis, comparing the keywords you rank for with those your competitors rank for.
- Calculate potential impressions increase: Estimate the potential increase in impressions by targeting the new or optimized keywords. This involves analyzing search volume, keyword difficulty, and your current rankings to predict how much more visibility your content could gain.
- Monitor CTR and other metrics: After updating or creating content, monitor its performance using tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Track metrics such as CTR, position, clicks, and impressions to see how well the content is performing and whether it’s effectively filling the identified gaps.
5. New Content Expansion
What StoryChief does: Recommends additional content, topics, and keywords to complement existing articles.
This is what the recommendation ‘New Content Expansion’ looks like in StoryChief:
It includes details on:
- The main keyword
- Current CTR, position, clicks and impressions
- Suggested keywords to create new content for and add internal links to the main page
🕵️♀️ What would it take for you to come up with this recommendation yourself?
- This feature is similar to the "Related Keywords" in tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs. These tools suggest a list of keywords related to the main keyword you input. However, you still need to review the list and identify the keywords that will have the most impact for you.
- You can also find related keywords using Google Search Console. You can discover the exact keywords a certain page is ranking for and find keywords that you may not have targeted yet but are ranking for. By writing an article targeting these keywords, you potentially can attract more traffic.
6. New Content Pillars
What StoryChief does: Suggests new content pillars to complete your content strategy and get content ideas for those pillars.
This is what the recommendation ‘New Content Pillar’ looks like in StoryChief:
It includes details on:
- Missing content pillar
- Current CTR, position, clicks and impressions
- Number of impressions of existing content pillars compared to the new content pillar
- Examples of new content related to that content pillar
🕵️♀️ What would it take for you to come up with this recommendation yourself?
- Evaluate current content pillars: Review your existing content pillars using tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to analyze CTR, position, clicks, and impressions.
- Identify gaps in current content: Look for missing or underdeveloped content pillars in your strategy. Compare your website's keywords with those of competitors to identify opportunities for new content pillars.
- Research new content pillars: Use Ahrefs, SEMrush, or BuzzSumo to research industry trends, competitors, and audience behavior.
- Analyze potential performance: Estimate the potential of new content pillars by comparing their impressions, potential traffic, and competition with existing ones.
- Generate content ideas: Brainstorm ideas related to promising new content pillars. Address specific subtopics or pain points using tools like AnswerThePublic or Google Trends.
- Internal linking strategy: Plan how the new content pillar will integrate with your existing ones.
Win the SERPs with StoryChief’s Content Audit
Content audits no longer need to be the daunting, once-a-year task they used to be. With StoryChief’s automated Content Audit tool, you can continuously monitor your content’s performance, stay ahead of trends, and optimize your strategy in real time—all without the headache of manual analysis.
Use it to:
- Pro-actively discover traffic decline and competitors outpacing you.
- Track how well your content performs across different platforms
- Improve SEO and readability with in-built suggestions
- Audit multichannel content for reach and engagement
Imagine the time (weeks), and money (hundreds of dollars monthly) you'll save, while driving better traffic and staying ahead of the competition.
Sign up for a free trial of StoryChief and let’s get your content back on track to outperform the competition!
📚 Read more about Content Audits:
