A website content review is essential if you want to increase your online presence.
It involves assessing every text, picture, and multimedia asset on your site to ensure it supports your company objectives and appeals to your target audience.
This process may also help you find areas for improvement and make the required changes to optimize your website for success.
But how can you perform your website content review effectively?
Here are four sets of steps to follow to achieve the best results.
1. Gather tools for review
When conducting a website content review, you and your entire team must have the right tools for the job. Here are some you'll need:
- Spreadsheets or note-taking apps. You'll need Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel or note-taking apps, such as Evernote or Notion, to document your findings, observations, and recommendations. You may also need AI templates, such as Release Notes from Writer. All these tools will help you with organizing and presenting your data.
- SEO tools. Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz can help you analyze your website's SEO performance, keyword rankings, backlinks, and overall search visibility. Most of these tools do the same thing, so you'll need just one of them.
- Grammar and spell checker. Grammarly, Hemingway, and similar tools can help you identify and rectify your content's grammar, spelling, and readability issues. These tools are essential because content quality affects user experience.
- Analytics tools. This type of software will help you track the performance of your site content before and after the content review. Google Analytics can help you gather insights into user behavior, traffic sources, and content performance. Hotjar, Crazy Egg, and similar tools, meanwhile, can provide heatmaps, session recordings, and other insights into how users interact with your B2B website's content.
Those tools will allow you to analyze your content's performance from multiple angles. Together, they can give you valuable insights into how you can improve your overall content strategy.
2. Create a sitemap of content assets
A content sitemap is a graphic summary or outline of all the content you have produced. That may include case studies, videos, infographics, whitepapers, and blog posts, among other content assets.
A sitemap helps you classify all of those resources and can help you plan your website's structure for optimal user experience.
Here's an example of a sitemap:
The first step in creating a content sitemap is to identify and organize your content's components.
You or your review team should assess all the current material on your website, including webpages, blog posts, photos, videos, and downloadable files.
Then, as part of your website content review, make a list of core parts or top-level pages that encapsulate your various content types—for instance, your Home, About Us, Pricing, Blog, FAQ, and Contact Us.
Under each primary section, define the subsections or subcategories of content. For instance, under Products/Services, you might have various product categories or service offerings.
Similarly, for each subsection, identify the distinct content assets, which may include specific webpages, blog posts, videos, downloadable resources, etc. Include relevant details, such as titles, descriptions, and URLs.
Organize everything in a hierarchical framework, with primary parts at the top and subcategories and individual content elements nested underneath.
You can use sitemap generators for this task, such as XML Sitemaps.com, Slickplan.com, and Octopus.do. You can also use mind-mapping software, diagramming tools, or even a simple spreadsheet.
Once you have your sitemap, you can better visualize the different topic clusters on your website and the areas that require improvement. You can also identify gaps or inconsistencies in your material. For instance, you may notice missing pages that should exist to meet informative or navigational requirements. Similarly, you may discover duplicate content that should be removed.
Use your sitemap to evaluate each page's quality and relevancy. Decide whether pages should be updated, consolidated, or removed depending on what they contribute to your objectives.
3. Review content's accompanying images
Images play a crucial role in enhancing the overall user experience and engagement on a website.