One of the advantages of working for an agency is the volume of websites we get to evaluate. The majority of clients who sign up for ongoing SEO and/or content services will receive a content audit. Similar to a technical SEO audit, the results of the content audit should drive the strategies and priorities of the next stages of content work. Without the audit, you can’t create an effective strategy because you first need to know what types of content you’ve got, what content you’re missing, and what content you’ve got too much of.
While there are many posts out there about how to perform a content audit (and I encourage you to check out these posts: How to Do a Content Audit and 5 Lessons Learned from a Content Audit), I am going to be focusing on what my common findings have been from recently conducting 15 content audits. My aim is to give you more of a framework on how you can talk to clients about their content or, if you are the client, ways you can improve your website content to keep users on the site longer and, ultimately, convert.
Mistake #1: No clear calls-to-action
I have yet to complete a content audit where creating clearer calls-to-action wasn’t a focus. The goal of a page should be obvious to any visitor (or content auditor). What is it that you want a visitor who lands on this page to do next? Many of our clients are not e-commerce, so it may feel less obvious; however, assuming you want someone to stay on your website, what’s next?
Even if answer is “I want them to visit my store,” make it easy for them. Add a prominent “Visit Our Store” button. If it’s a simple blog page, what are the next blog articles someone should read based on what they just read? Or do you have a relevant e-book you’d like them to download? You got them to the end of your post — don’t lose the visitor because they aren’t sure what to do next!
Mistake #2: A lack of content for all stages of the customer journey
One thing we often do when conducting content audits is track where in the sales funnel each page is aimed (awareness, consideration, purchase, or retention). What we sometimes find is that clients tend to have a disproportionate amount of content aimed at driving a purchase, but not enough for awareness, consideration, and retention. This isn’t always the case, particularly if they have a blog or resources hub; however, the consideration and retention stages are often overlooked. While the buyer cycle is going to be different for every product, it’s still important to have content that addresses each stage, no matter how brief the stage is.
Retention is a big deal too! It is way more cost-efficient and easier to upsell and cross-sell current customers than bring in new. Your customers are also less price-sensitive because they know your brand is worth it. You definitely want to provide content for this audience too to keep them engaged with the brand and find new uses for your products. Plus, you’ve already got their contact information, so delivering content to them is much easier than a prospect.
Here are some examples of content for each stage:
Awareness: Blog posts (explainers, how-tos, etc), e-books, educational webinars, infographics
Consideration: Product comparisons, case studies, videos
Purchase: Product pages, trial offers, demos, coupons
Retention: Blog posts (product applications, success stories, etc), newsletters, social media content
Mistake #3: Testimonials aren’t used to their full potential
There are so many pages dedicated solely to testimonials out there on the Interwebs. It’s painful. Who trusts a testimonials page over reviews on third-party sites like Yelp, Google My Business, or Tripadvisor? No one. That being said, there is a place for testimonials. It’s just not on a testimonials page.
The best way to use a testimonial is to pair it with the appropriate copy. If it’s a testimonial about how easy and fast a customer received their product, use that on a shipping page. If it’s a testimonial about how a product solved a problem they had, use it on that product page. This will enhance your copy and help to alleviate any anxieties a prospective customer has with their decision to purchase.
Testimonials can also help you improve your local relevance in search. If you have a storefront that is targeting particular cities, ask for a customer’s city and state when you gather testimonials. Then, include relevant testimonials along with their city and state on the appropriate location page(s). Even if your store is in Lakewood, Colorado, collecting testimonials from customers who live in Denver and including them on your location page will help both search engines and users recognize that Denver people shop there.
Mistake #4: Not making content locally relevant (if it matters)
If location matters to your business, you should not only use testimonials to boost your local relevance, but your content in general. Take the auto dealership industry, for example. There are over 16,000 car dealerships in the United States and they all (presumably) have websites. Many of them have very similar content because they are all trying to sell the same or similar models of cars.
The best car dealership websites, however, are creating content that matters to their local communities. People who live in Denver, for example, care about what the best cars are for driving in the mountains, whereas people in the Los Angeles area are more likely to want to know which cars get the best highway gas mileage. Having your sales team take note of common questions they get asked and addressing them in your content can go a long way toward improving local relevance and gaining loyal customers.
Mistake #5: Not talking about pricing
Many companies, B2B companies in particular, do not want to list pricing on their website. It’s understandable, especially when the honest answer to “how much does your service cost?” is “it depends.” The problem with shying away from pricing altogether, though, is that people are searching for pricing information. It’s a huge missed opportunity not to have any content related to pricing, and it annoys prospective customers who would rather know your cost range before giving you a call or submitting a form for follow up.
It’s mutually beneficial to have pricing information (or at least information on how you determine pricing) on your website because it’ll help qualify leads. If a prospect knows your price range and they still reach out for more information, they're going to be a much better lead than someone who is reaching out to get pricing information. This saves your sales team the trouble of wasting their time on bad leads.
Having pricing information on your website also helps establish trust with the prospect. If you aren’t transparent about your pricing, it looks like you charge as much as you can get away with. The more information you provide, the more trustworthy your business looks. And if all of your competitors are also hiding their pricing, you’re the first one they’ll likely reach out to.
Mistake #6: Getting lost in jargon
There are a lot of great companies out there doing great work. And more often than not, their website does not reflect it as well as it could. It isn’t uncommon for those tasked with writing web copy to be quite close to the product. What sometimes happens is jargon and technical language dominates, and the reason why a customer should care gets lost. When it comes to explaining a product or service, Joel Klettke said it best at MozCon 2017. A web page should include:
- What is the product and why should a prospect care about it?
- How will this product make the prospect’s life easier/better?
- What’s the next step? (CTA)
It’s also important to include business results, real use cases, and customer successes with the product on your website too. This establishes more trust and supports your claims about your products. Doing this will speak to your customers in a way that jargon simply will not.
Mistake #7: Page duplication from migration to HTTPS
With more sites getting an SSL certificate and moving to HTTPS, it’s more important than ever to make sure you have 301 redirects set up from the HTTP version to the HTTPS version to prevent unintentional duplication of your entire website. Duplicate content can impact search rankings as search engines struggle to decide which version of a page is more relevant to a particular search query. We’ve been seeing quite a few sites that have an entire duplicate site or some isolated pages that didn’t get redirects in place in their migrations. We also keep seeing sites that have www and non-www versions of pages without 301 redirects as well. Running regular crawls will help you stay on top of this kind of duplicate content.
Here are a couple of good resources to check out when doing an HTTPS migration:
- HTTP to HTTPS Migration: The Ultimate Stress-Free Guide
- Implementing HTTPS: Options to Consider with JR Ridley (podcast)
Mistake #8: Poor internal linking and site architecture
How content is organized on a site can be just as important as what the content is. Without proper organization, users can struggle to surf a website successfully and search engines have a difficult time determining which pages are considered most important. Making sure your most important pages are structured to be easy to find, by listing them in your navigation, for example, is a good user experience and will help those pages perform better.
Part of making important pages easy to find is through internal linking. Web content is often created on an ongoing basis, and being smart about internal linking requires taking the time to look holistically at the site and figuring out which pages make the most sense to link to and from. I keep encountering blog content that does not link back to a core page on the site. While you don’t want product to be the focus of your blog, it should be easy for a user to get to the core pages of your site if they want to do so. As you’re auditing a site, you’ll find pages that relate to one another that don’t link. Make notes of those as you go so you can better connect pages both in copy and with your calls to action.
Wrapping up
What I find most interesting about content audits is how subjective they are. Defining what makes content good or bad is gray in a way that identifying whether or not a page has, say, a canonical tag, is not. For that reason, I have found that what content auditors focus most heavily on tend to be a reflection of the background of the person doing the audit. And the most common content mistakes I have touched on here reflect my background perfectly, which is a meld of SEO and content marketing.
So, I’m curious: what do you look for and find in your content audits? What would you add to my list?
Excellent article! I find myself leaving websites because of the pricing issue. It sucks when I can't even estimate how much I am going to spend. It drives me straight to another company that does list pricing.
The call to action is something I'm going to work on more. Even more so on deeper pages of my websites.
Thanks for the tips! Got some new perspective to think about.
Thanks, John! Appreciate the feedback. Agreed - a lack of pricing is a big reason people leave a website. It's always interesting to pull search volume around keywords related to pricing for clients. Any other adds to my list?
Yes! Love all 8 of these, probably the most common mistakes I see in blogs and local websites when doing local SEO. Definitely recommend having a clear Call-To-Action on every page and internally linking when appropriate, especially to pages you are trying to increase the search engine rankings for. Having content for all stages of the customer journey is a great tip as well that I believe a lot of people overlook (Awareness, Consideration, and Decision especially)
Thanks for the feedback, Nicholas! When doing content audits for local, anything else you'd add to the list?
Solid list of common website mistakes Alli, we have definitely been guilty of some of these in the past, especially Not Having a Clear Call-To-Action and Not Internal Linking. Thanks for sharing and great article!
Thanks, David!
You mentioned some great points, Alli! Calls-to-action are so important – experienced this myself. I wanted my customers to ultimately sign up for more great content but I have not had any call- to- action integrated into my content so that they would be animated to actually sign up. As a result my sign up quote was quite low, as you can imagine, but once I did add a call- to- action the sign up number increased drastically!
Also, I learnt that if you want your customers to continue reading your article you should try to hook them at the beginning. Maybe with a question that you will answer a little later on in the article – this way your customers will continue reading as they are interested in the answer.
Thanks for the great feedback, Abel! It's always rewarding to see sign ups increasing from simply adding a more prominent CTA! Good point too about hooking your reader - having good quality content also matters a great deal. Do you do content audits? Any things you'd add to my list?
You're right that we neglect the testimonies. Often, we do not trust them, but we are aware that most Internet users have a look at them before buying. A bad opinion, even false, can cause us a brand crisis and that is something very serious.
I would add the typical mistake when you do not work with a good copywriter that prevents it from being written only for Google. You can position yourself quickly on the first page, but without content that convinces you will not create good relations with your audience
That's a great add! Bad SEO copywriting is definitely not helpful for visitors and it's certainly not working in search like it once did. If you follow Danny Sullivan's Twitter thread in this article on Google's latest algorithm update, he says stay focused on creating quality content. That seems to be the way Google is going with each update, which is great for users too.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-confirms-core-...
Thanks for the feedback!
Good stuff Alli! We have seen huge improvements with interaction on our website and our client's websites by simply focusing on #1 and making sure their is a clear CTA. Going back through your content and looking for internal link opportunities like you mentioned in #8 is a great way to give multiple pages on your website an SEO boost as well. Thanks for sharing your insight here and very well-written!
Thanks for the nice feedback! Sounds like you've done some auditing too. Any adds to my list?
POP UPS. Can we call those mistakes yet? JK..but seriously.
I certainly don't disagree with you! I haven't encountered any in my content auditing, surprisingly. At least Google is penalizing the intrusive ones, so there's also that argument. It's definitely something to do with caution. Good add!
When I do an audit, a glaring mistake I often see is choosing bad images -- particularly for the homepage header. Also, not taking advantage of using images to "show not tell" throughout the site. Plus of course, not optimizing those images in terms of size and ALT text. I have a whole deck I've written about this if anyone is interested.
That's a great addition. Do you have a link for your deck? Would love to see it!
Glad it's helpful. Free download of "Ideas for Great Header Images": https://gumroad.com/l/cODXW/100images
LMK what you think or if you have anything you would like to add.
Just sent the link, but it's hitting your moderation filter. Hope it gets through.
It did! Thanks!
Content of 10. These errors as you say are very common, and I think that the redirection with www and without is the most common, or what of / and without it does not redirect and display both pages. And here almost the entire site is duplicated.
Thank you very much Alli.
Yes, indeed. The trailing slash vs non-trailing slash is another good add!
Based on experience, most people spend time on how their website looks rather than how they make their content. While that cannot be ignored, I believe that before anything else, we should plan ahead our content since good content plus a well-optimized website makes a huge difference in traffic and conversion.
That's a great point! Design definitely provokes more emotion and immediate response than content, so it often gets more than its fair share of the attention, particularly in new launches and redesigns.
Mary-Affilorama
I am totally Agree with you. People actually want the success quickly. They try to spam google and what i recommend new peoples always, that days are gone when people copy others content or rank their site with content quantity.
"Now Google Only Focus on Quality"
I know a man, which only have 34 to 35 post since 2012 but his every post is a master piece and he gets more than 200k visitors per month.
So that encourages me to now only stick on quality. Just find the content that can be better and people wanted to read.
Thanks for the feedback! Quality over quantity is definitely a good rule to follow.
You're welcome Alli Berry! I would love to hear you in your next article to find some useful informations!
Hi Alli,
Thanks for such an awesome post, It is very educational.
I have a query about the 5th point; suppose one is running a Website Development business where the service cost is estimated based on various factors such as type, size and complexity of the website and various others. Can you please guide how should the individual draft their content to make it engaging for the potential customers.
This is a very useful article. It's very true because we don't tend to realize that we had those common mistakes already, and i admit i am so guilty on mistake #5 and this explains a lot on how we can avoid these. I give two thumbs up for this great content.
Thank you for the kind feedback! Best of luck on #5. It's easy to overlook!
It's ironic that you list # 5 - Not Talking About Pricing. There is probably no industry guilty of this more than the SEO industry.
Ha - Super glad you pointed that out! Hopefully, there will be some self-reflection happening among our peers.
Great list! Based on our audits, we can confirm the content of this article. Good info, thank you!
Happy to hear! Thanks for the feedback!
Important text content embeded in images. Which can make it really difficult for search engines to return such results to their users.
Great addition! Thanks for the feedback.
Really help! I wish every company future owner can read this!
Thanks for the feedback!
Thank you Allie!
Your description of "Mistake #7" may have just helped us solve a mystery of why our site is showing so many duplicate pages in a recent SEO audit! Thanks for the tip.
I agree with everything you've said above as well. Especially on the pricing and jargon mistakes.
That's so great! Happy this was helpful!
404 errors, you can redirect the urls if you like but maybe Google will continue to see them as pages that no longer exist. The important thing is that I reduce them by reducing the duplicate content, in the past I did this on a website, with redirects included and sometimes the tags appear as not found pages, but what really matters is that they improved positions considerably when reducing the excessive duplicate content he had.
regards
Alli, thank you very much for sharing this with us .
I think we can divide the article into two parts:
1- Content Audits for Users .
2- Content Audits for SEO .
So what do you think ?
Note :
This is the first time in my life that I have commented on a foreign site, but the beauty of your article made me do it .
Thank You .
I completely agree; and especially with content that is only written to boost the SEO of its site. I find myself in this case with a lot of customers
(sorry for my English) Hello Alli, thanks for your article , it has been very useful.
Especially the "Testimonials section" and "Getting lost in jargon"
Interesting thoughts Alli.
Good thoughts about testimonial pages, we'll start trying that. We do already get our clients to get their customers to post reviews on trusted websites. That is working really well for a bunch of them. They think it's more difficult than it is. We just tell them to go through their client list and send out emails with the appropriate links to make it easy. Customers that are really happy will do it no problem (and with no incentive). Since our clients are choosing who to send these emails to, they can choose the customers that will leave the best reviews.
One thing we always audit (and list first) is website loading speed. It's so important and fixing that really improves rankings and conversions.
Thank you.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, site speed is super important! Those typically end up on our SEO audits rather than content, but a great add.
Hi Berry, Thanks for posting this useful and informative Article. These all points are very important and helpful for improving online presence of any business.
Thanks for the kind feedback!
Really interesting! Some of these items are already well known, but is really important to keep them always in mind, otherwise our project could be in serious troubles.
Thanks for everything Alli
Thanks so much for the feedback!
When I do a content audit, I am also looking for pages that have not had any pageviews in X period of time - it could be a quarter or it could be a year. This is an opportunity to refine that content :-)
Good tip! There's definitely a lot of untapped opportunity to improve content rather than create new.
Great List ! I had faced this issue migration to HTTPS, Good Alli :) thank you
Testimonials are great social proof, but another feature I'm always looking for are case studies. A company can tell me all about their product or service in theory, but hearing or seeing an example of how it achieved measurable results gives me the practical context I need to understand if it's a good fit for my needs and how I work.
Absolutely! Great add!
#5 not talking about prices. Yup, still happening in 2018. Those people will only attract shady people like themselves. I know it's our job to explain how ONLINE works, I'm sure an A/B test would be revealing, but I'm afraid it might not be for everyone.
That's a good idea about A/B testing, especially if a client is hesitant to add pricing. Then there's data to support the right direction. Thanks for the feedback!
Great article Alli, I just have a quick question about the testimonial page.
If the testimonial is coming from Yelp, Google My Business, or Tripadvisor people think it's authentic review because site owner doesn't have any interference. Apart from that these site have great reputation.
But if someone will post reviews on their own site people may not feel very confident because site owner is the moderator and reviews might have modified.
How will you explain?
Thanks again in advance
I completely agree with what you said. It's so valuable to get reviews on the 3rd party sites because you can trust there wasn't any interference and people are increasingly looking to those sites prior to purchase. You could still use those same reviews on your own site if you wanted to...I would just recommend using them in a spot on your site where it makes sense based on what the review is saying rather than on a page dedicated solely to testimonials.
Great post and you focused on right and exact points. I like to read those points and also I will remember these points at the time of audit.
Thanks
Glad this is helpful!
Hi Alli - Some really good points and got to say that we have not done the calls-to-action thing ourselves and will have a look at that.
Awesome, glad you found this useful!
Great article Alli!
As an SEO beginner, like myself, it is important to avoid these common mistakes. This article helps.
Could anyone point me to a great article about internal linking? I can't grasp this topic. And I have the feeling if I mess up in the beginning it will take a lot of effort to redo it. Or am I wrong?
In the upper right corner of this page (above a large image with a paper and a pen), you'll find a hamburger menu (three horizontal lines), click on it and a page with search box will open. Type "internal linking" in the search box and click on magnifying glass or press enter.
Hi Joshua,
Thanks for the feedback! If you aren't familiar with Andy Crestodina, I highly recommend this internal linking article: https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/internal-linking/
Totally agree, I believe that many websites have small or too complex content. in many cases that cntenido is not good for the user
Definitely! Thanks for the feedback, Antonio!
Thanks for the tips! Got some new perspective to think about.
I'm glad to hear! Thanks for the feedback.
Alli, thank you very much for sharing this with us. These 8 points are really interesting to be aware of. During my blogging career, I have committed a lots of mistakes and one of the most important ones were the unappropiate usage of testimonials and not having a clear call-to-action strategy. I wish I could have read this a few years ago. It would have helped me with all the troubles I found on my way to a successfull online business.
Thank you very much
Thanks for the kind feedback! Glad you found this useful. It's never too late to improve your site!
I liked the article.
The only thing I am halfway disagree with is to put the price.
There are services where you need to make a prior budget, for example "repairing a car" without making a previous diagnosis is to lead to confusion, but if I disagree in facilitating a path within the blog so that the client has the maximum information about How to solve your problem.
Definitely true. There are times when you can't and shouldn't list a price. But, transparency into the process is really helpful for prospects and builds trust. Thanks for the feedback!
Wonderful parameters to remember during website development.
showing prices on site, won't it be a threat to our business?
Not showing any information about what you charge can scare people off. Publishing some kind of price, that is, being transparent, can help create trust. It can alleviate some of the concerns that someone may have about calling you. At least enough for them to pick up the phone. I like what was said in point #5 -- at least explain how you price things. Or you could try a packaging strategy, as outlined in my blog.
I like the Mistake #8: Poor internal linking and site architecture, that's what people don't consider most of the time. Well actually they know to that we make internal links but they don't make internal links to related content.
Let me give you a simple example!
I write content about "Dwell Time" and i am linking that to my old "On-Page SEO" Post, That is fine. That's what Relevant internal linking.
But what people do, If they Write the content on "Dwell Time" they internal that Post with there Older post which is like "Find Top 10 List of Movies" or Some thing else, which does not make any sense.
So what i know is to stick on one niche in the start and complete every topic of that niche. If you do that you make authority and at the same time you can easy Interlink each and every post to others. What that does it's increase the "Dwell Time" and your Chances are that your ranking become better.
If you would like to know about What is Dwell Time, Impact of "Dwell Time", It's benefits. I write a long Article Recently. If Moz allow me to add link. Than i will share!
Thanks
Yeah, internal links to irrelevant pages is definitely a red flag suggesting spam. I don't think you need to write everything about one niche at once. I would just make sure to keep an inventory of your content so you can reference it and find appropriate internal links when you create something new.
Thanks for your interest in my content, should i inbox you content?
I am doing my first content audit ever, so there are some good points here that I will keep in mind. I also keep in mind UX design and responsiveness on mobile when doing the audit - we have a very large webshop, so it is important that our customers can easily find and purchase our products! And this has become increasingly more important for mobile pages.
Absolutely! Great addition. Thanks for the feedback!
Good article! It is difficult to include the prices, but it is very good advice. Let's try.
Thanks! Yes, indeed. But, some information that explains how pricing works goes a long way.
Great job Alli. I wonder how many of those websites analyzed have CEO's that micromanage everything :)
Thanks! You'd be surprised. It's a solid mix of large organizations and small businesses. It's pretty easy to forget things like CTAs at any level if you aren't consciously thinking about them.
Interesting suggestion about pricing. As a freelance writer, that's a tough one, because most freelancers prefer to charge by project, and not all projects are the same. An article could be 600 words to 1,500 words. A white paper could be a single interview with a source and virtually no research. Or it could be heavy on research and require four sources. And the page count could be the same for both. Or it could be an industry a freelancer is unfamiliar with, so it takes more ramp-up time. However, it would be nice to nip certain calls in the bud. The one time I saw a freelance writer provide pricing was a white paper writer, who gave a range of $2,000 to $5,000.
I hear ya. I used to have a freelance business and website too. A lot of what you just explained though could easily be put on a page about pricing. Here’s what goes into my pricing. It’s customized based on these factors. You could give a range and have the CTA of the page be send me details about your project for a quote. Then at least people have a general idea before they reach out and you’ll hopefully weed out bad leads before they come to you.
1.How can I add keywords that serve to position my website in the search engines. My website is about real estate agent. Thank you.
That is a large question as there are a lot of factors beyond keywords that go into rank. You may want to check out the beginner’s guide to SEO. Here’s the chapter on keyword research: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research
How can I add keywords that serve to position my website in the search engines. My website is about tech and gadgets. and also facing problem in indexing latest posts.
Thank you.
Hello,
I think that the Mistake #5: Not talking about pricing its not a mistake when it comes to sales sector, this is a strategy thats the sale sector use ,they only add phone number in their website.
It is important for B2B companies to do this strategy.
Btw Nice article.
"Many companies, B2B companies in particular, do not want to list pricing on their website. It’s understandable, especially when the honest answer to “how much does your service cost?” is “it depends.” The problem with shying away from pricing altogether, though, is that people are searching for pricing information. It’s a huge missed opportunity not to have any content related to pricing, and it annoys prospective customers who would rather know your cost range before giving you a call or submitting a form for follow up."