How to perform a content audit for B2B SaaS businesses [w/ template]

When was the last time you did a pulse check on your B2B SaaS content inventory? What about lead magnets? Testimonials?

If you haven’t ever thought about it, chances are, now is the time to think about conducting a content audit.

This might sound daunting at first, but you’ll want to sift through the “clutter” in order to aid productivity and yield better results for your content marketing strategy. After all, if you don’t know what you have on hand, or what you’re missing, are you really in control? 

I’ll walk you through a step-by-step process on how to execute an effective content audit for SaaS businesses in order to boost your credibility and regain focus to drive better results.

Why your B2B organization should conduct a content audit 

Surprisingly, 37% of content marketers have never completed a content audit. Many feel it’s either too overwhelming or time-consuming.

It’s important to examine why a content audit is an invaluable asset to your overall strategy. Plus, it’ll help your team generate the most meaningful content for your audience. 

Here are a few steps to take before you even begin:

1. Research your audience. understand their hopes, needs, and pains. 
2. Think about your goals. Align with your sales and marketing team to understand where you are and where you’re going.
3. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Don’t let your inventory scare you. Think of it as an opportunity to grow and improve. You don’t need to update everything all at once.

Questions to ask before auditing your content:

To align with your team, you can ask the following questions to inform your strategy so you can work smarter and save time.

• What are our quarterly sales goals? Do we have any product updates rolling out soon?
• What do you like about the content we’ve produced?
• What DON’T you like about the content we’ve produced?
• What content do you think we need more of (testimonials, sales enablement, nurture, etc.)?

These questions will help you understand what’s important to tackle before you begin. In the end, completing a content audit can help with the following:

• Understanding what’s working well for your team
• Looking at ways you can improve your SEO authority
• Discovering any gaps in your content (are you covering every step in the buyer’s journey? Are you addressing every persona?)
• Creating a full inventory of content for your team’s visibility 

B2B content audit dont's 

Surprisingly, the easy part of a content audit is gathering all of your materials in one place. The hard part is figuring out what to do next.

If you don’t have an initial goal in mind for the purpose of your audit, you’re somewhat setting yourself up to fail. There’s no point in looking through every piece of content if you don’t actually do anything with it.

That’s why you’ll need to collaborate with your team to account for upcoming campaigns and quarterly goals. Without an initial goal in mind, you’re just wasting your time. 

Also, your blog inventory is an important piece of the content audit, but it shouldn’t be your everything. When I say content audit, I mean every piece of content that exists on your website. Don’t overlook these other deliverables that are essential to your strategy:

• Lead magnets (ebooks, infographics, one-pagers)
• CTA’s (pop-ups, sign-ups, etc.)
• Social proof (statistics and customer testimonials)

Look at each deliverable and think of ways you can use them to their full potential. Could you integrate a testimonial into one of your nurture campaigns? Is there social proof missing on a section of your website and could you add a quick customer quote to provide more value?

When to conduct a content audit 

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day as a content creator. Whether you’re working on multiple clients or working as an in-house content marketer, it’s important to continually keep a pulse check on your content library and align them with your goals.

Here are five red flags to look out for as you create new content and look through old content:

1. Outdated messaging and positioning. Content does not accurately reflect the tone or positioning of the product or service.
2. Poor design and editorial structures. Have you come across a few blog posts that have poor layouts or old designs?
3. Inaccuracies. Information is inaccurate or not up-to-date.
4. Re-brands. The business you work for is tackling a website rebrand.
5. Lack of visibility. You don’t have any idea of what content you have on hand or where it lives on your website.

If you come across any of these situations, chances are, it’s a good time to consider conducting a content audit. 

Conducting a content audit: Determine WHAT

Once you decide it’s time to conduct a content audit, you’ll need to narrow down what exactly you want to look at. 

This is why creating a spreadsheet will be your best friend. You’ll want to think about what’s the most meaningful to track, but here are a few categories we gathered that might be a good place to start:

1. Type of content
2. Date of publication or recent optimizations
3. Buyer’s journey
4. Writer
5. Meta data
1. Title
2. Meta description + characters
3. Header
6. Main CTA
7. Traffic
8. Social Shares
9. Top performing keywords

If you’re breaking down lead magnets, sales enablement pieces or event testimonials, consider looking at:

1. Conversions/downloads
2. Date created
3. Where it lives on your website

Create an actionable content audit 

The most crucial part of a content audit actually comes after the audit itself. It’s great to have a list of all of your content in one place, but it holds no value if you don’t use it to your advantage.

I suggest that you use your content audit as an opportunity to look for topic gaps you might be overlooking or even expand on a topic cluster. If you notice a topic that’s performing particularly well, you may consider writing more about that topic.

You’ll also want to factor in how your content fits into your overall SEO strategy. If you are seeing a pattern where you consistently write about the same topic, think about how you can fit each blog into a topic cluster. 

If you notice a piece of content that’s getting little to no traffic or has poor SEO results, think about how you can add more value to the content. Maybe you need to redirect your reader to another blog using a 301 code that covers a similar topic and is performing better. You can also narrow down what pieces make the most sense to optimize for a new keyword. 

Old content doesn’t necessarily mean it’s dead. If it’s a matter of a few optimizations and redirects to revitalize what you already have on hand, you don’t need to get rid of it. However, there are some cases like relevancy, SEO cannibalization and more that might indicate it’s time to let go.  

Remember the goal of your content audit for SaaS

One way to prioritize any action items that come from your audit is to think about your quarterly goals. Does your team implement objectives and key results (OKRs) or content goals to reach a certain amount of traffic, keywords in top SERP positions or content downloads? 

You can use your content audit to work smarter and help you achieve these goals, instead of creating net-new content. 

Once you decide what your priorities are, you can bake in your optimizations or rewrites with your content calendar. This will give you a chance to place action items on each piece and prioritize which subjects mean the most to your readers at that specific time. 

Lead magnets and CTA’s 

Placing action items on your lead magnets and testimonials might look a little bit different than combing through your blog posts.

For lead magnets, you will want to define what your audience is looking for at that time and think about ways you can create the most value for them. That might involve tweaking verbiage to make the content more evergreen or even looking at the CTA’s on your website. CTA’s should not be forgotten, as they are the pathway that gets your readers to actually download your content.

How can your CTA’s be improved or highlighted on your website to attract more readers and generate more downloads? Generating actions from your readers is the meat of content marketing. If you’re having a hard time generating interest or conversions, a content audit can help you pinpoint where you currently stand and map out where you want to go. 

SaaS content audits are all about prioritization 

Remember, you don’t have to tackle everything at once. Breaking up your content audit into action items will help you stay organized and keep your content pipeline full for the future.

Staying on top of your library of content will keep you and your entire team in-the-know in order to work smarter and look for ways to improve your performance. It’s not enough to just publish your content and hope for the best.

Think of using a content audit as an opportunity to grow and sort through the clutter to become a more sophisticated and aware marketer. For more helpful content tips for B2B SaaS, check out these resources below:

• Ultimate Guide to B2B SaaS Content Marketing: Tips, Tricks and Topics
• Beginner's guide to B2B SaaS SEO content: Strategy, tools and tips
• How B2B content marketing drives SaaS growth