When to retire content on your B2B SaaS website
Knowing when to retire content vs. producing new content can be a challenge. If you’re on the fence, use these tips to guide your website content...
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.
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.
To align with your team, you can ask the following questions to inform your strategy so you can work smarter and save time.
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:
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:
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?
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:
If you come across any of these situations, chances are, it’s a good time to consider conducting a content audit.
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:
If you’re breaking down lead magnets, sales enablement pieces or event testimonials, consider looking at:
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.
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.
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.
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:
With a passion for social media, content, and all things creative, Emily is excited to consistently learn new skills to advance her marketing career and is always up for a challenge.
Knowing when to retire content vs. producing new content can be a challenge. If you’re on the fence, use these tips to guide your website content...
Content marketing attracts, educates and converts customers. Learn more about our B2B SaaS content marketing tips, tricks and topics.
Promoting your content is important to provide value for your intended audiences. And for B2B SaaS companies, LinkedIn and Facebook are the two most...
Be the first to know about new B2B SaaS Marketing insights to build or refine your marketing function with the tools and knowledge of today’s industry.