Content Audit Semrush: A Beginner's Guide

Performing regular content audits is critical for staying on top of your website's health and performance.

By leveraging Semrush's robust auditing capabilities, you can conduct comprehensive audits to unlock growth opportunities and optimize content for higher conversions.

In this post, you'll discover a step-by-step guide to conducting your first content audit using Semrush as a beginner. You'll learn how to set up Semrush, analyze your site's SEO and engagement metrics, evaluate backlinks, research keywords, map future content, and maximize content ROI.

Introduction to Content Audit with Semrush

A content audit is a detailed analysis of all the content on your website. It helps identify content gaps, outdated or underperforming content, and opportunities to better optimize content for search engines and users.

Conducting regular content audits is a crucial part of any content marketing strategy. It provides invaluable insights to create more effective content that drives traffic, conversions, and revenue.

Semrush offers a robust set of tools to carry out a comprehensive DIY content audit. Its key features like Position Tracking, Backlink Analytics, Site Audit, and Content Analytics empower users to audit their content performance from multiple angles.

Understanding the Role of Content Audits in Digital Marketing

A content audit examines both the quality and quantity of content on a website. Its key goals include:

Identifying content gaps where new content can be created to attract more organic traffic
Pinpointing underperforming content that can be updated or replaced
Ensuring content is optimized for keywords and ranking potential
Determining if existing content aligns with target buyer personas and their interests
Checking if content meets requirements for maximum visibility and engagement

Regular content audits facilitate data-driven decisions about what content to create, update, promote or remove. This leads to having a content portfolio finely tuned for lead generation and revenue growth.

The Importance of Regular Content Audits for SEO Success

Conducting quarterly or bi-annual content audits is vital for sustaining long-term SEO success. Benefits include:

Discovering new keyword opportunities to target with optimized content
Understanding precisely how existing content ranks in SERPs and where there is room for improvement
Identifying issues like thin content, broken backlinks, or violations of Core Web Vitals that impact rankings
Comparing your content performance over time and against competitors
Maintaining relevance by updating or removing outdated, irrelevant content

Overall, regularly monitoring content metrics stops issues from accumulating over time and helps sustain a healthy, high-performance website.

Navigating Semrush for Content Audit Success

Semrush equips users with a robust toolkit to audit website content, including:

Position Tracking: View keyword rankings and monitor changes over custom date ranges.
Backlink Analytics: Identify toxic backlinks to disavow and discover new link building opportunities.
Site Audit: Check site health issues like broken links, page speed, Core Web Vitals violations.
Content Analytics: Analyze content metrics like total published content, shares, backlinks per piece of content.

Combined, these tools provide actionable data to create better content, improve optimization, increase rankings, and beat competitors.

What is content audit in Semrush?

A content audit in Semrush is a process of analyzing and evaluating your website's content to identify areas for improvement. It allows you to:

Assess the overall quality, relevance, and performance of your existing content
Identify content gaps, outdated or underperforming content
Uncover new content opportunities and topics to target
Benchmark your content against competitors
Inform your content strategy and planning

Some of the key things you can analyze in a Semrush content audit include:

Organic traffic - See how much traffic each of your pages gets from search engines using Semrush's Position Tracking tool. This shows you the value of your existing content.
Keywords ranked for - Find out which keywords your pages are already ranking for in search results using Semrush's Organic Research tool. This highlights content optimization opportunities.
On-page SEO - Check important on-page factors like meta titles & descriptions, headings, content length etc. using the On Page SEO Checker.
Backlinks - Assess the number and quality of backlinks pointing to your pages using Semrush's Backlink Analytics tool. More quality backlinks signals better content.
Competitor content - Compare your content performance with competitors using Semrush's Domain Analytics tools. This uncovers content gaps and new opportunities.

Conducting regular content audits in Semrush provides data-backed insights to shape an effective content strategy aligned with your business goals. It serves as a feedback loop to create better quality and higher performing content over time.

What does a content audit include?

A content audit is a process of reviewing and evaluating all the content on a website. It helps identify content gaps, outdated or redundant content, and opportunities to improve content.

Here is what a basic content audit typically includes:

Inventory of all website content - This includes pages, blog posts, images, documents like PDFs, etc. The goal is to catalog everything.
Analysis of content performance - This involves looking at metrics like traffic, engagement, conversions for each content asset. This shows what content is working well and what is not.
Assessing content relevance - This step evaluates if the content serves user intent and business goals. It looks at aspects like keyword targeting, messaging, format, media use, etc.
Checking technical SEO elements - The audit reviews technical SEO factors like metadata, internal linking, page speed, etc.
Competitor content analysis - Benchmarking against competitors' content strategy and performance.
Identifying content gaps - Figuring out what new content needs to be created to plug holes.
Recommending content improvements - Suggesting ways to update or repurpose existing content.

For beginners, focusing on taking an inventory, analyzing high-level metrics, and spotting redundant or outdated content is a good start. As you gain experience, you can level up to more advanced analysis. Using a tool like Semrush simplifies the entire process.

How do I check content quality in Semrush?

After adding your target keywords in Semrush, you can view the content quality score in the graph under the Content Marketing section. This score is based on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest quality.

Here are the key things Semrush analyzes to determine content quality:

SEO optimization - Semrush checks elements like meta titles and descriptions, H1 and H2 tag usage, image alt text, internal linking, etc. Proper on-page SEO improves content quality.
Readability - The add-on evaluates the reading ease of content using metrics like Flesch-Kincaid grade level. More readable content tends to perform better.
Originality - Semrush checks content originality and plagiarism using its database. Unique, original content scores higher.
Tone - The right tone of voice for your audience and industry also impacts quality. Semrush analyzes this qualitatively.

You can view detailed quality reports for each piece of content in Semrush, under the Content Audit section. This breaks down all the above elements that impact quality, along with specific optimization tips.

Monitoring content quality over time is also useful for gauging performance improvements from an SEO and reader perspective. Regularly checking scores can help identify new issues and opportunities.

With consistent assessments using Semrush, you can better optimize content to drive more organic traffic, increase engagement, and boost conversions.

Is Semrush an auditing tool?

Yes, Semrush has a powerful Site Audit tool that makes it easy to run comprehensive SEO audits.

The key features of Semrush's Site Audit include:

Crawlability audit: Checks page indexability, crawl budget optimization, crawl depth, and more.
On-page SEO audit: Analyzes title tags, meta descriptions, headings, image alt text, and other on-page elements.
Technical SEO audit: Checks site speed, Core Web Vitals metrics, mobile-friendliness, security issues.
Content SEO audit: Evaluates content quality, readability, formatting consistency and more.

The Site Audit report provides actionable suggestions to fix over 140 potential SEO issues. You can also integrate data from Google Analytics and Search Console to enrich the audit.

Overall, Semrush's auditing capabilities are very extensive, making it easy for beginners and experts alike to identify opportunities and errors that may be hindering site performance. So yes, it's an invaluable SEO auditing tool.

Setting Up Your Content Audit with Semrush

To prepare for an effective content audit using Semrush, the first step is integrating your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts. This connects the data from these platforms into Semrush for more comprehensive insights.

Integrating Google Analytics with Semrush for Enhanced Insights

Connecting your Google Analytics provides visibility into your website's traffic sources, top landing pages, bounce rates, and other engagement metrics.

To set this up in Semrush:

Navigate to the Integrations section under Projects
Click Connect next to Google Analytics
Follow the prompts to connect your account

Once connected, you can view Google Analytics data directly within tools like the Semrush SEO Dashboard. This gives a holistic perspective for your audit.

Linking Google Search Console for Comprehensive Data

Additionally, integrate Google Search Console to pull in data on search queries, impressions, clickthrough rates (CTR), and more.

To connect it:

Go to Integrations
Click Connect next to Google Search Console
Complete the authorization process

With Search Console linked, Semrush displays search analytics like top queries, clicks, and impressions. This helps better understand search intent and optimization opportunities.

Adding Other Accounts for a Holistic Audit Perspective

While Google Analytics and Search Console provide a strong foundation, you can connect other accounts as well. For example, linking Ahrefs pulls in backlink data for a more well-rounded content audit.

Evaluate if adding any other platforms makes sense to capture additional metrics relevant to your goals. More data points allow for spotting crucial optimization areas.

With the right integrations set up, you have a powerful 360-degree view of your website's performance through Semrush. Now you're ready to leverage the platform's robust analytics for an insightful audit.

Conducting a Thorough Website Content Audit

Conducting a thorough audit of your website's content is crucial for identifying opportunities to optimize it for higher organic traffic, conversions, and revenue. By analyzing your existing content across key areas, you can pinpoint specific improvements to pursue.

Utilizing Semrush Site Audit for SEO Health Checks

Semrush's automated Site Audit tool provides comprehensive technical SEO audits to diagnose issues impacting site performance. By running Site Audit reports, you can:

Identify high-priority technical problems to fix like broken links, duplicate content, accessibility issues.
Check if pages meet Core Web Vitals thresholds for page experience.
Assess if pages are mobile-friendly and load fast enough.
Review metadata issues such as missing page titles and descriptions.

Fixing these technical SEO problems will directly improve your ability to rank in search results and engage visitors.

Analyzing Traffic and Engagement Metrics for Content Optimization

Analyze your website's top landing pages by organic traffic and on-page engagement metrics to identify content optimization opportunities. Specifically, review:

Organic traffic - Pages driving the most organic visitors are top candidates for further optimization to capture more search traffic.
Bounce rate - High bounce rates signal content failing to engage visitors. Prioritize improving or replacing poor performing pages.
Time on page - Low time on page can indicate content not valuable or relevant enough to visitors. Add more multimedia and better structure content on these pages.
Scroll depth - Low scroll depths highlight content not encouraging visitors to continue reading. Experiment with different content formats, structures and visuals.

Identifying Content Gaps with Semrush's Keyword Gap Tool

Semrush's Keyword Gap tool compares your current content with high-traffic keywords you don't rank for. Using this, you can:

Discover relevant, high-search volume keywords lacking dedicated pages on your site.
Identify topics and content your competitors are targeting that you aren't.
Prioritize creating new, optimized content for these missed opportunities.

Addressing content gaps is key for tapping into new relevant search demand.

Evaluating and Enhancing Your Backlink Profile

Assessing the Strength of Your Backlinks with Semrush

Semrush provides detailed backlink data to help you evaluate the quality and strength of links pointing to your site. The Backlink Analytics tool shows your most powerful referring domains and allows filtering by metrics like domain rating, organic traffic, and more.

You can assess metrics like:

Domain Rating - Semrush's proprietary metric scoring a site's SEO strength. Higher is better.
Organic Traffic - Estimated monthly visitors. More traffic indicates an influential site.
Links to Your Site - The number of backlinks from that domain.
Linking Domains - The number of unique linking domains, helpful for diversity.

Analyzing your top linking domains using these metrics reveals opportunities to improve your overall backlink profile.

Uncovering Link Building Opportunities with Semrush

Semrush makes it easy to find sites linking to competitors but not your site. The Backlink Gap Analysis tool compares your backlink profile to up to 5 competitors. It identifies domains that link to them but not you.

You can filter these domains by:

Organic traffic
Domain rating
Linking domains

Prioritizing high-quality sites your competitors have backlinks from but you don't provides clear link building opportunities.

Finding Quality Link Prospects Using Semrush's Link Building Tool

Semrush's Link Building Tool automatically identifies relevant, high-quality sites that are likely to link to you. Just enter a target keyword or URL, and Semrush returns a list of prospects.

You can filter prospects by:

Domain rating
Organic traffic
Linking domains
Email availability

The tool even estimates the likelihood that prospects will link to you. Focus your outreach efforts on sites with high domain ratings and traffic, with a high probability of linking.

Keyword Research and Topic Exploration with Semrush

Semrush offers expansive keyword data to help identify relevant targets for creating new content. Their suite of keyword research tools provides actionable insights to build an effective content strategy.

Discovering High-Potential Keywords for Content Creation

The Keyword Magic Tool surfaces volume keywords with low competition, making them prime targets for new content. To find these "golden" keywords:

Enter a seed keyword like "content audit"
Filter by low competition and high volume
Export the keywords into a spreadsheet
Review and identify targets for new articles, videos, etc.

Focusing on low-competition, high-volume keywords helps ensure your new content can rank well and drive significant organic traffic.

Semrush contains a database of high-volume questions related to your business or industry. Mine these questions to identify knowledge gaps and content opportunities.

For example, search for "content audit" then filter for questions only. Review the high-volume questions and consider creating content that provides those answers. This ensures your content actually addresses user search intent.

Creating Topical Clusters for a Structured Content Strategy

Group related keywords by topic to inform content pillars and clusters. For example, group "content audit" keywords into categories like:

Content audit tools
Conducting an audit
Audit analysis and reporting
Optimizing existing content

Define each cluster, then create pillar pages with overview content supported by subpages on each subtopic. This structures your site content and links pages together thematically.

Developing an Actionable Content Strategy Post-Audit

Conducting a thorough content audit provides invaluable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your current content. But the real value comes from translating those findings into an optimized content strategy and plan. Here are some tips for developing a practical, achievable content roadmap based on your audit results:

Prioritizing Content Optimization for Quick SEO Wins

When analyzing your audit, look for quick wins - opportunities to make incremental improvements to existing pages and posts for fast SEO and traffic gains. Some easy starting points include:

Optimizing page titles and meta descriptions
Improving content structure with better headings
Enhancing on-page optimization around focus keywords
Identifying thin content to flesh out into more comprehensive, useful resources

Tackling these types of quick page fixes first creates momentum and frees up more time for creating net new content down the line.

Mapping Out a Content Structure Based on Topical Clusters

A key output of your audit should be uncovering natural topical clusters across your site's content. Look at which categories and subjects have the most pages and perform best. Then visualize these as content pillars, laying out a site architecture map based on these clusters.

This topical hierarchy forms the blueprint for ongoing content expansion, showing high potential subjects to double down on. It also reveals content gaps - missing topics that could attract more organic search traffic. With a clear content map in place, you can methodically fill out these clusters with interlinked, targeted pages.

Setting Achievable Content Marketing Goals with Semrush

With your audit findings and content map established, the next step is setting realistic goals for content output and performance improvements. Benchmark metrics like pages per month, target keyword rankings, traffic growth rate, etc. based on your current capacity.

While aiming high is good, overextending with unrealistic targets often backfires, leading teams to fall behind and struggle to keep up. Sustainable, incremental growth aligned to your bandwidth helps ensure content efforts don't flame out from fatigue. Leverage Semrush's tracking to set targets, then monitor progress against KPIs.

Consistency and persistence are key - not chasing quick hits. Build processes for continually optimizing existing content while expanding your content clusters over time. With an organized system in place, achieving long-term SEO and conversion gains through content becomes much more feasible.

Leveraging Semrush's Content Marketing Platform for Distribution

Semrush offers a robust suite of tools to help content creators and marketers distribute their content effectively across channels and measure its performance.

Using Semrush to Distribute Your Content Across Channels

You can leverage Semrush's Topic Research and Content Marketing Platform to:

Identify high-potential topics and keywords to create content around
Optimize content for search and social channels
Get SEO Content Templates to streamline creation
Use the SEO Writing Assistant to refine your drafts
Distribute your content more widely by identifying relevant websites and influencers

This allows you to plan and execute a data-driven content strategy across search, social, email marketing, PPC ads, and more.

Measuring Content Performance with Semrush Analytics Reports

Once your content is published, you can track how well it is performing using Semrush's analytics reports:

Monitor organic traffic and rankings with Position Tracking
Identify top performing pieces of content with Organic Research
See how your backlinks are growing with Backlink Analytics
Check site speed and Core Web Vitals under Site Audit
Get actionable tips to improve metrics under SEO Diagnostics

Setting up custom reports and alerts ensures you stay on top of the key metrics and KPIs for your content marketing strategy.

Optimizing for SERP Features and User Experience

Semrush enables optimizing your content for maximum visibility and engagement in SERPs:

Use the SERP Features tool to identify opportunities to add videos, images, structured data etc.
Improve page speed, Core Web Vitals and mobile-friendliness under Site Audit
Check if your meta titles and descriptions are optimized under On-Page SEO
Identify high traffic competitors to benchmark against using Organic Research

This allows you to shape content that not only ranks well but also converts visitors into customers.

Conclusion: Maximizing Content ROI with Semrush

Recapping the Semrush Content Audit Checklist

Conducting a comprehensive content audit with Semrush provides invaluable insights into the health and performance of your website content. Here's a recap of the key steps:

Connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts to unlock the full power of Semrush's auditing capabilities. This gives you a holistic view of your site's visibility and engagement.
Use features like Position Tracking and Backlink Analytics to audit your site's rankings and backlink profile. Identify ranking drops, new competitors, and backlink opportunities.
Run an On-Page SEO Checker analysis to catch technical SEO issues impacting site speed and Core Web Vitals scores. Quickly diagnose problems and improve site performance.
Leverage Semrush's wealth of organic research data to audit your site and top pages for traffic, rankings, and optimization opportunities. Compare against competitors to guide your content strategy.
Conduct keyword research with Semrush to uncover buyer intent, valuable long-tail keywords, and content gaps compared to competitors. Expand your site's visibility.

Next Steps for Content Marketing Mastery with Semrush

Armed with audit insights from Semrush, you're ready to transform your content marketing strategy. Some next steps include:

Use the Topic Research tool to ideate relevant, high-performing content that plugs your site's gaps and matches target audience intent.
Tap into Semrush's AI-powered Content Marketing Platform module to streamline ideation, creation, distribution and optimization of data-backed content that drives organic growth.
Continuously monitor your site's health and rankings using Semrush to catch issues early and capitalize on new keyword and backlink opportunities. Consistency is key for long-term content success.

With an informed strategy powered by Semrush's robust auditing and insights, you'll maximize content ROI, own your niche, and sustainably grow your organic presence over the long haul.