How to Perform a Content Audit for SaaS Brands (and See Real Results)

So, first things first: what is a SaaS content audit and why is it important?

It’s pretty much what it says on the tin: a systematic evaluation of your SaaS content. Its goal is to gather the data necessary to provide valuable insights about how to move forward. 

A full content audit for SaaS businesses is a chance to step back and analyze the quality and results of your existing website in order to determine your future content marketing strategy. 

Think of it as a type of review: an essential step to move forward and grow, indicating what’s working well and what isn’t.

In this guide, we’re going to walk you through the ins and outs of a SaaS SEO content audit: from where to why to how—we’ll leave no stone unturned. 

Let’s get started. 

What is the purpose of a SaaS content audit?

From blog posts to landing pages, a SaaS content audit will help you develop up-to-date, quality content for your target audience. It will trawl your site’s content to identify gaps, outdated content, and duplicate content. It may be an undeniably time-consuming process, but it offers exceptional ROI in terms of optimizing content and increasing site visitors. 

Creating content—especially effective, engaging content—is no mean feat, and it certainly helps to look at the bigger picture every now and then. From meta descriptions to keyword research, a SaaS content audit is designed to boost a site’s search engine optimization (SEO) in order to drive up organic traffic and increase those conversions.

Let’s look at some of the key benefits of conducting a SaaS content audit. 

• Increased engagement from users: better content means more interest. Helpful, up-to-date content will not only attract new leads to your SaaS website but will keep them coming back for actionable tips and practical advice. 
• Better site performance overall: renewing content quality will, in turn, attract more traffic to your website, which has a positive knock-on effect on brand visibility and reputation. 
• Indicates outdated content: conducting a content audit will bring to light the content that is no longer of value. Remember, when it comes to a SaaS content marketing strategy, quality reigns supreme over quantity. One good blog post is worth 100 low-quality posts. 
• More insight into what content works best: the content audit process yields important data for developing a future content strategy. If you discover a blog post is performing particularly well, you can dive further into the factors that make it successful and apply them to future content marketing efforts. 
• Identifies gap’s in a buyer’s journey that you haven’t covered: effective SaaS content will cover all stages of the sales funnel, from initial interest to paying customers. Due to the longer nature of the SaaS buyer’s journey, it’s essential for SaaS businesses to provide all sorts of actionable content on their website. 
• Whether your content matches your current marketing strategy: this information provides valuable insight into your positioning, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of your existing content. 
• Identifies content that can be updated: over time, blog posts tend to slip down the rankings. Analytics tools can help discover content that needs to be improved or updated. Refreshing old articles by boosting their content quality is a particular benefit of a content audit, as it requires minimal effort. 

When should you conduct a content audit for SaaS?

Carrying out a content audit every 3-6 months is a great way to make sure your content is consistently fresh, exciting, and engaging with your target audience. Auditing your content every 3-6 months gives you time to respond and adapt to shifts in users’ behavior and market trends. It’s a step-by-step process that can take time, so it’s worth scheduling some time to prepare for it. 

The frequency of content audits for SaaS businesses depends on various factors such as the size of the content library, frequency of content creation, and industry dynamics. Regular monitoring of content performance and user feedback can help identify the need for more frequent audits and updates.

–Nathan Clark, Co-Founder Gate2Ai 

Here are some questions to ask yourself before a content audit:

• Who is our target audience? What are their pain points?
• What do you want to achieve with your blog content? What are your long-term and short-term goals?
• How do you want to position your brand?

Remember, it’s not necessarily about how long the content audit itself takes, but the actions you take based on the data it yields. So, what might come out of your content audit? 

• A need to optimize your content 
• Delete certain webpages 
• Find a content gap that could be filled with new content 

How to conduct a content audit for your SaaS business

Let’s go through the stages involved in a content audit, step by step. 

1. Define your ICPs 

First things first. In order to carry out a content inventory it’s crucial to know who your site is aimed at. This will ensure you maintain a consistent voice and tone throughout your entire website. 

It’ll also ensure that you collect data that are specific to your target audience, data that will define your future content marketing efforts. Remember that your website visitors will be at different stages of the marketing funnel, so it’s important to map out your customer journey and know at which stage each piece of content is aimed. 

2. Define your objectives 

Start by clarifying the goals of your content audit. Are you aiming to improve lead generation, increase customer retention, or enhance brand awareness? Defining your objectives helps align the audit process with your overall business strategy.

Abhishek Shah, Founder Testlify

Clear priorities are key. Whatever your goals are, it’s essential to take the time to define them clearly. You need to know what you’re hoping to gain from your content audit: all the factors you need to inform your decisions. Ask yourself these questions: 

• What are you hoping to achieve? 
• Are there specific areas of your content that need improvement? 
• Is your current content attracting the right audience? 
• Are users coming back to your site? If not, why not? 
• Does each piece of content encourage the user to take action? 

3. Crawl Your Website

This is the first step of collecting and categorizing your content. You’ll need to take a content inventory of everything on your website, including blog posts, articles, videos, white papers, how-to guides, interactive quizzes, and everything. 

4. Audit each URL 

There are multiple content audit tools available (such as Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and Semrush) to help you compile a list of all the URLs on your website. Once you’ve gathered your list, you’ll need to audit each one systematically, determining whether it needs to be deleted, updated, or redirected. This is your chance to root out any broken links or dysfunctional pages. 

5. Determine the correct action for each page

Whether it’s repurposing old content that isn’t performing well, adding new sections, or deleting an entire webpage, each page will need to be categorized to implement the corresponding changes. The data you gather will inform you about whether to remove, replace or redirect content. 

6. Monitor and measure key metrics

Now you’ve completed the first stage of your audit, you’ll need to take a deep dive into exactly how it’s performing. Ideally, you’ll want tangible KPIs that indicate the health and performance quality of your website content. Engagement metrics are central to successful SaaS content audits: they give an idea of how valuable your content is to those who are reading it. 

Here are some examples of SaaS SEO metrics to watch for (remember, what’s acceptable for you will depend on your specific area): 

• Organic traffic: the number of visitors coming from search results. This is indicative of your content strategy, how you’re distributing it, and the content type. Examine the pages with the most traffic, and the least, to see which content is performing well and which can be optimized. 
• Bounce rate: this is the percentage of website visitors navigating away from your web page without interacting. It can give you an idea of how helpful or engaging your content is. 
• Backlinks: constantly changing, you’ll want to keep an eye out for the good quality backlinks created when a piece of content is promoted and shared. Backlinks can be a source of organic traffic when they appear in the right place. 
• Unique visitors: essentially the number of views a piece of content gets. The higher the number of views, the higher the chances of content ROI. 
• Time on page: this metric is a useful tool to determine how successful or engaging (particularly long-form) blog posts are. For example, for a 2000-word ‘how-to’ guide, an average time on a page of 30 seconds will demonstrate that it’s not providing value to users. The average person can read around 180 words per minute, so a 2000-word post should be engaging enough to keep them on your page for 11 minutes.
• New vs. returning customers: with a SaaS-specific content strategy, it’s vital to nurture leads and keep them returning to your site, moving them further through the buyer’s journey. A website content audit will demonstrate how many users are returning and how many are new to your web pages. 
• Conversions: you’ll need to determine your set goals for, say, a quarter, and then compare them with the statistics from your content audit in order to determine your web page’s success during that period of time. Careful monitoring is key. 

A spreadsheet containing all the metrics and important information about each piece of content is a great way to keep things simple. Like Sudhir Khatwani, Founder at The Money Mongers, says:

7. Develop a content strategy 

Using the data from your content audits, you’ll need to update your current content marketing strategy. A helpful tip is to develop a content calendar that addresses your findings, by filling the gaps and finding new directions to satisfy the search engines. 

8. Keep monitoring your metrics 

The final stage goes beyond the content audit itself: you’ll need to keep a close eye on your metrics throughout the year, to monitor the results of your content audit, and to keep reaching your goals. It’s important to keep updating your ideal metrics as your company grows and your web page attracts more visitors over time.

Additionally, monitoring your metrics will allow you to optimize the right content. Failing to update outdated content on your website can make your company seem outdated and not a leading authority in your industry. Typically, updating and optimizing the content is enough to bring it back to life for visitors and search engines. However, if the content is irrelevant or underperforming, deleting it altogether can enhance the overall quality of your content library and potentially offer opportunities for repurposing or republishing. 

Best practices for a flawless SaaS content audit

There are multiple ways to do a successful content audit for SaaS companies, but here are some top tips to bear in mind while carrying out content analysis. 

• Audit often: particularly for new or incomplete websites, it’s recommendable to audit more regularly than every 3-6 months. It might be a monthly practice when starting off, with the intervals between audits growing as your website takes off. 
• Know when to delete a page: kill your darlings! You might be particularly attached to a piece of content for various reasons, but if it’s not performing well or contains outdated information, it could be detracting from your brand’s reliability and credibility. It’s better to delete these pages in the long run.
• Work to identify gaps in current content: these could lead to opportunities for new content, which will keep your web page refreshed and attractive to new (and returning!) customers. 
• Looking for opportunities to repurpose or merge pages: sometimes you’ll need to think outside the box. A bit of imagination can mean that old content isn’t totally wasted if you have to delete the page. You can always take sections out, and merge them with others to create new content. 
• It’s worth doing thoroughly: content auditing isn’t the most glamorous or fun part of marketing, but the time put into it can really be worth its weight in gold. High-quality content can be the key to success for a SaaS business, so it’s well worth investing time in. Remember: your website’s content has the power to attract and turn away potential customers. 

And always remember what Daniel Chabert, CEO & Founder at PurpleFire, says:

Keep your business at the heart of your SaaS content audit

It’s all very well putting in the hours into optimizing your content marketing strategy, but at the end of the day it has to be the right content—the content that will generate the most impact for your business—that you’re putting first. 

A successful content audit will help you establish what content is working for you, allowing you to refine your efforts and ensure that the work you’re doing is really paying off. Every single page on your website needs to be geared towards attracting and retaining prospective customers, and a content audit will help you make sure this is the case. 

A strong SEO strategy is becoming ever more important for SaaS businesses around the world. It’s essential to keep your finger on the pulse, measuring SaaS content performance and continuously improving existing content. 

Working with a dedicated SEO content marketing agency with years of experience in the sector can help improve your chances of developing a highly effective, high-ROI website that generates the leads you’re looking for. Skale has helped multiple industry-leading SaaS businesses to make their entire content marketing processes easier for the user. It’s a crucial step in any marketing strategy: now’s the time to get started.