Content Strategy: The Importance of Performing a Content Audit

In all of my years in B2B marketing, working with dozens of independent software vendors and consulting partners across 5 continents, I’ve noticed several themes in the mistakes that companies make. One of the biggest mistakes B2B marketers and content creators make is not fully leveraging the content they’ve already developed. As I repeatedly tell my clients – you’ve spent all this time and research and effort toward great content, only to underutilize those assets. Over the years, it starts to accumulate to the point where companies are no longer aware of what they even have within their archives. Instead of constantly creating new content from scratch, a content audit helps you evaluate what you already have, identify gaps, and develop a smarter strategy moving forward.

In this continuation of the Content Strategy series, we’ll explore why a content audit is essential, the key steps to performing one, and how it can transform your content strategy.

Why a Content Audit is Essential

A successful content strategy isn’t just about producing new content—it’s about ensuring that every piece of content you have is working toward your goals. Without a content audit, your digital presence can become cluttered with outdated, underperforming, or irrelevant content, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. By regularly assessing your content, you can refine your messaging, improve SEO, and better serve your audience. A content audit enables businesses to focus on what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and uncover new opportunities for growth and engagement.

1. Gain Visibility into Your Existing Content

• You can’t improve what you don’t measure. A content audit provides a clear view of what content exists across your website, blog, and other digital channels.
• Helps identify content gaps, ensuring you’re covering all necessary topics for your audience.
• Aids in organizing content by format, topic, audience, and performance metrics.
• Allows you to compare your newly organized content against market research and support topics to make data-driven decisions about new content.

2. Identify Gaps & Opportunities

• Reveals where your content strategy is lacking (e.g., missing topics, underserved personas, outdated material, or underdeveloped themes).
• Uncovers high-performing content that can be expanded into new formats (e.g., turning a blog post into a video or podcast).
• Helps prioritize new content creation based on what’s missing rather than guessing.

3. Improve Content Performance & Search Rankings

• Low-quality, outdated, or duplicate content can harm SEO and user engagement.
• Identifies content that needs updating, consolidating, or removing to improve search rankings.
• Allows for internal metadata/linking improvements, making content easier for users (and search engines) to navigate.

4. Repurpose & Maximize Existing Content

• High-performing blog posts can be turned into LinkedIn articles, videos, infographics, or webinars.
• Older evergreen content can be refreshed with new insights and republished for continued engagement.
• Helps repurpose assets across different platforms to reach broader audiences.

5. Focus on Quality Over Quantity

• A content audit helps shift the focus from volume to value.
• Instead of churning out endless content, it ensures that each piece is purposeful, relevant, and aligned with audience needs.
• Cleaning up low-performing content improves site quality, credibility, and engagement.

How to Perform a Content Audit in 5 Steps

A content audit is more than just taking inventory—it’s a strategic process that helps you assess the effectiveness of your content and align it with your business objectives. Organizations that regularly audit their content are able to develop, over time, scoring mechanisms that help them focus on high-performing content and quickly refine or replace low-performing content. By following a structured approach, you can determine what content is driving results, what needs improvement, and what should be removed or repurposed. This not only enhances the user experience but also improves search rankings, streamlines content production, and ensures that every piece of content is contributing to your overall goals. Below is a five-step guide to conducting an effective content audit.

1. Gather All Your Content

• Compile a list of all content assets, including blog posts, web pages, whitepapers, videos, social media posts with high engagement, and gated content.
• Where there are no internal metrics, use tools like Google Analytics, Screaming Frog, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to extract URLs, metadata, and performance data.
• Organize content by format, topic, date published, and engagement metrics, as well as by personas, customer journeys, and sales funnel conversion activities.

2. Assess Performance Metrics

• Identify high-performing content based on metrics like traffic, engagement, time on page, and conversion rates.
• Pinpoint low-performing content that may need updating, consolidation, or removal.
• Look at backlinks, social shares, and keyword rankings to determine SEO value.

3. Categorize Content

• Assign each piece of content a status:
  • Keep & Optimize (high-performing content that can be updated and improved)
  • Repurpose (content that can be expanded into new formats)
  • Merge (similar or overlapping content that should be consolidated)
  • Remove (outdated, low-quality, or irrelevant content that no longer serves a purpose)

4. Identify Content Gaps

• Compare existing content against your audience’s needs and search intent.
• Identify topics you haven’t covered that align with industry trends and audience questions.
• Review competitor content to spot missing opportunities.

5. Develop a Content Optimization Plan

• Prioritize updates based on content value and potential impact.
• Create a repurposing strategy to maximize existing content across different channels.
• Implement an ongoing content audit schedule (quarterly, biannually, or annually) to maintain content health.

How a Content Audit Sparks New Ideas

A content audit isn’t just about tidying up—it’s a powerful way to uncover fresh opportunities and develop a smarter content strategy. By analyzing what has worked in the past, you can pinpoint themes, topics, and formats that resonate with your audience, and which validate or align with data captured within your product teams (through industry and competitive research) and support organizations (through customer surveys and support ticket data). Additionally, evaluating existing content often reveals ways to expand, repurpose, or experiment with new approaches, helping you stay ahead in an ever-changing digital landscape. Here’s how a content audit can fuel creativity and innovation in your content strategy.

1. Identify What Works and Do More of It

• Analyzing high-performing content can reveal patterns in topics, styles, and formats that resonate with your audience.
• Helps double down on successful content strategies rather than blindly creating new material.

2. Experiment with Different Formats

• A well-received blog post can be turned into a video, podcast, or LinkedIn post.
• Webinars can be transcribed into blog articles, ebooks, or email sequences.
• Data-driven reports can be converted into infographics or interactive tools.

3. Revisit and Refresh Evergreen Content

• Evergreen content remains relevant over time but may need updates with fresh statistics or new examples.
• Republishing optimized content boosts search rankings and extends its lifespan.
• Keeping content up to date ensures your site remains authoritative and valuable.

Taking Action

A content audit may seem like a daunting task, and many leadership teams push back on investing the time and resources to conduct one. However, the payoff far outweighs the effort. By taking inventory of what you already have, you’ll save time, reduce content production costs, and create a streamlined strategy that drives more engagement and value.

In marketing, it’s well known that keeping an existing customer is much less expensive than acquiring a new one. The same principle applies to content creation—why start from scratch when you can refine, repurpose, and maximize what already works? The most successful content marketers understand that existing assets are goldmines waiting to be tapped. By auditing your content, identifying gaps, and repurposing high-performing materials, you ensure that every piece serves a purpose and delivers maximum impact.

If you’ve never done a content audit before, now is the perfect time to start. Knowing what you CAN do starts with knowing what you’ve ALREADY done—and with the right strategy, you can make every piece of content work harder and smarter for your business.