What is a blog audit, you ask?
A blog audit focuses on evaluating the relevance and accuracy of your blog posts. Your business evolves over time, and so should your blog. A blog audit ensures that your voice, your brand, and your content continues to remain relevant as your business evolves.
Here’s how you’ll know it’s time to do a blog audit in your sleep consulting business:
Your Ideal Client Avatar Has Changed
Each blog you (or your copywriter) write should be written for your ideal client. In order to attract your ideal client, you need to write content that resonates with them. It’s pretty understandable that in those early months of your business that you didn’t have your ideal client avatar clearly defined. How could you? It’s only through experience that you really get the sense of WHO you WANT to work with each and every day.
It’s also possible for your ideal client avatar to change over time.
For example: Your ideal client used to be a stay at home mom but you’ve now decided your ideal client is actually a mom who works outside the home. In a blog audit you would change any wording that talks about being home with little ones all day to wording that discusses childcare, after work routines, etc.
Whether you have just defined your ideal client avatar or you are altering an existing one, a blog audit is going to be a critical part of this transition in your business. Just deciding on a new client avatar isn’t enough to attract them to your services. Your content - future and past - is how you will convey to your ideal client that you offer exactly what they want and need.
It’s Been One Year (Or Longer) Since Your Last Blog Audit
If you took a moment to think back to where you were in your business one year ago, I am sure A LOT has changed since then. You’ve gained experience, written more content, and learned more about running an online business. All of these changes will impact your past blog posts which is why performing a blog audit annually will ensure that all your content is accurate and reflects the growth you have experienced.
As the days and years go on, links change or become broken. This is an important reason for why performing a blog audit at least once a year is a good idea. Your future blogs will link back to past blogs and you don’t want to direct your readers to blogs with broken or irrelevant links.
Over the course of a year, you’ve gained valuable experience and that will be reflected in some of the blog posts you’ve written.
For example: You wrote a blog post 10 months ago about how to drop the pacifier. But since then, you’ve helped a handful of families through this transition and have additional tips to share.
It’s not just your own professional experience that changes your content, sometimes things in our industry change. Recently, the safe sleep guidelines were updated by the AAP. Any blog posts you have that discuss safe sleep practices should be reviewed to ensure they are in line with the most recent guidelines. This is something so important that you would be able to catch during a blog audit.
In addition to the experience you’ve gained from working with clients, you have also gained knowledge over the past year about running an online business. Maybe you’ve learned a thing or two about SEO since your last blog audit. Now is a perfect time to go through all your blog posts to ensure that the headings, keywords, and links are all strengthening your SEO.
You’ve Added (Or Removed) Services/Products
If you’ve recently added new services or products to your offers then you’ll need to do a blog audit to direct your readers to your new offers.
For example: You have recently created a newborn course. You will need to go through all your past blog posts that relate to newborns and update the post to now direct your readers to your newborn course.
So whether you’ve added a course, a guide, a freebie, ask-me-anything calls, whatever it may be, you want your blog posts to reflect these changes so you can get more sign ups, more calls, and more sales!
You’ll also need to do a blog audit after removing services or products from your offers. This is arguably more important than doing a blog audit after adding services because you wouldn’t want your readers to come across an offer that no longer exists. So whether you’ve decided to no longer offer newborn support or you’ve removed a freebie from your resources, it’s important that your past blog posts are a reflection of what you offer now.
It is also important to keep any affiliate links or codes up to date. Have you recently become an affiliate or opened an Amazon storefront? Then it’s time to do a blog audit to determine where you can include your affiliate links. The same is true if you are no longer an affiliate with a company, you’ll want to go through your blogs and remove any affiliate information.
I know that a blog audit can feel like a tedious task and it’s hard to find the time to do it between consultations, creating new content, running an Instagram account, and caring for your family. However, blog audits are an important part of running a successful blog. Performing blog audits regularly ensures that your posts are accurate and up to date. Blogs that are filled with inaccurate information and broken links cause readers to stop reading.The little details become the big details!
Now that you know it’s time for a blog audit, you may be wondering when in the world you’re going to find the time. We can help!
Reach out to one of our virtual assistants (VAs) today to chat about how we can assist you with managing your blog.
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