In this guide, we’ll walk you through the Content Audit. This is your assistant to optimize your content portfolio. New opportunities are waiting for you, as well as ideas to keep your current content relevant.
Watch our Academy videos 📹 on using the Content Audit for a step-by-step guide:
Or watch our webinar 📹, a more hands-on session:
Table of Contents
Before you get started
It's important to connect to Google Search Console 👉 Help article
Make sure to create your Content Marketing Strategy with Alice 👉 Walkthrough video
🔔 Note: New opportunities are being generated every week (on the weekday it was set up).
Start auditing your content
1. Access the Content Audit tool
Step 1. In your StoryChief dashboard, you’ll see a new feature in the navigation bar. Click on Insights -> Content Audit to access the page.
Here, you can filter on the opportunity type.
2. Opportunity Types
a. New Content Idea
The ‘New content idea’ presents fresh topics based on recent trends and competitor research. The preview includes the title, the content pillars, audiences and the potential traffic increase. The ideas are based on the content pillars from your company intelligence 👉 Quick link.
Step 1. Click on an idea for more details including summary, keywords driving traffic, technical metrics like relevancy (linked to the company intelligence), uniqueness score (competitor analysis), and difficulty (ranking keywords).
Step 2. Click ‘Start’ to start transforming the idea into content. Choose the content type (Article, Social Post, Video, ..). Assign team members and leave them a note for the invitation. Select a campaign from the dropdown menu. Change the language of the content if needed. Click ‘Create’ to start generating the content.
Step 3. Insert the generated article or make tweaks to the prompt if needed.
Step 4. To fine-tune keywords, click on 'Content Gap' and hit ‘Identify Gap’. The focus keyword is already filled in, to make sure the recommendations are hyper-relevant.
b. Page Losing Traffic
‘Page losing traffic’ shows content that is in short or long-term decay and how much it would cost you if you would bid on these keywords in Google ads to regain your lost position.
The content opportunity:
Analyze cost per click for ranking keywords.
Add new terms suggested by the idea.
Step 1. Click ‘Apply’. This redirects you to the StoryChief article or to the live webpage, so you can quickly apply changes.
c. Underperforming CTR
‘Underperforming CTR’ compares your page against competitors.
Step 1. Open an idea and view the global position, click-through rate (CTR), clicks & impressions.
Step 2. View search result snippets from competitors for inspiration.
Step 3. Click ‘Apply’ to optimize the article accordingly on StoryChief or the website page.
d. Content Gap
Revamp current content with 'Content gap' suggestions.
Step 1. Open an idea: view potential monthly impressions gain & keyword suggestions.
Step 2. Click ‘Apply’: use the provided links in StoryChief or the website page for the optimization steps mentioned above.
e. New Content Expansion
Build upon older articles with 'New content expansion'.
Step 1. Choose one of the potential keywords.
Step 2. Click ‘Start’. Assign team members & provide notes. Select a campaign from the dropdown menu & choose language if needed.
Step 3. Click on Create.
Step 4. To fine-tune keywords, click on 'Content Gap' and hit ‘Identify Gap’. The focus keyword is already filled in, to make sure the recommendations are hyper-relevant.
f. New Content Pillar
A content pillar is a key element in a content marketing strategy, so adding new pillars can open doors for new topics to write about. This is based on keyword clusters, coming from your own keywords, that aren't assigned to existing content pillars. These pillars are also high-performing and have the potential to increase your reach.
Step 1. Click 'Create' which adds it to company intelligence pages directly.
3. Status Management
Stay updated using statuses effectively: Utilize filters on top of the main screen showing open ideas alongside completed/discarded ones too ensuring everything remains organized throughout workflow process seamlessly every time around here onwards always without fail whatsoever anytime soon.
Step 1. After applying changes to an opportunity, or after deciding not to apply anything, open the card menu (2 possibilities) and choose to Mark as done or Discard.
Step 2. Navigate the ideas by using the status at the top of the page. The statuses are Open, Done and Discarded. Ideas can be moved by opening the menu (3 dots) and marking them as done or discarded. Status can still be adjusted if needed.
Step 3. Use the Traffic volume potential to filter through cards with Low, Medium or High potential.
4. How Our Idea Generation Feature Works
Our Idea Generation feature combines SEO research with insights tailored to your business, helping you create relevant, impactful content. Here's how it works:
1. Analyzing trends and top content
Your content pillars are examined to identify trending focus keywords.
Top-performing search results are tied to your pillars, providing context from high-ranking articles and blogs to uncover patterns of success.
2. SEO auditing for deeper insights
A full SEO audit is applied to extract information from top-performing pages, including:
Essential topics, themes, and terms.
SEO assets like HTML tags, backlinks, and captions.
This allows our research to capture both the big picture and fine details of what drives success in your niche.
3. Merging insights with creativity
The latest SEO data is combined with company information, such as your industry focus and target audience.
A creative layer transforms these insights into SEO-grounded content ideas tailored to your brand's needs and voice.
4. Post-processing and ranking Ideas
Each idea is evaluated based on:
Business Relevance: Ensuring alignment with your goals.
Uniqueness: Ensuring your content stands out in the search space.
Ranking Difficulty: Evaluating how feasible it is to rank for each idea.
This two-step SEO optimization process ensures the generated ideas are well-liked by search algorithms and actionable for your strategy.
The result is a curated list of content ideas that are not only relevant and unique but also strategically optimized to maximize your online presence.
🎉 You're done, grab a coffee, you deserve it!
Check out the next steps below for more in-depth guides or follow-up actions.