14 Dec
The word “audit” is often a source of stress and dread when you use it in any generalized context. You will find plenty of articles online telling you how to best avoid it, how to make last minute amends, what to do when you are being audited, etc. But this is when you are being audited in a general context, however when it comes to medical content audits, you will find yourself eager instead of dreading it.
When you have a fast performing content marketing funnel, you are producing medical content rapidly, posting it as soon as it is created, sharing it, and then moving on to create the next round of content. Amidst this fast cycle, some questions that slip your mind are:
“How can I know if my medical content is reaching my crowd of patients?”
“Is it performing at its best?”
“Are there some impared points that need repair?”
“Am I earning back my intended ROI?”
“Is my SEO being improved by it at all?”
These are all questions that are answered when you conduct a content audit on your medical site.
What Is a Medical Content Audit?
Medical content audits are analytical reports that are conducted to assess the content of a medical. Content audits are a part of a content marketing system (CMS) since they showcase the content’s quality in terms of its rate of exposure, traffic, and conversion rate. A properly conducted content audit has these outcomes:
- Improves overall SEO performance
- Points out the holes in a content marketing funnel
- Gives new ideas for future content creation
- Finds the best performing content and the worst
When conducted thoroughly, a medical content can give a profound perspective of your medical content. It highlights the current positioning of your medical content and gives you insight into adjusting for the better by meeting your patient’s requirements and your medical business’s objectives.
What Are the Benefits of Conducting Content Audits?
As mentioned previously, this type of audit won’t ask you to prove why you made a purchase 2 years ago. You can only earn benefits if you audit your medical site’s content. Here are some major ways that conducting a content audit benefits you:
Demonstrates More Tactics to Develop Your Medical SEO
Your medical site’s content is directly connected to your medical SEO; it is being affected by pages on your site. Content auditing points out the content pages that are dragging your SEO down and shows the ones that you can improve them further. A content audit will show your top-performing pages, which you can enhance more by back linking them and sharing them, ultimately improving your medical SEO.
Shows What Works for You and What Doesn’t
Conducting a medical content audits give you an insight into both the good part and bad parts of your content. For instance, it will show which type of content on your medical site had the least amount of patient traffic, and it will point out which type of content structure appealed the most to your medical site’s visitors. With this information, you can edit your CMS structure accordingly.
Points Out Content That Can Be Reused
Content creation is not cheap, but you need a steady flow of it to attract patients and build your medical business online. A smart way to achieve that is by repurposing or reusing your old medical content that is pointed out by a content audit. This saves time, money, and extra effort. For instance, a page of written content pointed out by an audit can be transformed into a medical infographic.
How to Conduct a Thorough Medical Content Audits?
It is best to conduct a content audit once every 3-4 months, as it will give enough time for its SEO to cultivate and catch the patients’ response to it. A proper content audit process follows the 4 steps below:
Step 1. Gathering All Your Medical Site’s Content
It is best to gather all your medical content in one place before starting an audit as it makes it easier to compare it within each page and calculate the success or failure rates, later on. If you use an editorial calendar to publish your medical content, then it will be easy for you to gather it all. If not, then you can use the tool Shouting Frog for collecting all the URLs of every page of your medical site.
Step 2. Analyzing and Measuring Your Medical Content
Optimize medical content performance and audit medical content by measuring and analyzing it to some success metrics. These metrics point out several aspects that you can improve later on. There are various metrics that content can be audited against, each having its own goals, however, the most common ones that indicate the content’s success and its impact on your medical SEO are:
- Medical keywords
- Page loading and bounce rates
- External and internal links
- Normal time spent by a patient on each page
- Number of comments, likes, and shares on each page
- Rate of exposure of each page
- The conversion rate of each page
A medical content audit can be carried out manually, which is a lengthy process, or can be done by using tools such as Google Analytics, Web Gnomes, MySiteAuditor, etc.
Step 3. Turning Data Analysis into Actionable Insights
Now that you have audited your content against the metrics above, you will have to grade your audited medical content, with your custom grading metrics. Let’s say, a page of content has high conversion rates and high patient traffic, you can grade this page with an “A”, meaning there is nothing to be changed.
Another page came up with less than average likes, shares, or comments, you can give it a “D”, meaning you need to work on its SEO further. If a page had zero patient traffic and conversion rates, you can grade it “F”, meaning you need to remove that page from your medical site.
Step 4. Updating Your CMS Accordingly
With your grading done, you now have an insight into your failings and strengths, which you can make use of in the future. This data should be updated into your CMS and your future content creation must follow it, completing the purpose of the content auditing.
Content Auditing Brings Success Rather Than Stress
Medical content auditing is a great way to understand your content’s impact on your SEO, how your patients react to it, and where does it need work. As a medical business, your content is your earner, besides your medical services, therefore tracking its performance is crucial for your overall success.
