How to Conduct a Blog Audit (10 Significant Blog Audits)

How often do you conduct a blog audit?

If you don’t do it often, you’re probably missing out on traffic, subscribers, customers, and everything awesome that comes with blogging for profit. Many bloggers are missing out on these things because they don’t conduct a blog audit.

I’m here to convince you that skipping an audit is only damaging your blog and your blogging goals.

With this guide, I’ll show you how to conduct and audit your blog. I’ll also share the most important parts of your blog to audit if you want to attract more readers and make more money with your content.

Why Conduct a Blog Audit?

Before you start conducting a blog audit, you need to know what it is and why it’s so important. Otherwise, you’ll likely not be motivated to spend time doing it.

What is a blog audit? In simple terms, it’s when you inspect different parts of your blog and strategy to see how it is performing in alignment with your goals and blogging strategies. There is a lot that goes into blogging, and an audit will help determine the worth of each thing that goes into your blog.

Why is it important to conduct a blog audit? It’s important because an audit will show you what is working and what is not working, so that you can focus more energy on success and less on failure. If you want a blog that gets read more, you need to audit. If you want a blog that makes more profit, you must audit.

The overall goal of conducting a blog audit should be to make money. Your audit results will help you make more money by adjusting your strategy and focusing on what is actually working or what could be optimized to work better.

For this blog, I recommend you get a piece of paper out and start writing down information for your audit.

1: Audit Your Purpose and Brand Clarity

The first thing we need to put on our audit sheet is information about your blog’s purpose and brand clarity.

Define your blog’s niche and target audience. What is the main topic of your blog? This is something you should have figured out from the get-go, and you also need to identify exactly what category of people you’re targeting with your content. You should know your audience before launching your blog.

Evaluate your brand messaging and voice. Determine your message around your brand. What are you trying to tell your audience, and in what type of voice are you using to tell them? Make sure your brand and voice match one another across all the platforms you create on.

Ensure your blog’s purpose aligns with the monetization goals you have set. Don’t make the mistake of providing something with your blog that will not effectively bring you in profit at some point. You need to have monetization goals, and you need to use your blog to reach those goals. If you go against your monetization strategy, it makes it even harder to profit in the long run.

Audit your About Page for clarity and conversion. Many bloggers create an About Page and then forget about it. This is bad because many of your readers and potential customers are reading it, and if it’s misleading and outdated, it’ll reflect your entire brand. Keep your About Page up to date while reflecting on your mission and resonating with your audience.

It’s important to know where your brand and voice stand as you continue to audit your entire blogging process because they will be reflected in most of your additional audits.

2: Audit Your Content and Creativity

You should also take the time to audit your blog’s content and creativity, as these two factors are what drive readers to your blog.

Identify top-performing posts. You can identify these through traffic metrics on your analytical service and through engagements and shares on social media. You should also look at what blog posts are earning the most amounts of revenue. Pay attention to these metrics and record them on a weekly basis to see how you’re doing.

Find low-performing posts. Understand your blog posts that are performing poorly and not getting many views or engagements even after re-promoting them. If you can update these posts and bring life back to them, I recommend you do that. Otherwise, you might need to consider removing the underperforming blog posts altogether.

Evaluate content quality on your blog. Look at all the content you have published and audit it for value. Make sure your content is original, accurate, and sets a tone that reflects your voice and branding. Make changes as needed or remove content altogether to ensure you only have the highest-quality content on your blog.

Check keyword targeting and optimization. You want to make sure you’re as top-notch as you can be in terms of how you optimize your blog content for search engines. Audit your posts to ensure a unique keyword is targeted for each piece of content you’ve published. You should also run through and make any changes needed due to algorithm changes in terms of search engine optimization updates.

Review blog post structures. Look at each post and examine its structure. Ensure there are proper headings, introductions, and subheadings, and make sure a Call to Action is implemented. Older posts may have Call-to-Actions that are no longer valid and need to be replaced with something fresh.

Update old content regularly. While auditing your older content, try to make a list of previous blog posts that can be updated with new data and content. Update your older posts with new data, images, and links to keep them accurate and relevant. In most cases, after a year, you should be able to update most older content.

Content and quality are important factors in a blog audit since they are the actual meat of your blog and the main features that your readers will consume.

3: Audit Your Search Engine Optimization

You should conduct a blog audit on your search engine optimization from time to time.

Using a tool like Ahrefs or similar, perform a site crawl of your blog. This will help you identify key SEO metrics and strengths. It can also help you identify weaknesses and areas of opportunity for search engine optimization improvement. Try to understand the entire report that is generated for you.

Fix broken links on your blog, 404 and other errors, and audit your redirects. You want to make sure there are no broken links on your blog posts, as that will turn off users. Look for and correct any errors that you find on your blog. If you use any redirects, make sure they’re working redirects.

Check your title, description, and header content. Make sure your title matches the intent of your content. The meta description should also be in line with your title and content. Finally, audit your post headers to ensure they’re accurate.

Optimize your blog images. The bigger the image (size), the longer it takes your blog to load. You want quick-loading images on your blog. You also want to check the ALT tags to ensure they reflect your target keyword for the page or post you’re auditing.

Improve your overall internal linking structure, ensure good navigation, and make sure your cornerstone content is easy to find. Your internal linking and navigation are really important to keep simple and easy to use.

Audit your search engine keyword strategy. Do a SWOT or gap analysis to find out where you need to work and then start working on a plan for opportunities and improvements. Make sure you’re targeting long-tail keywords that are high in search volume but low in competition. Ensure that search intent aligns with your content and keywords.

Put your mobile SEO strategy first. Most of your audience is likely using their phones to browse your blog. You should be fully optimizing your blog in a mobile-first stance to ensure that you put mobile users first. The good news is that most of the time, a mobile-optimized blog looks good on a desktop, too.

Check Google Search Console regularly. Make sure you integrate and check Search Console on a regular basis. Google is king when it comes to the search engine you want to optimize the most for. Search Console provides many features that can help you win with your SEO strategy.

Search engine optimization is very important, and it’s essential that you audit it to ensure that your content can rank as high as any other blog in your niche.

4: Audit Your User Experience

You should also conduct a blog audit on the overall user experience of your readers and contributors because you want to always, please them, no matter what.

Assess your overall visual design. Take a look at your branding, consistency, and content readability. Do these things match your goals and mission concerning why you blog about the topics you blog about? Do they match the needs, wants, and desires of your target audience?

Inspect your navigation and menus. Make sure you have top-notch navigation and menu structures. Everything on your blog should be right there in front of any user and easily accessible. If anything is hidden, is it really doing your blog any good at the end of the day?

Heavily audit mobile responsiveness. Ensure that mobile users are a priority on your blog because they’ll likely be your largest audience. Twenty years ago, mobile use was very small, but today, it dominates the internet, and you want to make sure they have the best experience possible. Your best blog features should be available to mobile users first.

Always test usability. This will ensure that your content is easy to find and access. Click on your menu links, conduct a search on your blog, and check your pages and posts to ensure they can be accessed easily. If there is any challenge, that could be one that makes a reader click off your blog.

Reduce clutter and improve your CTAs. Try to minimize any clutter or fluff on your blog pages and posts that may take attention away from the main content. Improve your Call-to-Actions (CTAs) by ensuring a legit CTA is on every page and post. There should never be an instance where reading is the end of the action on any page or post.

The user experience on your blog is essential to keeping your readers happy and coming back to read your content.

5: Audit Your Monetization and Profit

Auditing your monetization strategies will ensure that you’re making the most profit and revenue from your blog.

Monetization methods. List all monetization methods that you use. This might be ads, affiliates, products, services, memberships, courses, and related. It’s important to organize all monetization methods and have a list of them.

Evaluate earnings from each method. Use analytics for that method, whether it’s built into the service you use to offer the paid benefit, or you have to use Google Analytics or something like that. Know and understand the metrics provided. You should always stay on top of these metrics.

Identify underperforming monetization elements. Then, you need to decide whether to enhance these elements or get rid of them. Sometimes, it’s better to cut ties with something that isn’t working so that you can focus more effort on the thing that is paying better. However, you might just need to make a slight change that will positively impact your earnings.

Check the ad placement and load speed. Be sure to make sure that ads aren’t slowing down your blog. Every blog page should take less than 2 seconds to load completely. If you’re loading slower than that, readers are likely not reading your content as a result.

Review affiliate links for relevancy, clickability, and conversions. Make sure every affiliate link you add is still valuable for the content it is added to. Maybe the product or service has been shut down, and your link is going to a broken page. Replace or remove affiliate links as needed.

Optimize product pages or service descriptions. Ensure that the landing pages for your products and services reflect the copy you want to present to encourage people to make purchases. A landing page will always need to be reviewed from time to time, especially when you need to add more social proof to it. Make sure everything that needs to be on these pages is actually on these pages.

Explore new income streams. Conduct an audit to determine more income streams (eBooks, courses, sponsor content, etc.) for your blog. Experiment and try out these different income streams to see if they work. Remember, a profitable blog is a blog that has more than one stream of income.

Ignoring your monetization strategy is often the reason you’re not making the amount you wish to be making at the time.

6: Audit Your Performance and Metrics

Make sure you understand all the metrics included in any analytical or insights feature you have for your blog, search console, and social media.

Review Google Analytics data. This includes traffic sources, top pages, bounce rate, time on site, and any conversions being made. Use AI to help you understand what each metric means if you’re having any issues understanding them. You want to know what they mean and how each one relates to the others.

Review Search Console. These metrics include any indexing issues or errors Google finds, core web vitals, and keyword queries. Google gives us amazing free tools to help us rank on their search engine. It would be crazy if you weren’t using them to improve your blog.

Set clear goals and event tracking. Make sure that you are setting goals for what you want to see from your analytics and metrics. Then, monitor the metrics through event tracking to see how they align with your goals. This will give you an idea about what to change to meet your goal.

Monitor audience behavior trends. Your audience will tell a story based on their behavior. You can also determine if your audience is in a buying mood, which will help you either give information on how to buy something or information to help encourage buying behavior. Not understanding audience behavior will cause you to miss out on many important benefits.

Analytics and metrics may seem hard to understand. Still, today, they are so easy to learn and not learning them can cause you to miss out on many profitable opportunities.

7: Audit Your Email Marketing

If you don’t do email marketing, that’s your first mistake but if you do, make sure you conduct an audit of that, as well.

Check opt-in placements and lead magnet effectiveness. Make sure opt-in locations (pages, popups, links, etc.) are working and are effective. You also want to make sure your lead magnet is still effective for generating subscribers. These two elements will get you most of your subscribers.

Analyze email list growth over time. Watch the growth of your email list and see how it changes based on the content and tactics you utilize to encourage subscriptions. This will paint a picture of how your list grows. It will also give you an idea of any changes you need to make to enhance mailing list growth.

Review open, click, and unsubscribe rates. Pay attention to your newsletter metrics. The main metrics to watch are open rates, click-through rates (CTRs), and unsubscribe rates. You want higher open and CTR metrics and lower unsubscribe rates.

Segment and tag your list for better targeting. Segmentation is when you send out specific emails to specific groups of subscribers. Some of your subscribers may need content to encourage them to buy, while some may be ready to buy. Analyze subscriber behavior to determine how to segment properly.

Evaluate the welcome series and automated workflows. Make sure that your welcome messages are accurate and everything on them is up-to-date. If you send out automated workflows, make sure you audit them as well. The last thing you want to do is send out outdated information to your subscribers without realizing it.

Make sure newsletters include monetized CTAs. Everything you create should have a Call-to-Action attached to it. Whether it’s a blog post, a page on your blog, a post on social media, or a newsletter, there needs to be some kind of action or goal for that piece of content. Audit your mailing list to ensure that there is a CTA present and try to ensure it’s there to earn your money.

Mailing lists are powerful growth tactics because algorithms can’t get between you and your subscribers. Audit your mailing list frequently to ensure that it is healthy.

8: Audit Your Social Media Marketing

If you’re marketing your blog on social media (you should be!), make sure you are auditing social media from time to time, as well.

Evaluate top social channels driving traffic and engagement. You might be using multiple platforms and pages for social media marketing. Ensure that you know which ones are performing the best and which ones are performing the worst. This allows you to improve what works and quit wasting effort on what is not working.

Check consistency in branding and voice. You need to use YOUR voice across all platforms. It’s your brand, after all. If you’re not consistent in using your brand and voice, then there is a serious problem.

Audit performance of content types. These are things like reels, shorts, pins, posts, stories, live streams, and related. Ensure that you understand how each of them plays out when you use them. This will help you focus on content types that are actually helping you grow.

Review posting frequency and audience interaction. It’s important to be consistent in posting frequency and engaging with others on social media. You should monitor this and do different experiments on frequency to find your sweet spot. You should also try to engage with everyone who engages with you for as long as you can.

Improve content repurposing and cross-promotion. Make sure that you are repurposing content the right way and not using duplicated content with watermarks that will often get fewer views. You should also make sure you cross-promote on other platforms. Just be sure that you’re adding exclusive and unique content on platforms as well.

Social media should never be the main product because, at the end of the day, it is rented space, but you should definitely use it as a tool to grow your audience and promote your blog.

9: Do a Blog Audit of Your Technical Specs

Definitely audit your blog’s technical specs, speed, and core web vitals to ensure that you pass the technical SEO test.

Test your blog speed routinely. Conduct page speed insights, GT Metrix, and other speed tests to ensure your blog loads quickly. You might need to make changes to make it as perfect as possible. Pages should never take more than a few seconds to load completely.

Check mobile usability. Make sure that your mobile users are prioritized over any other user. They need to be able to access your blog and its main features quickly and easily. The days of creating blog posts for desktop-only users are definitely over.

Make sure your SSL certificate is active. Your website must be secure, and you need to have HTTPS and a working certificate. Not having this may scare readers off and significantly hurt your SEO.

Check for plugin/theme conflicts or bloat. Make sure your WordPress theme is up to date and does not slow your blog down because of bloat or outdated features. You should also try to limit plugins so that you don’t slow your blog down. Too many plugins can also create security and privacy concerns for your blog.

Backups and security systems are in place. Make sure you’re auditing your backup system or manually backing up your blog on a frequent basis, such as daily or every time there is a change to it. You should also audit your security and make sure your blog is safe from bad actors online. It’s important to keep your blog healthy and safe.

Many people ignore technical audits until it’s too late, and then they wish they had paid more attention to them.

10: Blog Audit Your Blog Competition

Be sure to monitor your competition or other blogs that share your niche or topics. You can get new ideas from them or even compete with them if that’s your thing.

Analyze 3–5 competitors that match your blog. Audit their content strategy, SEO rankings, monetization methods, and tactics on social media and email marketing. Look for any changes they make on their blog. Determine how their changes and strategies line up with what you’re doing with your blog.

Identify gaps in your strategy and ways to differentiate. Conduct a SWOT analysis of your blog and compare it to research you’ve done on your competitor blogs. Identify what you do best and what you do worst. Use your analysis to improve your blog and compete with others.

Watching your competition can help you stay modern and trending in your blogging niche, and it’s something every blogger should do.

Finalizing Your Blog Audit

After you complete all of your audits, you need to finalize everything and take the appropriate action needed to ensure your blog remains on track.

Prioritize fixes by impact and ease. Organize fixes and tasks by how they impact your blog, and it will be easy to make the fix. Try to attack the easy fixes first and get them out of the way before you move on to the more complex issues. Be sure to record your progress for each fix so that you remember taking care of it.

Group into quick wins vs. long-term improvements. Auditing allows you to set micro-goals so that you can win quickly. These micro-goals can eventually help you win at bigger goals that take longer. Small wins will keep you motivated and prevent burning out.

Set a timeline and goals for each improvement area. You need to motivate yourself to fix your blog’s problems. Create a timeline and deadlines for each fix. Create additional goals for each area that needs attention.

Keep auditing. After you complete your blog audit and make your adjustments and fixes, you need to schedule the next audit. Auditing never stops because it’s a form of improvement. You should always want to improve your blog.

Congratulations on being able to give your blog a full audit. Many bloggers tend to ignore this task.

Now, Over To You!

I hope you have enjoyed my article about conducting a blog audit. Use the advice above to improve your blog’s growth and profit margin.

In the comments, tell me what area you find the most difficult to audit. I’d love to help ease that task for you.

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About the Author

Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers who follow this blog. Shawn also offers various services for extra help in content creation and blogging.