25 essential blog post audit components to make epic blog post.

“Meh” Or “Wow”

Which reaction (from your readers) do you want to get from your blog?

Blog post-audit gives you the reaction from “Meh” to “Wow”. It is the best way to optimize your blog post to get the result you want.  It is an examination of the execution of each blog post.

You are going to learn all the necessary components to audit your blog post in this post. Before going through all the components, it will be wise to start from the beginning. Isn’t it?

With your permission let’s start from the beginning. Before that, you can visit another post (which is connected to this post) about how to start a successful blog that makes money and how to finalize your blog niche.

Defination of audit

when you search on Google for the definition of audit you will find something like this:

Thus, the financial definition of audit – Audit is a verification activity like inspection or examination of a process or quality system to ensure compliance with requirements.

But here in this post, you are learning to audit from perspective of online business, your online assets mean your blogging website, and your blog posts.

Thus, you can define an audit as something like this – an audit is a process of analyzing overall website performance for visibility in search engines. The purpose of the audit is solely marketing.

You have to carefully take into consideration for your website audit factors like SEO, backlinks, broken links, meta description, titles, HTML validation, statistics, error pages, indexed pages, site speed, content, social sharing, your site’s health, security, competition, conversion, recovery, and many others (that affect your site visibility).

What is blog audit?

It’s really hard to define the blog audit. It is very similar to a content audit but it’s not a content audit. Blog audit is especially for bloggers like you. Among lots of different types of websites, a blogging site is the one that a blogger uses for an online business.  

Hence, here is a simple and understandable definition of blog audit from the perspective of the blogging website.

Blog audit is comprehensive and complete check of

your blogging site and each and every stem of it.

You should check from small details like logo design and placement, theme, menu structure, and navigational links, social sharing buttons, about page to your content, SEO, Email marketing, Comment section, Affiliate link placement and strategy, Google Analytics, site maps, monetization strategy and all the workflows you have to do on your blog.   

You should audit your blogging site often. Think about the way you visit your doctor twice a year and you will know what is lacking and what to improve to keep your health strong and active. Similarly, when you do your blog audit regularly, it will help you keep your blogging site fresh and competitive in your niche market. As you know there are millions of new blogging sites are always coming into your market wanting to take your position.

Types of digital marketing audit

Blog audit is one kind of audit in digital marketing. If you are not a blogger and you choose a different way in digital marketing, your website will be different from the blogging website so you have to do different kinds of audits.

Most business owners and online entrepreneurs have to conduct all types of digital audits to be in the number one position in the market with their well-performing websites. Most of the audits, the online entrepreneurs have to do on their website are the same. Only some differ from one website to another.  

Here is a list of the most essential and needed for all types of websites in the online space. These are very important audits of your blogging website too.

• Content audit:  Content audit is an accounting, cataloging, collecting, and systematic analysis of all types of content (core website pages, landing pages, guides, webinars, podcasts, success stories, videos, templates, and more) on your website including your blog posts. The main objective of the content audit is to find out the weaknesses, strengths, and opportunities in your content marketing strategy and content development. Therefore, a blog audit is a part of the content audit. Blog audits won’t cover all the essential audits like content audits.

• SEO audit: SEO audit is a crucial process of evaluation of the given standard procedure and its parts for your website’s long-term success. SEO audit especially covers on-page and off-page issues, technical issues, website structure, competitive insight, opportunities, and loopholes, and issues with user experience for the visibility of your website in the search engines.

• Social media audit: Social media audit is a systematic process of evaluating the presence and performance in social media of your digital marketing business i.e., your website. The main goal of a social media audit is to find what strategy is working and what isn’t and what can be done to achieve better results on your social media platforms.   

Infographics (types of digital marketing audit)

Now, you got most of the audits you need for your blogging website. Besides these most important audits, there are many other types of audits that digital marketers conduct as per their necessity. 

What is blog post audit?

Blog post audit is the extension of the blog audit. It is a process of looking at execution of each blog post on your blogging site to make sure that your blog post is fully optimize for your readers, search engines, to find it in the first place and also meet your blogging site’s marketing goals.  

Blog post-audit improves your blog post performance from Ok to Good and from Good to Best. It will help your blog post make it natural and be engaging to your readers from the start.

But it doesn’t mean that only a blog post audit makes your blog post perfect. You should have great quality content in your blog post whether it’s informative, educational, or entertaining. The factor of delivering good content that is engaging should also be considered along with a blog post-audit to get the best performance from your post.

Why do you need blog post audit?

Before you think of the answer to this question, you should ask yourself a question –

why do you start your blogging business?

The answer to the above question is inside this question.

The ultimate goal of every blogger and digital marketer is to make life through their online business. You are also one of them and you also start your blogging career with the goal of making money through it and living your life fullest, isn’t it?

But you know what running a successful blog is very challenging. There are 5 million blogs on WordPress alone. WP adds about 50,000 new sites every day and 3 million new posts are published on the WP blog every month.

Hence, you have to create your blog post with quality content in such a way that it attracts clicks, likes, and shares to be on top in your niche market. Your blog post should have a real effect on readers that ultimately gives you conversion. It also helps you to establish yourself as a niche leader and stand out in the market.

You should audit your blog post to be fully optimized for SEO, to make your reader stay on your site. Your blog post should provide high value to make them want to read more, share it everywhere, and join your mailing list. You have to make sure that you have exactly what your readers are looking for to reduce the bounce rate of your blogging site.

Auditing a blog post is something like structuring your blog post. Most of the components match in both processes. It is assumed that you know the role of structure in building, in an organization, and in business. This type of vital role plays by the blog post audit in your blogging business.

What is the purpose of blog post audit?

The main purpose and/or goal of the blog post is none other than marketing your blog post. Every blogger conducts an audit of blog posts to

• get best performance in terms of SEO for ranking in first place so that readers find them easily
• make perfect and sticking blog post giving the best solution of reader’s problem
• be on top in the niche market and stand out in the crowd following the standard procedure
• make ensure of having exactly what the readers is looking for so that they want to read more, share more and like more making it epic post
• Hit the targeted traffic, engagement, reputation and personality
• Make sure that the blog posts published in the blogging site are working
• Maximize success and to get biggest return on blogging effort possible
• Adapt the changes in algorithms, strategies, contents, facts and statistics and procedure
• Build authority, creditability, popularity, and loyal following with expertise generosity. 

How to create a blog post audit checklist?

A checklist is a list of things to be checked or done. A checklist makes things to do easier. 

In this post, as promised in the headline, you are going to learn all the essential components for your blog post-audit. These are the points you should include in your blog post checklist.

Making a checklist means you can verify, check, and inspect your listed components that make sure you don’t forget any important steps in your blog post-audit process.

Checklists keep things organized providing all details for every step so that you won’t forget the important points in the blog audit process. It’s improved your productivity, and creativity and kept you motivated to write more blog posts. Just think about the pleasure and surge of accomplishment as you check off the tasks which inspire you to keep going and get more tasks done.

Therefore, creating a checklist is no big deal and you already have got the importance of it. Just make a list of all the components described in this post below, if something comes up, continue adding it to the list and check off each item as you complete it while conducting your blog post-audit.

How to do a blog post audit?

Same as you, every blogger wants to run a successful blog. But it incredibly challenging with competition published millions of blog posts daily. Blog post-audit isn’t a fun part of conducting and it’s really time-consuming but it is very important to identify the area of improvement and changes for your success.

No matter, how well you write your blog post, it can always be better. Your posts will age over time. The only way to keep your posts fresh and updated is to conduct a blog post-audit. There is always a space to improve your blog post by changing and developing algorithms, procedures, and statistics.  

It seems overwhelming to audit your blog post, isn’t it?

You don’t have to be afraid and worry about it. Yes, it’s not fun and takes lots of time. If you follow the right framework and procedure creating the checklist of the necessary elements and audit your blog posts checking and verifying components one by one, it makes it easy to conduct your blog post-audit.

Ta-da! You have got your essential components for your blog post audits right here as promised in the headline of this post. If you follow the framework presented to you, it will make your blog post epic. So why wait. Let’s get started.  

Most essential components of a blog post audit

Source: growthbadger

1. Headline/Title

When you read newspapers, books, e-books, ads, and anything in the written form, what do you look at first? It’s of course Headline and/or title. When a headline excites you, has something you need, and can learn something interesting then only you will read the material inside it. It is the reason of reading 8 out of 10 your readers read the headline of your blog post and only 2 out of 10 read the whole post.

The headline is as important as your blog post, there will be no value in your great blog post if no one reads it. It’s like your game is over before getting started if your blog headline/title is weak and boring.     

Thus, your headline should be unique, creative, and catchy. It should be written clearly and tightly as few words as possible (from 50-65 characters). You should deliver upon the body of your post what you promised in your headlines without misleading. It should be informative, attention-grabbing, engaging, SEO optimized with keywords, and persuasive and descriptive like an overview of your article (power of giving the whole story of your blog post, what it is about).

Because the headline plays much a vital role in blog post success and click-through into your blog post, you have to be thankful, honest, and truthful while creating your blog post headlines.

To help you create your clickable headline, here I have presented a list of headline generators. You can find many more on the internet. You also can piggyback from a successful headline formula or templates. Most successful bloggers use the same pattern or formula to create an engaging headline. For example: How to Get [DESIRED END RESULT] in [DESIRABLE AMOUNT OF TIME]

Now here is a list

• Hubspot’s blog topic generator
• Impact’s blog title generator
• Answer the Public
• Buzzsumo’s question analyzer
• Seopressor’s blog title generator
• Fatjoe’s blog post title idea generator
• Portent’s content idea generator

2. Introduction/the hook

Now you start to read the content of the headline that excites you. If it is not attention-grabbing enough, interesting enough and you didn’t get what you expect as promised in the headline then you will leave it immediately. Your readers will do the same.

Creating an awesome headline is the first step and the second is an introduction. You should create the inro of your blog post in such a way that it draws the readers in and compels them to read the entire article. The first sentence or two of the introduction should be extremely easy to consume, punchy, curiosity-building.

This is the paragraph in your blog post that determines whether your readers will leave the page within seconds or stick around to read the whole thing and it is called Hook.  The hook can be a question, or a story, a controversial statement, inspiring statistics, etc.

Your keyword, brief summary of your blog post, and some kinds of hook are the main 3 elements of your introduction. Using those elements you should write the transition of your blog post so that it can develop a rhythm for your post.

3. Consumption

“The blog post cannot do its job if it isn’t consumable”

As a part of the battle, you should write for your readers quality content not for yourself to succeed in blogging and digital marketing. Always keep your readers in mind while writing your blog post. You know your audience and write the content that they want and need.

Your content should be smooth and consumable. The transition between ideas and sub-heading should be smooth so that your readers won’t get bored, slow down, and/or stop reading.

Your blog post should not be like a chapter in a book. It should be easy to read. On the web, everybody was looking for something and if they got that then only, they will continue reading. You should stick to your blog structure, format and break the paragraph after 3-5 sentences.

“Short and sweet” everyone likes. Your sentence and even word should be short to consume easily. Keep it simple, check all the grammars and spelling, and write in plain English like eight grade students write. The longer your sentences and paragraphs are, the more complicated and difficult it is to keep your readers’ attention.

4. Goal/ the purpose

Whatever action you want them (your readers) to take in your blog post is the goal of your blog post. It can be anything like list building, affiliate marketing, building brand awareness, product, and service marketing, boosting SEO, etc.

Your blog content goal should be to ensure readers learn something valuable from it whatever you finalize the goal and purpose of your post. In this way, you can get a better chance they will share it and come back to you again.

A clear call to action (CTA), for example: reading the related post, downloading an e-book, checklist, or cheat sheet, leaving a comment, signing up, answering a question, sharing it, etc., is the one you should include in a prominent position within your blog post to get the desired action from your readers.   

5. Media / The Visuals

Blog posts with colorful visuals/media make people 80% more willing to read them.

Post with images gets 94% more views.

Infographics are shared 3x more than any other content on social media.

The study also shows that the visuals and/or media (images, screenshots, infographics, GIFs, Videos, graphs, charts, etc.) retain better in peoples’ minds. It’s 80% of what we see versus 20% of what we read.

One way to stand out in the digital marketing industry is the production of high-quality visuals/media related to the blog post. The great and related media/visuals make it easier for your readers to understand what you’re talking about and also break up the text making it easier to read.

You should use compressed images, produce your own related videos, use permitted high-quality images and other visuals related to your blog topic to increase engagement, shares, click-through rates in your blog post.

6. Close/ the conclusion

Although it’s called the close and last part of your blog post, it’s an opening of click on your CTA. This is the section where your reader decides to share a post, comment, and dive deeper into your site.

You shouldn’t end your blog post like a TV serial see you in the next episode. It should close effectively. You can use humor, wit, insight, enticing emotions in the conclusion that drives them to share, comment, and visit more blog posts on the blog.

It’s the summary of your blog post. It should restate the intro and ask the readers to comment and share. This is the place where you can ask to take your desired action upon your CTA.

7. Search/the SEO

While writing your blog post you should consider mainly two things: your audience and SEO. If your blog post isn’t optimized, it won’t show on the search engines and nobody finds your blog post.

Therefore, you should grab all the opportunities to cross-link to other posts as well as to optimize all 5 on-page SEO elements mention below for your focus keyword on that post. 

8. Categorization

The proper categories and tags are an important part of the user experience on your blogging site. Although it’s often simple to select a post, it’s an important component of any blog post audit.

Categorization is like a table of contents. It helps your readers in site navigation to find the information they want. It helps you organize your site, make your blog content strategy easier, and improve your site SEO by adding hierarchy to your pages (so that search engines better understand what each page is about and rank accordingly).

9. Completeness

You should take your content seriously like a professional writer or marketer without making any mistakes. Completeness determines the quality of your blog post. Your post should deliver the promise made in the headline and introduction.

Failing to deliver your promise on your blog content will destroy the reputation of your blog quicker. Quality and completeness are all about your blog post from head to toe. Not only promise you have made in headline and intro but also completeness is about identifying areas in the post that could be strengthened by adding:

• Media (Images, Videos, audios, infographics and other visuals)
• Examples
• Data
• Internal and/or external links to more information
• Proof read (final editing with words, spelling, sentences and grammar)

10. Consistency

Consistency directly relates to your brand, your niche market, your niche blogging site. It’s the way that you look, sound, and act. You should always sound more or less the same by having a consistent voice, style, and tone.

Therefore, the content of the post should be consistent with your niche/brand. Whether your niche market is academic, professional, affiliate, and/or other, you should produce content that reinforces that your niche/brand identity.

Your readers may feel being sold to by lots of different people rather than a single when you are not consistent in your niche and produce poor quality content here and there. But when your content is consistently good, it helps you to create better user experiences, to build trust, credibility, and a great reputation.

11. Sub-heading

Sub-headings are one of the most important parts of the blog post as well as blog post-audit. Sub-heading won’t get your readers to read every word but it will stop readers from leaving your post early.

When auditing your blog post, there should be one checkpoint for the subheading. It will help you a lot in blog success. It is as important as the headline. So, you have to spend enough time on subheadings too.  Here is a list of benefits when you do a proper audit.

• Helps search engines identify the content
• Highlight the main elements of topic
• Add to the scan ability of the article
• Lead the reader through the content
• Break up the text on the screen, making it more attractive
• Add extra white space to make for easier reading
• Act as signposts in the text so that readers who are skimming through can easily stop at relevant points
• Give the post a strong structure so it’s easy for the reader to follow

12. Clear Call to action (CTA)

As we have discussed on the goal component of the blog post-audit, the call to action is part of your blog post goal. It is directly related to your funnel. Giving a clear call to action keeps your readers on your site and so increases engagement and pageviews which is great for SEO.

When you write your blog post, don’t just write and leave it like that. You can end your post with a request, suggestion, or question so that your readers can know what to do next like a related post, sign up, follow you on social media, downloads, comment, appointments, etc.

A clear call to action should be relevant to the subject matter of the post. You should design and/or write the copy of the CTA in such a way that it compels the reader to take the desired action.

13. Interlinks and External links

Interlinks and external links are very important components in your Blog post-audit as well as blog audit and your SEO audit. Using both links on your blogging site will ultimately improve the search visibility and rank of your site.

Internal links are the hyperlinks on your post that links direct the reader to a target page. This link helps a reader stay engaged with your post longer providing a positive user experience. It will help a bot find other web posts on your site which means it will be added to a search engine’s collection of web pages so that your post can be found easily.

External links are hyperlinks that direct the reader to a reputable post/page on a different website. It is a great way to reach out, make connections in the world of content and digital marketing, and get your content out. It improves the credibility and authority of your post as well as your website.

14. Highly visible sharing button

If you are serious about blogging, you should have highly visible social sharing buttons. Allowing your readers to easily share your content can increase the likelihood that your content will spread virally.

You have to make sure that your social sharing buttons work and are highly visible either at the side, top, and bottom, or floating. You should have them to encourage readers to connect with your brand on social networking sites.

Besides this, it will be a plus point for your blog’s popularity if you also have social media icons that link to your social networking profiles on your post. It will help you to encourage your readers to connect with you on other platforms too.

15. Lively comment section

While writing a blog post you should include a comment section on each post. It is a great way of knowing whether your content is being well consumed by your readers.

A lively comment section means when someone writes a comment: REPLY as soon as possible. Your readers want to engage with you, but they won’t if you don’t reply. When you reply to comments on your post timely, it will encourage more comments, and interaction, and trust among your readers which leads to building a good relationship.

16. Check the URL is GOOD

Your blog post URL is the virtual address of your post or page. It is the web address specifically allocated to every webpage. No one can find your post on the web with a URL. It is also a very important element of SEO audit.

While doing your blog post-audit, this is the one checkpoint you should take into consideration. It delivers the right idea of your blog content to readers. Therefore, you should make your post URL optimized and readable. It helps you to bring more value and to convey the main idea without much effort.

Well, the structure URL should be short and readable. URL should contain your blog post focus keyword one or two but not repeatedly. When structuring URLs, you should avoid special characters, underscore, too much longer with more words, etc. Instead of underscore, you should use hyphens.

17. Paragraph/Post Length

There is no hard and fast rule in the blog post and paragraph length. The length of your post depends upon many factors such as what are you writing about? and what are your goals. who is your target audience? and many more. What you should keep in mind is that you are writing for your readers and SEO. Your focus should be on the quality of the post.  

Studies and statistics show (as you can research many on the internet) that your blog post should be long enough to get the best SEO in Google ranking and should have a word count from 1600 to 3000. In the same way, your paragraph length should be no more than 4-5 sentences. One point discussion in one paragraph with 2-4 sentences is the best practice. The Yoast SEO accepts no more than 300 words in a paragraph.

An example which is presented by Convertkit in 2017 shows the average blog post length from 1000-2500 words.

Source: growthbadger

18. Make sure you use tags

Tags are the components of the categories. If the categories are your blog’s table of contents, tags are your blog’s index. Both of them help you organize your blogging site or blog and help your readers find the information they want.

A tag is meant to describe specific details of your post. It is usually one word or two and reflects the keywords or points of your blog post. Tags don’t describe your blog as a whole, instead, they describe an individual section of the blog.

You should make sure you use proper tags in your blog post for the best usability of your blog post.

19. Contact info

Contact info is one of the top tasks you should do in your blog post. Most of your readers will be looking for contact information on your site.

This is one of the easiest ways to generate leads by making sure your readers can easily get in touch with you and good contact information makes you look accessible in turn makes readers trust you.  

Therefore, when you audit your blog post, there should be a checkpoint of contact info too. It is one of the most important components that explain to your reader how to communicate with you.

20. Formatting your blog post

Formatting your blog post is one of the most challenging because you are writing your blog post for your readers (real humans) and not for robots. Smart formatting of your blog post is the best way to succeed in the blog.

Formatting includes from a headline to a conclusion, media or visuals, blog length, paragraphs, sub-headings, formatting of the text, and all the completeness of your blog post.

Great formatting will help your blog post get read more often and more completely. Here are some points to be considered while formatting your blog post

• Break up big paragraphs
• Highlight important information
• Add supporting graphics
• Ensure that images are the right size
• Draw the eye with a list
• Format your text (bold, italic) to emphasize what’s important
• Keep sentences and paragraphs short
• Embed video and podcasts to support readers
• Use images and gifs to explain complicated topics
• Feature templates, formulas, and graphs when needed
• Keep your blog post the appropriate length

21. Personality

Personality in a blog means writing your blog post in your style mixing with humor, emotion, or even just a conversational tone. You should make your writing sound like you.

When you write your blog post be yourself, be authentic, and be consistent. You should write as you talk with your friend, share your story, feelings, joy, experience, clear point of view, etc.

Be honest, be intentional, and write what you believe. Build yourself as an expert in your niche by being authentic and keeping your ideal reader in mind. You should make your blog more compelling and differentiate from the crowd.

22. Use active voice

The active voice is simpler, interesting, and more direct whereas the passive voice sounds academic and formal.

Active voice can make your content more engaging and easier to take in. Passive voice can be distancing and sometimes confusing.

Using active voice in your blog post helps you in readability. It keeps momentum in reading, connects with your readers, and makes your writing persuasive and engaging.

Source: Copypress.com

23. Credit proper sources

You should write your blog post depending on your knowledge, and experiences in your personality. Your content should always be original and never copied from another website.

If you have to use the information, statistics, formulas, quotes, visuals, etc., from other sites in your blog post, you should give credit to the proper sources by listing and linking.

Giving credit to proper sources provides your readers with a greater experience by offering them more information. It does not only give credit to the original author but also makes you look more credible.

24. Add trust factor

To stand out from the crowd, you should make your blog content trustworthy. Your blog content should be well-researched and authoritative.

It’s like maintaining your home appliances when they are out of order. You go to the person in whom you believe most among others. Similarly, there are lots of blog posts in your niche and trust brings readers to your post.

The trust factor depends on many things. There are hundreds of trust signals. Among the most important are:

• Content
• Links
• Bounce rate
• References or sources
• Privacy policies, terms of use, or affiliate disclosure

25. Proofread it

This is your final copy edit. Although proofreading is the least fun part and tedious, it’s well worth your effort. You don’t want all your hard work of researching, writing, and editing to be let down by a stray apostrophe or accidental type. One single spelling mistake can cut the blog subscriber or readers of your blog post as it can completely change the meaning of your copy.

You can use a self-editing checklist that helps you find spelling and grammar errors as well as typos. Read it aloud on-screen to make sure it looks OK. Make sentences and paragraphs short and sweet. Double-check details like people’s names, brand names, telephone, prices, emails, typos, spelling, apostrophes, homophones, capitalization, etc.

After finishing your final check and you think everything is OK, it looks fabulous then hit the publish button.  

The Final words

Now you have all the components that you need for your blog post-audit. It is essential to your success which is why recommend conducting blog post audits regularly.

You have to ensure that every post you publish has a purpose and plan to advance your marketing objectives. Continuously producing high-quality, value-packed blog posts helps you to make sure you are hitting your traffic, engagement, goal, etc.

Hopefully, the components that have been mentioned in this blog post armed you to produce content that will rock your readers’ world.

If you think any point and/or component is missing in this post. Let me know in the comment section.