Your website reflects you and your business. It’s not enough to have an aesthetically pleasing site design. You also need to make sure you’re publishing impeccable content that Google will rank highly and that your readers will enjoy.
Part of that is learning how to review content for efficacy and quality so you can put your best foot forward with everything you publish. This way, you always give off a great first impression.
But how exactly do you conduct a content review? That’s what you’ll learn how to do in this post.
What is a Content Review and Why is it Important?
A content review is essentially like the final piece of the puzzle before hitting publish and sharing your work with the world. It’s your opportunity to look everything over and make final changes that will allow you to polish your draft to perfection. Here’s why it’s so important to learn how to review content:
- It Ensures You’re on Track to Reach Your Goals: As you look over your content, you’ll be able to ask yourself whether it’ll get you closer to reaching the goals you’ve set for yourself. If not, you’ll have the opportunity to make tweaks before publishing.
- It’ll Encourage Consistency With Content: Consistency is key but can sometimes be tricky if you have multiple people writing content for your brand. With a content review, you can catch those inconsistencies and correct them. It’s also possible to turn the review into a learning opportunity as you sit down and talk to your team about how to better meet brand guidelines.
- Any Mistakes Will be Spotted and Corrected: Content riddled with issues (whether typos or inaccurate information) is a major turn-off for your readers. You want to make sure you spot them and get them fixed to avoid hurting your brand’s reputation.
While it may sound tedious, it’s worthwhile at the end of the day. When you take the extra steps to polish your content to perfection your readers will truly appreciate your efforts. They’ll keep coming back to your site because they know they can count on you for great content.
Don’t hesitate to take your review beyond your blog posts. You can apply this process to your website’s homepage, landing pages (such as for products and services), and more.
How to Review Content for Efficacy and Quality
Your content review process could look different compared to other creators, and that’s okay. It’s important to make this step work for you and your team. However, there are some basic tips you’ll always want to implement to ensure success. Here are a few of our top suggestions:
1. Keep Your Goals Top of Mind
As you move forward with these tips on how to review content, you always need to remember your goals. You cannot measure the efficacy of your content if you don’t know what you intended to achieve with it in the first place. So, what do positive results look like in your content? What results indicate that you’ve seen a return on your investment?
For instance, your goal may have been to increase traffic, engagement, and conversions. To determine whether you’ve been successful at making that happen, you’ll want to dive into your analytics. Measure things like page views, traffic sources, and conversion rate to help you decide your goals and how to move forward with them.
2. Bring Someone on Board for Your Content Review
The best thing about conducting a content review is that you don’t need to do it alone. After all, sometimes we get too attached to our content, and it makes us unable to spot mistakes or quality issues. By having someone else step in to look over a piece of content with fresh eyes, they can see things we’ve overlooked.
Ideally, you’ll want to choose someone who is meticulous and has impeccable spelling and grammar skills. You never want to rely solely on spell check. It’s even better if that person is willing to offer constructive criticism that you can use in the future.
If you work alongside a team, you can assign a specific person to this task. Having a team of creators and editors to help you bring your content to life is an amazing asset. So, if you can afford it, it’s worth it to have a content team that can tackle these tasks.
There’s nothing wrong with having to tackle these tasks on your own. If you have to work alone, don’t be afraid to ask a knowledgeable friend or colleague for assistance.
3. Ensure Everything Meets Your Brand Guidelines
Part of learning how to review content is determining whether a piece of content aligns with the vision you have for your brand. To start, you need to create brand voice guidelines and make sure you share them with anyone on your team who will be writing or editing content. This way, they can refer to those guidelines when conducting the review.
They should encompass details such as tone of voice, who your target audience is, and even go over your brand’s quality standards. Then, you won’t have to worry about content that’s below your standards getting published. Instead, it’ll only be top-notch content your readers will love.
4. Take the Time to Fact-Check Claims and Data
Misinformation can spread around the internet like wildfire if you aren’t careful. You can avoid being pulled into an issue by taking some extra time before publishing a piece of content to fact-check any claims or data you include in your article. This way, you can feel confident knowing that what you’ve published is 100% accurate.
As you do this, make sure to include links to cite your sources. Then, you can back up any statements you’ve made. It may seem time-consuming, but it’ll be worthwhile because your readers will view you as a trusted and informed source of information.
5. Check for Proper Optimization
If you hope to see your content at the top of Google’s search results, you’ll need to take additional action steps to effectively optimize your content. If you’re on WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin makes this incredibly easy. It breaks down all the steps you should take for blog optimization and even gives you a ranking accordingly to help you spot opportunities for improvement.
As you’re doing a content review, make sure you’ve hit all those marks to stand a better chance at ranking above your competitors. For instance, you’ll want to ensure your content’s focus keyword is used in places like the title, introduction, headers, and throughout the copy. Keyword density is crucial, too. Including internal and external things, as well as images, will also be essential.
6. Make Sure the Content Speaks to Your Target Audience
Knowing your audience is a crucial element of being a content creator. Everything you write should be developed with them in mind. Then you can be sure you’re addressing their needs, pain points, etc. As you go through the content review process, ask yourself if the content will speak to its intended audience. Will the headline make them want to click through to your site? Does the introduction hook them? And is the body copy captivating enough to keep them reading until the end?
If everything checks out, you’re good to go. If not, make some changes. Find ways to make the copy more appealing through rewrites and formatting tweaks that will make your content easy to consume. You’ll also want to avoid using complex jargon and speak only in terms your reader would understand. Essentially, your content should benefit your reader because many want to understand what’s in consuming it for them.
7. Check Back Later for a Follow-Up Review
Now that you know the essential steps for how to review website content, don’t fall into the trap of thinking your job is done once your content is published. Conducting follow-up audits later on to ensure your content is still accurate and up to your brand’s current quality standards is smart.
For instance, you could make it a point to sit down every six months to a year to reflect on your most popular content. After all, if it’s still generating traffic, it’s worth reviewing to see if it’s still giving off a great first impression to your visitors. Just be sure to record when you last updated your content and note any changes made so you can keep track.
Get Quality Content from the Experts
Here at Express Writers, quality content is our priority. Our team of skilled writers is passionate about creating valuable content that your readers and Google will love. From blog posts, web page copy, or something in between, you can count on us to deliver top-notch, optimized content that meets your brand’s quality standards.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can serve you.
