The Optimization Phase: Evaluate your content's success post-publish in seconds with Surfer's Audit
You're only human, but luckily incredible tools like Audit exist! Here's how to find the low-hanging fruit in seconds using Surfer's Audit!
Hey everyone! Danni here, from Surfer. I'm back and I'm happy you're here too. So in this lesson I'm going to share a tool that hopefully makes your life, and your content creation process a lot easier.
You ready?
So I briefly mentioned before that Surfer has a tool which can assist you in the post-publishing stage. Just in case you’ve forgotten, let’s say it together: the work is not done once you’ve hit ‘publish.’
This is where Surfer’s Audit tool enters the chat.
I’m going to explain how it works:
Go to the Audit section. Then you create an analysis by typing in your main keyword and choosing if you want to see results for mobile or desktop SERP. Don’t forget that as of March 2021, Google is mobile-first indexed.
From there you analyze the internal link suggestions, add or remove keywords from the “terms to use” section, and fix any other errors you may find. If you notice some terms different from what you’ve seen in the Content Editor – don’t worry. It happens. In Audit, we test out your content in a real-life environment to see where you fall short, and can make any improvements. The difference between the Content Editor and Audit is that in the Content Editor, we’re mainly focused on the contents of the article or post. On the other hand, in Audit, we zoom out and also analyze the navigation bar, the footer, menus and comments which is why the data can vary and it might affect your final score.
What kinds of errors might you come across? Page speed, load time, or valuable internal link opportunities.
Using Surfer’s Audit tool you’ll be able to:
Check internal link suggestions
Partial and exact keywords
Headings and subheadings
Look at common words and phrases with their density and page frequency
Consult commonly asked questions and their search volume
Share the audit with your team or clients without them having to log in!
So, here’s how our team expert recommends going about auditing your content in terms of priority: First, check any internal links that you should add. We recommend using 5 to 10 internal links, but the more the merrier!
Then we take a look at the terms to use. The default setting will give you an idea as to what’s happening, but if you click the “action” button you’ll see any missing entities. It’s in order according to relevance. Adding 10 to 20 is a great starting point for optimization.
Next, we do an overview of length, exact keywords, partial keywords, page structure, things like that. Keep in mind that for the title and meta description, it’s classifying it based on length, not content. Lastly you’ll see page speed.
Now, you can click on select competitors. Surfer will organize your top five organic competitors based on their content score. Don’t forget that if for some reason they have a different user intent, you don’t need to factor them in.
I've used this tool a lot myself, and as a content writer and content creator I really do feel it saves me hours of guess work. It makes it a bit more fun, but at the very least it optimizes the process. So everyone, let me sum it up agin for you one more time:
After you’ve published your piece, give it a second to be indexed and settled.
Then open Surfer’s Audit tool and enter your keyword.
Check out the top 5 competitors based on their content score rankings.
Pay attention to content score and domain strength, and only factor in those sites that are your direct competitors and share in your search intent.
Lastly, make the suggested changes you receive from the audit; whether that’s adding more words, removing some characters from your title or incorporating more images!
Keep in mind that the internet, and SERPs in this case, are always changing. Just because you wrote a high-ranking piece in 2019 doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way always and forever. On the other hand, just because you wrote a piece of so-so content in 2019 doesn’t mean that it’ll be stuck in SEO purgatory forever.
So people, how are we feeling? I hope you're feeling empowered. I hope you're feeling at ease. And I hope you're feeling stress-free. I'll see you in the next lesson. You know it. Happy Surfing.
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