In my previous post: An Introduction to Content Strategy, I described a content inventory as “your site in an Excel-spreadsheet nutshell: what content is found where, page by page.” Now, I’ll explain how to create this document and what this information can be used for.

I know what you’re thinking – Excel, really? Of course, if you have a more advanced content management system, you can (and should!) use that to intelligently manage your content.  However, many businesses do not have the budget to employ such systems, hence the reason for using Excel.

To complete a content inventory, you will have to go through your site page by page, recording your content findings.  And be aware — content is not limited to website copy!  This inventory should include web copy, photos, videos, forums, infographics, guides… basically any content that is living your site.

Start with the home page. Set up your spreadsheet (or other document) to include the following:

• Unique identification for each piece of content or each page, so you can easily navigate the document later.
• Name, topic or overall theme of the page.  You can usually grab this information quickly from the title tag of your page, or the content heading.
• Link – of course – so you know where to find the page.  You can also use this information to examine URL structure later.
• Type of information on the page—is it a product page, media information or a whitepaper? Be sure to be as specific as possible to make it easier for yourself in the long run.
• Keywords associated with that specific piece of content (Think META keywords, or image tags.)
• Meta description.
• Owner of the content, if you know. Who created the content and who is responsible for updating it? Whoever it is should be known as the content owner.  You may even want to record that person’s contact information in case the content needs to be revised.
• Internal links found on the page, and all of the above information regarding content on those pages.
• Notes on the status of the page addressing revisions or outdated content.  You should also keep track of any broken links or images that don’t load, as well as SEO and usability concerns that need to be addressed.

You can make more columns to cater to your website, though I would recommend recording all of the above information to have a concise and complete inventory. You can create the inventory to include more usability information or more detailed SEO information if you like.

Now What?

Once you have completed your content inventory, there are many ways to utilize this information to improve your site and your content.

Now you have a map of your website content page by page.  This makes it much easier to manage what content needs to be updated and when, as long as you took good notes!  Also, when it is time to update the content, you will know exactly who to contact since you have already recorded it.

A content inventory is a great way to discover outdated or insignificant content that is no longer needed or just flat our wrong.  Also, you can discover if content is missing and content development opportunities.

If you kept track of SEO concerns, an inventory will bring these issues to the forefront that you otherwise might have missed. The inventory will also reveal dead-end pages, poor URL structure and incorrect meta information.  Also, by viewing the internal linking structure page by page you can see what a visitor or customer may experience while on your site.

So, no matter how you format it, a content inventory is a necessary document to organize your website content. But unfortunately, a content inventory is almost never complete.  The second you remove or add new content to your site, you should update the inventory accordingly.

There are many uses for a content inventory, and all are going to improve your website visitors’ experiences on your site. Content is considered the most important component of your website, so keeping it updated and organized is essential.  And though this process is time-consuming, tiring and painstaking, the wealth of information you are left with is well worth the hard work. If you lack the resources needed to complete this task, it is important to understand and consider the benefits. And don’t worry, there are resources, like ourselves, willing to work with you.

What are your experiences with completing a content inventory?  What have you used your content inventory for? Let us know in the comments below!

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is a content strategist at Vertical Measures. When she is not creating, tweaking and developing strategies for online content, she creates her own offline content as a freelance print journalist.

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For webmasters trying to rank in Google organic results, it can often feel like you are all on your own with little help and guidance. There are the published Google guidelines and of course the great amounts of SEO blogs where writers can share their knowledge and opinions, but other than that companies and website owners are mostly on their own.

It can be a fine line between optimizing your site correctly, and doing something that you thought would be OK but ultimately Google didn’t like and penalized you for.

Fortunately, there is one medium for communication where webmasters can view data on their website, as seen by Google, and receive notifications to any possible issues on their site. This area is Google Webmaster Tools, and if you are reading this and haven’t yet set up and verified your site, I suggest you go and do this immediately. I’ll wait.

With that now set up, you can see lots of data on your website from links to crawling errors and site performance, but what I am most interested in for this blog post is keywords. There are a couple of areas in Webmaster Tools that can help with your keyword research and onsite optimization, both of which can be found under “Your site on the web” on the left hand navigation.

Keywords

The first of these sections is aptly named “keywords” and shows you the keywords that Google thinks are important to your website based on the content of your pages.

The first page of data you are shown isn’t necessarily the most accurate; the first term for Vertical Measures is “market”, but you can click down to greater detail for related terms such as “marketing” which is more relevant to our site.

So how can this report help you? Well using this information you can see the words that are repeated most on your website, and how this correlates with the terms you are targeting with SEO. If your most important keyword is hard to find on your site, then you might wish to think about rewriting your website content to make it more prevalent (without keyword stuffing).

Looking at verticalmeasures.com we can see the following top 10 list of words on the site. Obviously market/marketing is important for our business, as is building/link building and SEO. However, more important from this list is what isn’t listed, for example our content marketing or local search services don’t crack the top 20, so we could rewrite our important pages accordingly.

You can then drill down this information to see which pages are using these keywords the most, and check that these pages are those you are targeting with that keyword, and again rewrite your content accordingly if it isn’t.

This tool could also prove useful for ensuring that you are using other related terms suitably throughout your website. By checking that other related terms, such as synonyms or related products, are also being used various times on your pages you can ensure that you can rank for other searches and long tail queries.

Search Queries

The other area in Webmaster Tools that can help you find and target keywords is the “Search queries” report. On this report you can see the keywords that Google is returning your website for in search results (impressions) and when these searches are actually resulting in visitors to your site (clicks).

This data is worth evaluating in closer detail to see exactly what it is telling you, and how this should be used. Firstly we can see that almost all of the impressions for “Google Images” took place on one day, when we were ranking on the second page, as shown below:

If we use the AdWords tool to try and see the approximate search volume of this keyword, we can see the following data for broad, phrase and exact matches:

Reducing this figures to a single day, this still leaves us on broad match with either 111,666 a day or 50,000 local, or 91,000 queries on phrase and exact or 40,000 local. Either way these figures differ greatly from those in Webmaster Tools, so it is possible that they are in fact more accurate. However, that does not mean that we were necessarily exposed to 60,000 searchers yet received less than 10 visits. If we use SEOBooks approximation that only 10% of searchers look at second page, it is likely that this figure is closer to 6,000 impressions (in reality given the search term itself, I suspect it is far fewer than this).

The bottom line for website owners is that this impression number is likely to be far higher than reality, unless you are ranking in the top three positions, and even then the AdWords Keyword tool is known to be inaccurate.

However, the piece of data that you can verify in Analytics is the clicks you get from various keywords.  Looking at our own data for these keywords these numbers appear to be mostly accurate, with Webmaster Tools reporting 150 clicks and Analytics reporting 144 visits. I was also able to look at the position Webmaster Tools gives for a keyword in the SERPs with a separate ranking tool where the information was again validated, so we know that this too is accurate.

So knowing this information, what can a website owner learn from this report and how can they change their keyword strategy accordingly? Firstly, this report can be useful for highlighting keywords that you are already ranking for without targeting, and you can then focus on these more directly for better rankings.

You can also look at these reports to see those keywords with low click though rates to troubleshoot any potential issues (without trusting the impressions figure too greatly). This information can then help you understand the intent behind certain keywords, what they are looking for, and how you can better attract clicks once you are ranking, for example by tweaking your Page Title and meta description.

Summary

This is just a small amount of the information that is available in Webmaster Tools, and I highly recommend that every business owner use the information Google gives you as much as possible. It is the one area where the Almighty G gives you some kind of feedback, and by combining it with other tools you can find mistakes your website is making, and fix them to achieve improved results.

In addition, following several announcements by Google over the past month regarding Webmaster Tools it in an area that I believe they are focusing on at the moment and expect to grow in functionality and information available – use it wisely.

James Constable

James is a Campaign Manager at Vertical Measures, looking at client’s Internet Marketing from a strategic viewpoint to get them the best possible results for their business needs and budget. His blog posts revolve around strategy, analytics and keyword selection.

In this edition of the Vertical Measures employee interview series, I speak with SEO strategist Jason Hendricks about his SEO experience, his golden locks and his longest-running engagement.

Michael Schwartz: What are your main responsibilities here at VM?

Jason Hendricks: I handle all technical and onsite SEO work as well as web development for our clients. I also work closely with the team to assist with onsite SEO and web development strategies. In my spare time I help James annoy as many people as possible by flying RC helicopters throughout the office.

Michael: You often like to tell me that you’ve been in this field since I was a little kid with a paper route (Editor’s Note: I never had a paper route). Tell us a little about your prior experience.

Jason: I think I actually say “since you were doing wheelies on your bike,” but yes, I’ve been a SEO since 2001. I started in web development in 1998 after getting bored with my job as a desktop support technician. Shortly after learning HTML, I discovered SEO and other forms of internet marketing including PPC. I worked as an in-house SEO and web developer for a couple of years before starting my own company, Tidal Wave Media. Long story short, I love internet marketing and could never see myself doing anything else.

Michael: On the side you own and operate the ClickToTweet Twitter program. How would you evaluate the success of that venture?

Jason: Well, ClickToTweet is such a simple Twitter tool that it’s tough to really evaluate its success. In terms of traffic and users, the site has been extremely successful. As far as revenue generation, not so much. Right now the site earns revenue solely from advertising, but I have plans to launch a Pro version in the not-so-distant future.

Michael: Around the office, your long golden locks are often admired. How do you get your hair to be so perfectly straight?

Jason: Ha, I think I must be the first guy with long hair that you’ve ever been around, because you seem to have an unnatural obsession with my hair.

Michael: You have lived with your fiancée Courtney for 13 years. Do you ever plan on getting married for real or will this just be the longest running engagement, The Office-style?

Jason: We’ve certainly taken our time with marriage and we’re still in no hurry. We already consider ourselves married after living together for over 13 years now, just without the required paperwork. It took Courtney 10 years to get me to finally pop the question, so it will probably take her another 10 to get me to marry her.

Michael: Tell us about your relationship with Vertical Measures employee Scott Wells.

Jason: There really has to be a better way to phrase that … not that there’s anything wrong with that question, but Scott and I have known each other since junior high school. We grew up fairly close to each other and although we attended different high schools, we had a ton of friends in common. We didn’t keep in touch after high school, so it’s great to reconnect with an old friend (and we’re talking OLD here, that guy is ancient) after so many years.

Michael: You’re a partial owner of the LeBron James unofficial fan site. What are your plans for the site in the future?

Jason: I partnered up with a friend to create a fun site to highlight LeBron James’ total domination of the sport. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that he’s an amazing athlete. We will begin to focus more on quality content and not worry about monetization since it’s just a hobby for us at this point.

Michael: What’s your favorite sport and why?

Jason: My favorite sport is hockey, hands down. Hockey is by far the most physical and, to me, most exciting game to watch. My favorite team is of course the Phoenix Coyotes, although this season isn’t going quite as well as I’d hoped.

As far as sports that I can actually participate in, skateboarding and snowboarding would be my choices. I’ve been skateboarding since I was 8 years old, while on the contrary I just recently picked up snowboarding. If anyone ever tells you that the two sports are very similar, they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Michael: I know you recently bought a couple of condos for dirt cheap. Are you going to become a real estate mogul on the side?

Jason: I’ve always been interested in real estate and currently have a very diverse investment portfolio including domain names, websites, stocks, commodities … even collectibles like guns and comic books. Adding a few rental properties to the mix is, in my opinion, a wise decision considering how far prices have fallen in the Phoenix metro area and the fact that the rental market isn’t as soft as it was a few years ago.

Michael: Like many people at VM, you possess a love of canines. Tell the good people a little bit about your dogs.

Jason: Courtney and I have two rescue dogs and strongly feel that adoption is the only way to go. Peanut (pictured to the right) is a male black and tan dachshund mix while Tinkerbelle (like the sailboat and not the Disney character) is a purebred miniature black and tan dachshund. They’re definitely more than just dogs to us but we try to keep the spoiling to a minimum (I said try, not succeed).

Michael: What do you like about working at Vertical Measures?

Jason: I really like the fact that we have specialists in every discipline of internet marketing, so there are plenty of great minds to learn from. I also enjoy the family vibe and team atmosphere that the office has because it’s completely opposite of some of the stuffy corporate environments I’ve worked in.

Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz is an Internet marketing strategist at Vertical Measures as well as an accomplished reporter, blogger and editor. He covers the link building beat.

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As 2010 winds down, we’d like to recap the year with some of our best blog posts of the year! Here are our top 10 most visited blog posts:

1. If you need a link building resource, our 100+ link building resources post is a one-stop-shop.
2. And if you are marketing your business or brand online, don’t make these 10 deadly Internet marketing mistakes! (Guest Post by Gerald Weber)
3. Did all of the 2010 predications from Internet marketing experts come true? Well, the year isn’t over yet!
4. One thing is for sure, this year we realized many SEOs have celebrity look-alikes.
5. A rumor that kept coming up through the year: Google starting its own SEO agency.  APRIL FOOLS!
6. And of course, many new tools were released. But perhaps the fastest, easiest, cheapest keyword research tool can be found at your fingertips.
7. This Halloween there were plenty of ideas for Internet marketing related costumes.
8. Even though we thought our Google SEO Agency joke was over, apparently it wasn’t.  Twenty seven days after April 1st, our post was still being reported on… as actual news.
9. But believe it or not, the year wasn’t all fun and jokes.  One of our posts aimed to help people to explain and measure the ROI on Internet marketing.  We hope it pointed you in the right direction.
10. And back in February, Vertical Measures introduced an “Ode to SEO” contest, in which entrants had to write a Valentine’s Day inspired poem using a choice of keywords. The finalists were announced, and voting was on!  Let’s just say, the winning poem was quite the read

As you can see, we like to have a little bit of fun with our blog posts in addition to bringing you SEO, link building and Internet marketing best practices.  What was your favorite Vertical Measures’ blog post of the year?

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is a content strategist at Vertical Measures. When she is not creating, tweaking and developing strategies for online content, she creates her own offline content as a freelance print journalist.

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In the Internet marketing business, we are all culprits of using industry jargon.  But what does the average person know about the lingo we use every day? About as much as we know about chrometophobia.  To be sure, we canvased the streets of Scottsdale to find out first hand what the average Arizona resident knows about Internet marketing terminology.

Definitions

SEO: An acronym for search engine optimization, which is an arrangement of techniques used to enhance a website’s rankings in search engines’ natural search results.

Link Building: The practice of obtaining links from quality sites that point to your website.

Twitter: A microblogging network that permits users to send and read messages up to 140 characters.

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is a content strategist at Vertical Measures. When she is not creating, tweaking and developing strategies for online content, she creates her own offline content as a freelance print journalist.

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