When Was the Last Time You Really Reviewed Your Digital Marketing?

by Jason Unger, Founder

Insights / Digital Marketing / When Was the Last Time You Really Reviewed Your Digital Marketing?

You know our mantra: your website is a work of art: never finished, only abandoned.

There’s always something to be done, whether it’s technical, design, or related to your overall mission and goals.

It’s incredibly easy for marketing decision-makers to get caught up in the day-to-day that you may not realize it’s been a long time since you checked in on how things are going with your digital marketing – or you may not even be sure what exactly to check.

Take a break from your to-do list and go through these 5 actions to keep your digital marketing fresh.

Check for Broken Website Links

There’s not much more frustrating to a website user than, just when they’ve found what they’re looking for … the link to access it is broken.

Broken website links happen over time, especially with older content or if you’ve done a major redesign. The goal should always be to ensure that you have 301 redirects set up for broken links, so that any page that no longer exists takes the user to a relevant page that does.

But, for that to happen, you actually have to know what links are broken.

Thankfully, you don’t need to visit every page on your site and click every single link to see what’s working and what’s not; there’s a tool for that.

Screaming Frog (yes, that’s really what it is called) is a website crawler that goes to every page on your site, grabs all of the page data – including title tags, meta descriptions, and more – and follows every single link to see if it’s working. This means that both internal links within your website and external links to other websites are checked.

After Screaming Frog is done crawling your site – which can take a while, depending on how many pages you have – you can easily export out a list of broken links.

For internal broken links, either:

• remove the links from the individual pages, or
• set up site-wide redirects for anywhere the broken link exists, or
• find more appropriate links for each individual instance of the broken link

For external broken links, since you have no control over the third-party website you’re linking to, consider either removing the link completely or finding a new resource to link.

Review Your Least (and Most!) Popular Content

A content audit – where you really dig deep every piece of content on your website and how it’s performing – can be incredibly beneficial to streamlining your marketing strategy and simplifying your story. And while you should plan to do a content audit regularly, sometimes you just need to quickly see what content is working and what isn’t.

Whether you’re using Google Analytics 4 or other software to track your website stats, pull up a report about the most popular and least popular content over the last 6 months, 12 months, 2 years, etc. Take a look at what’s performing and what isn’t – you’ll certainly find some surprises.

If you have older content that isn’t performing, consider redirecting its URL to a related piece of content that is.

If you have older content that is performing, consider updating it with something fresh that helps your reader: new insights, new perspectives, or related content from a page that isn’t performing well (if it adds value!).

You’ll know the specific timeframe you want to review better than we will, but generally you should give content at least a year to exist before deciding to delete it. For popular content under a year old, don’t hesitate to add in useful information that can make the page even more beneficial to your users. But that’s the rub – it has to be helpful, or else you’re just stuffing the page with keywords and unnecessary links.

Update Your Evergreen Social Media Content

If your organization is at all active on social media, then you know it’s not just about regularly posting useful content – there are plenty of evergreen places that need to be reviewed and updated.

On Facebook and LinkedIn, your cover photo and description can easily get stale. Keep them fresh with new imagery and new copy as your organization evolves and your marketing campaigns come alive.

On Instagram, your Featured Stories sit at the top of your profile; when was the last time you updated them?

First impressions make a difference, and it’s clear to any social media user coming to your profile whether or not you’re investing in the platform and working to stay relevant.

Clean Your Email Marketing List

For a whole host of reasons, a larger email list isn’t always better.

If your email distribution list is filled with junk contacts who never open your messages or fake addresses that soft or hard bounce regularly, it is certainly better to remove them and have a smaller, higher quality email list. Email marketing unsubscribes can be a good thing.

Export out your contact list, along with their regular activity – if they’re opening your emails and if they’re clicking links – awesome! Those are the people you want on your list.

The email addresses that look fake and have little to no activity should be purged; get rid of them!

Now you’ll be talking to people who actually care about your mission, and your open and click through rates will presumably increase as well.

Fix Your Google Search Console Errors

Google is going to let you know what errors they’re seeing on your website – assuming you have Google Search Console set up – and as long as their recommendations align with your values and the experience you’ve developed for your users, you should address them.

Remember, Google wants to know everything about your website, because the more information you provide, the better they can provide that information to searchers.

If you’re seeing issues with Core Web Vitals, pages that are unintentionally set to not be indexed, or errors with your sitemap, fix them right away. Google is going to let you know both in the Search Console dashboard and via email at least once a week – invest the time in fixing these problems that are being identified for you.

You know your organization’s digital marketing better than anyone, and over time, if your execution doesn’t match your vision – take a step back and review it all. If you want some outside help with fresh eyes to take a look, reach out to us and we’re happy to help.