Methodological Principles of Content Analysis of Websites

Abstract. Introduction. It has been established that content analysis is a method of quantitative and qualitative study of content to measure or identify certain trends and facts reflected in the texts proposed for study. The first examples of content analysis began to appear in social disciplines starting from the 30s of the last century in the USA. The basic system of content analysis includes: quick update of content, search for content on a certain resource, collection of content about regular and potential customers, audience analysis, analysis of resource visits. It is necessary to analyze the content of the site when the main tasks of the virtual project are not solved quickly enough or too efficiently. Quantitative content analysis is characterized by the frequency of occurrence of certain characteristics in the text. Qualitative content analysis - involves studying the form and structure of content. Nine stages of content analysis are distinguished: analysis of the situation, drawing up a plan, drawing up descriptions; site scanning. Analysis of descriptions for all types of products offered on the site; checking the effectiveness of the content - number of views, number of unique visitors, citations, rejection rate; entering information about keywords/phrases. Creating a map of keywords/phrases for the pages that are considered most significant; studying keywords. Analysis of query statistics for a list of keywords; integration of information from keywords. Determination of key phrases, the number of requests, information about the competition, entering information into the table; determining which content is missing.Definition of additional keywords and content corresponding to them; analysis of additional parameters of virtual pages. Research of popular and unpopular pages, pages with an increased level of risk (contain copied materials or information that does not cause any interest), improvement of publications; making recommendations. Selected software tools for site content analysis: Screaming Frog, XML-sitemaps.com, URL Profiler, Google Ads.