How to Do a Content Audit

A content audit is an analysis of your content inventory — a complete list of URLs and content of your website. 

As you improve a website, it’s important to know how many pages (and documents) you have, and what state they’re in. Most importantly, the content of your website should help your audience. Auditing your content can help you identify what’s working and what’s not. 

Content audits should help you decide:

1. Which content on the site should be kept, deleted, or merged?
2. How much content is ROT (redundant, outdated, and trivial) that could be repurposed or archived?
3. What gaps exist that would need to be filled by brand new content?
4. What guidelines should we create for how to handle content that is old and of little use to the site’s users?
5. How should we organize content so that it is findable by users?

Your audit spreadsheet template includes several columns to help you and your team audit your content. Some columns are just to help your team discuss the value of the content, so you can make your decisions on what to keep, edit, or delete. 

This guidance on conducting a content audit is to be used in coordination with the Template for Content Inventory & Audit.

Know your Goals

Always keep your website goals in mind. Who is this for? What do you want them to do with the information? Ask yourself and your team these questions to start:

• What do our users need to succeed? 
• What information can help them complete a task? Is this information getting in their way?
• Does this page communicate clearly what the audience needs, and what to do next?
• What information is lacking that could help them complete a task? 
• Does this content help our organization connect with our audience?

Page Information

Provided to your agency by an automated inventory tool. 

Page Name and URL Link

The page name and link to the live page on your site.

GA Page Views (if available)

Provided, if available. Google Analytics page views, 1 year of data.

Last Updated

Date of last update to the page, if available. 

Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level (Current State)

Reading level of the content, currently, if available.

Review Criteria

Provide this information to help your team understand the page’s intent, audience, and value to your overarching goals.

Audience

Open field. Who is the target for this page?

Up to date

Yes/No/Unsure. Is the content current and up-to-date, meeting current needs/goals?

Accuracy

Yes/No/Unsure. Is the content accurate and free of errors?

Uniqueness

Yes/No/Unsure. Is the content unique? Content should exist once and not multiple places.

High Quality (scale of 1-5)

1-5. Grade the content on the scale, 1 being low, 5 being high.

Decisions & Comments

Using the previous two sections to inform your team, it’s time for you to record next steps. Make decisions about the future of the content: keep, edit, delete, or consolidate. Provide notes too, such as “gut reactions,” opportunities for improvement, and other needs.

Keep, Edit, Delete, or Consolidate

• Keep. No changes needed.
• Edit. Content needs to be updated or refreshed. (Use the Notes column to specify why/how the page should be edited.)
• Delete. Archive content, don’t move to new site.
• Consolidate. Content could be combined with another page.

Notes, Questions, Comments

Provide any notes, questions, or comments you have about the content, or what needs to change with it before launch.

Responsibilities

If necessary, note who’s responsible for the page’s review, or any stakeholders who may need to be consulted for final decisions.

Reviewed By 

Identify who’s reviewing the content so you can assign ownership to the process.

Stakeholder

If you have a stakeholder who needs to be consulted, name them here.

Tips for Auditing Your Content

Review content for ROT

ROT stands for redundant, outdated and trivial. This means content should not be:

• Redundant. The content exists in more one than one place. It could be consolidated to a single page about the topic.
• Outdated. The content is old or stale. This could mean it’s incorrect, or it doesn’t align with  goals, voice, tone, and style.
• Trivial. It’s minor, or at one time held value but is no longer essential to your audience or organizational goals.

If it’s too much to review every page of content…

Option 1: Start with oldest updated pages

Content that’s not been updated in several years is a great place to start. While we recommend reviewing this content, you may notice right away these old, outdated pages can be marked for archive immediately, saving you time to focus on other, more primary pages.

Option 2: Start with high and low traffic pages

Start your audit with either high or low traffic pages. High traffic pages may indicate content is useful to your audience, especially if it leads to action. Low traffic pages may indicate a lack of usefulness to audience, and may be easy to make decisions about what to do.  

Keep in mind: Low traffic pages don’t always mean they’re not helpful or useful. It’s possible the page is buried too deep in your navigation, or isn’t indexing properly with search engines.

Option 3: Start with the most crucial pages or sections of your website

Analytics from Google or Acquia Optimize (formerly known as Monsido) can tell you what pages are most crucial. These may be landing pages, service pages, or informational pages. These pages should be simple for your team to identify, as they’re often high-level navigation pages, or pages with the most traffic. 

If you can, ask your everyday users what content they feel is most important. This can help you and your team identify the pages that need to be audited first.

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