Content Quality Checklist for Web Authors
Writing for the web helps us share important information with Iowans.
Use this Content Quality checklist to audit your site regularly. Check it before migrating to find content that needs archiving or rewriting. This helps keep your content quality high.
Is your content on-brand?
Does it follow an established and consistent style, voice, and tone?
Does it align with your audience’s needs?
Does your content support your key mission, vision, values, and purpose?
Is your content useful?
- Does your content answer the audience’s questions? Is the information organized? Does it have the most important details at the top?
- Is your content easy to access and understand (e.g., grade 8 or less) using short, simple words and sentences?
- Does your content meet web writing and accessibility standards? Check if it has subheads, bulleted lists, and other features that help with scanning and reading. Also, make sure all links are descriptive.
Is your content findable?
- Have you established a page title, H1, and appropriate meta description? Is the page title unique and short, while accurately reflecting the content on it?
- Do you have a page title and meta description ready? Make sure they fit the character limits. (Page titles < 60 characters; meta descriptions < 170 characters)
- Do your images on the page have alternative (alt) tags for accessibility?
- Is your content a PDF? If so, think about rewriting it as an HTML page. PDFs aren’t mobile-friendly and can be hard to access and search.
Keep in mind the State of Iowa quality targets:
- Readability - 8th grade or below by Hemingway App
- Quality - 93% score by Acquia Optimize
- Accessibility - 83% score by Acquia Optimize