Why Perform a Content Audit?

Why perform a content audit? Simply put: simplify, simplify, simplify. A content audit helps you determine if your content is relevant – both to users and to your departmental goals.

Essentially, a content audit helps shape your content by using the data we gathered during our research to help you assess where your website is and where you want it to be. Then, simplify everything down to only what is essential.

A content audit and later content mapping will help you determine:

  • What content is the priority?
  • Which pages need copywriting / editing?
  • Which pages need to be updated?
  • Which pages should be consolidated?
  • Which pages are no longer needed?
  • Does your content align with the needs of your users?

Evaluating Your Current Content

A content audit is the cornerstone of your content strategy. It is a qualitative analysis of all of the published content on your website. It allows you to catalog and analyze that content on a page-by-page basis.

It also helps you evaluate your current content by answering some key questions: Is this content accurate and consistent? Does it speak in the voice you want to project?

You will also use it to complete the content mapping task later in the process.

Completing Your Content Audit

Step 1: Find your content

  • If you have a way to pull up all the published pages on your site, then use this to complete the audit. Most website users can log in to their content system and click on pages to see a list. 
  • Another option is to visit the site map for the site. Replace the URL in this example with yours. So for example https://about.otc.edu/page-sitemap.xml could also be https://students.otc.edu/financialaid/page-sitemap.xml Contact web@otc.edu if you need an example URL for your pages. Note that all pages listed in the site map are active showing to the public. In many cases, you will find old pages that have been inadvertently left active by the unit content manager. This is a great time to move those to a non-public version-like draft. 

Step 2: Enter all the URLs on the spreadsheet in the “Page URL” column

Step 3: Evaluate the content on each page

When reviewing current content, consider these questions to help you evaluate your content.

  • What type of content is it?
  • What topics are covered?
  • Who is the page’s primary intended audience? 
  • What is the purpose of the page?

Step 4: Fill in the content type

  • Ask yourself what is the set-up of the page – Examples: homepage, an informational text page, story page (content that gets added frequently like news or blogs), list of links, staff directory, webform, tables, graphic element, calendar of events, photo gallery, etc.

Step 5: Fill in the topic

  • Ask yourself what the topic of the information is on the page — this helps us group pages that have related topics.

Step 6: Fill in the audience

  • Ask yourself who needs this information — Examples: current students, prospective students, faculty, staff, public, alumni, etc.

Step 7: Fill in the purpose

  • Ask yourself why you have this page — Examples: general information, introduction to a program, attend an event, join a group, fill out a form