Why is a content audit useful?

What is a content audit?

A content audit is more than a content inventory, which focuses on identifying every piece of content and important insights, such as navigation and tagging details. Establishing a content inventory is a crucial first step, and organizations can create one in several ways, whether by using specialized tools or simply exporting the list from a content management system. Capturing traffic analytics is also important to include in the inventory. For that information, organizations may need to extract data from an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics.

Once the inventory is built, the content audit can proceed. The audit focuses on the quality and effectiveness of each piece of content. The audit participants should be cross-functional. Include the digital team, the sales team, the experts who know the content and other stakeholders.

From a quality perspective, ask the following questions:

• Is the content readable? Easily readable content is well-written, concise and includes structural elements such as white space. Be sure to consider various screens, too, such as desktop and mobile devices.
• How is the voice and tone? Voice and tone are important. They help the audience relate to what they read and feel the organization is speaking to them as a single voice.
• Is the terminology up to date? Terms evolve over time, and it's important that older pieces reflect current terminology. Visitors might ignore an otherwise evergreen piece if the terminology makes it feel old.
• Are all the links still valid? The internet is constantly changing. Bad links can hurt findability and reduce the usefulness of the content. They also contribute to a piece feeling old.

An effective content audit evaluates content to identify strengths, weaknesses and gaps. Is the existing content helping to meet organizational goals? Are there gaps in the content that should be filled to encourage visitors to stay on the website? Are people searching for content on the site and not finding it?

If there's a lot of content to review, consider placing boundaries on the initial scope of the audit. For example, examine content from the past two years before moving on to older material. Alternatively, organizations can analyze a cross-section of content based on business areas. This allows for a domain-focused view, which could provide benefits to justify the cost of future content audits.

What to learn and achieve from a content audit

Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists, content strategists and business owners need to determine why people are visiting their websites. What questions do people have? Is the content and structure helping them find it easily, or do they have to resort to search? While a good search function is helpful, content should be organized and linked so that visitors rarely need to use it.

Look at how content is tagged. Are the tags useful and helping visitors find what they need? Are the terms consistent and correct?

Strive to understand how people find the content and what they do next. Is the piece serving the expected part of the marketing funnel? Every organization has a marketing funnel, though they vary based on the type of business. If a piece of content is not mapped to the appropriate stages, the call-to-action may be incorrect and make things harder for visitors.

By the end of the audit, businesses should have identified every piece of content as something to be kept, updated, removed or consolidated with similar content. Every piece should serve a purpose and lead visitors deeper into the site's pages, until they can take the desired action -- whether it's a purchase, donation or some other outcome.

How often should you perform a content audit?

Many audits are event-based, happening during website redesigns or other systemic changes that require content restructuring. Under-performing content might also trigger a content audit.

However, businesses should perform content audits on a regular basis, without the need for a triggering event. As the world is constantly evolving, a healthy digital presence can become outdated quickly without regular reviews and updates.

If businesses choose to audit all their content at once, a biannual audit should suffice, unless the market is highly dynamic, such as the tech industry. However, performing smaller audits throughout the year and dividing content into smaller chunks is usually more effective. This makes audits a regular part of an organization's content operations, which reduces the scope of each individual audit.

One way to divvy up the content is by publish date. Look at articles that haven't been reviewed in the past two years and include them in the audit. If this is done on a quarterly basis, it should keep the effort to a manageable scope. Alternatively, dividing the audits by business domain unifies the review and quality of content in a specific business area.

As long as every piece of content is reviewed at least every two years -- and there's no relevant business reason to do it more frequently -- then the schedule works.

If it's difficult to identify how to divide content into smaller audit sizes, that may indicate a problem with tagging and categorization. If an organization cannot readily classify and identify content, what hope do customers have?

Benefits of content audits

Ultimately, a content audit drives business. The user experience improves and becomes consistent. People find the information they are looking for quickly and can learn more or take action as needed.

A better user experience also leads to improved SEO ranking. Using updated tags, improving readability and ensuring current keywords all increase an organization's visibility in search results.

Audits also improve brand presence. The unified tone, voice and language convey an organization's identity. This reduces cognitive confusion among visitors and builds trust.

Content audits do cost time and money, but in the long run they reduce costs. If you can track pieces of content -- like blogs or other posts -- that are ready for removal or revision and improve content visibility through the site structure, you can expect to see better results.

Laurence Hart is director of consulting services at CGI Federal and has more than 20 years of IT experience.