By 
If you have a website it’s a good idea to review the content on a regular basis.
It’s important to make sure that the content of your website is still relevant and useful for your users.
Not only does good content impress your site visitors – good quality, relevant content is essential if you want to score well in search results.
What is a Website Audit
We often advise our clients to carry out regular site audits. We like to think of it as as a Spring Clean for your website. An audit gives you the opportunity to throw away irrelevant or out of date material, add new material and refresh existing content
The ultimate purpose of a content audit is to establish whether the content you have fits your site objectives.
If done properly an audit will give you a complete listing and evaluation of every piece of web related content you have.
A content audit will help you:
- Archive outdated or irrelevant material
- Manage your content quality
- Reveal gaps in the types of content you have
- Discover duplicate content
- Create a content strategy to generate fresh content
Before you Begin
Ask yourself a few questions before you begin. Go back to basics and think:
- Who is this site for
- What is the purpose of the site
- What is the call to action
If you are using your website to establish credibility it’s a good idea to make sure that the web content demonstrates expertise in your relevant area.
If your site has more than one objective each piece of content must contribute to at least one of your site objectives.
Evaluating your content will ensure that your website contributes to your whole business strategy.
How to do an Audit
You need to go through every page of your website with a fine tooth comb. Look at every asset on your website, make a note of it and evaluate it’s relevance.
Assets include – videos, PDFs, downloadable files, images and text.
We suggest creating a spreadsheet to record your assets and your notes. A spreadsheet is easy to use, handles lots of data and can be easily shared.
Some useful things to include in your spreadsheet may be:
- Page name
- Category of content – is it informative, educational, a news article
- Last updated – some older posts may no longer be relevant or interesting
- Owner of the post – helps identify key content providers
- Images – Are they relevant, useful, do they have captions and metadata
- Is the post optimised for web users – is it web friendly & easy to read
The audit should provide a detailed evaluation of every piece of content.
Be Ruthless
You may be proud of your content and sweated over writing it – but now is the time to be ruthless.
Out of date or irrelevant content will only dilute the quality and relevance of your website.
Some businesses use their website as a content dumping ground. They post up any bits and pieces of content just for the sake of it. This is a bad idea.
If you post up random content you run the risk of ending up with a big jumble of stuff!
Your site will lose its objective and users will find it hard to get the information they need.
Finally
A content audit may seem like a lot of hard work but it is worth it.
A thorough audit gives you the opportunity to take an in depth look at all your web related content. You will discover what information you have and more importantly how it can benefit your business.
If you need help evaluating your website or creating content feel free to get in touch.