Declutter your website with a content audit
“Keep only the things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest.”
So says organising consultant Marie Kondo. The things she’s talking about are the clothes, books, papers and general stuff we fill our homes with. But the principles are the same for the content that, over time, can clutter your website.
Arguably web content speaks less to the heart, and more to audience need. (Although that’s probably a blog post in its own right.) But applying a ruthless approach to what stays and what goes can have far-reaching benefits for you and your customers. If you don’t know what’s on your site, or you haven’t checked it for a while, it probably isn’t working as hard for you as it could.
And that’s where a content audit comes in.
What is a content audit?
Essentially, a content audit is an inventory of all the content on your site – pages, videos, downloads etc. – and a qualitative appraisal of its value to your audience, and therefore your business.
Why you need one
A regular audit is really good practice, and while it can be time intensive to start with (depending on the size of your site) it’s a document you can return to again and again to make sure you’ve got a handle on exactly what’s on your site and why.
Some of the most compelling benefits of conducting an audit are:
Confidence in the relevance and accuracy of your content. When the content on your site is up to date and answering your customers’ questions, it reflects well on your business. And your organisational skills!
Hard working content that’s contributing to your latest objectives. Every piece of content on your site should serve a purpose – one you can match back to your business goals. Auditing your site with that in mind means you're left only with what works.
Mitigating any wasted effort. Audits aren’t about chucking everything out and starting again. You’ll often find valuable content that simply needs updating or repurposing to work.
Content that’s optimised for search. A content audit is a great opportunity to revisit what your audiences are searching for – online and on your site. Understanding the questions they’re asking means you can identify where your content is providing the answers, and where there are gaps.
How to carry out a content audit
Setting up an audit is relatively straightforward and there are a lot of free templates out there that you can adapt to your purpose. Here’s how we go about it:
Run a site crawl. More traditionally run for SEO, software from the likes of Screaming Frog or Semrush ‘crawls’ your site and returns a comprehensive list of all the page URLs on your site. This becomes the first field on your content audit spreadsheet and means you can visit pages one by one to assess the content contained on each.
Append any other relevant data. You may have access to other complementary data like web analytics or SEO performance, that will give you a more holistic view of page/content performance. Just beware of making sweeping judgements about your pages based on web traffic alone.
Add your qualitative audit fields. These are the criteria against which you can assess the value and relevance of your content. Qualitative fields can include tone of voice, accuracy, audience focus or brand values. Anything that will help you work out whether the page is serving the right purpose.
Conduct your audit. This is the fiddly bit and can take some time, depending on the size of your site. But it is well worth doing. Get your team involved and go through your site’s content page by page, completing your qualitative fields and maybe adding comments along the way. Having a shared document makes this infinitely easier.
Analyse your results. You’ve finished your audit and are now the proud owner of the mother of all spreadsheets. Review the findings and capture an action point. For instance, keep, update, repurpose, archive.
Set yourself up for ongoing governance. This is vital. Your audit should be a living document that you revisit regularly as you add and remove content. Add a review date to each item, based on how quickly it’s likely to date, and make sure someone has responsibility for looking at it, then updating it, or archiving it.
And that’s it. Just like donating all your unwanted clothes to charity, decluttering your web content can leave you feeling unencumbered and, if we’re honest, a bit smug.
A final word
Our approach to content audits has been heavily influenced by the work of these content heroes, if you’re interested in reading more.
The Web Content Strategist’s Bible, Richard Sheffield
The Content Strategy Toolkit, Meghan Casey
Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson
If you’d like some help building a content audit approach, or auditing the content itself, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at hello@pigpencopy.com
