A practical guide on conducting a successful content audit

With new content frequently coming out, it’s important for organizations to review and refine what they already have. That’s why regular content audits are more than just a good practice—they’re essential for keeping content relevant and valuable.

In this blog post, we’ll explain what a content audit is and why it’s so important. We’ll also share the key stages of a content audit, along with practical tips to make your audit run smoothly and tools that can help you streamline the process.

What is a content audit?

A content audit is the process of analyzing and evaluating content based on specific criteria, such as topic or usage. It involves checking the content’s performance, identifying whether it’s still relevant, and ensuring it meets quality standards. 

When conducting a content audit, you might ask questions, such as:

• Does the content align with our brand guidelines?
• Is the content relevant to our target audience?
• Is the content optimized for SEO?
• Does the content comply with relevant legal requirements?

With regular content audits, you can identify areas of your content that need to be updated, could be repurposed, or should be removed altogether. The goal of a successful content audit is to help you gain a clearer picture of where your organization’s content stands right now and the potential steps you might consider to improve it.

A content audit can make a big difference—let’s now take a look at why it’s so important.

Why organizations benefit from doing content audits

Large volumes of content spread across different platforms can sometimes become challenging to keep up with—content might get outdated, lose relevance, or no longer align with the current brand guidelines. Regular content audits help organizations tackle these issues head-on.

Content audits will help you identify content that is working, and, at the same time, uncover opportunities for improvement. For example, you might find product pages featuring obsolete information after a new launch, outdated landing pages that don’t align with the latest brand messaging, or ebooks and whitepapers that are no longer relevant as they don’t address the audience’s current needs.

Keeping content relevant and up to date is essential for building and maintaining trust with your audience. Outdated or inaccurate content can harm your organization’s credibility, making the audience less likely to return for more. Fresh content, on the other hand, shows that the organization is invested in providing the audience with meaningful and valuable information.

To make sure your next content audit is a success, it’s important to include the right people. Let’s dive into who needs to be involved in the process and how they can contribute.

A content audit is a team effort

A successful content audit requires a collaborative effort from a cross-functional team. While the content manager or someone with a similar role usually leads the effort, sets the objectives, and oversees the project as a whole, other roles need to take part as well. Let’s now take a look at these roles in more detail.

Creative roles like content creators or graphic designers

Content creators are essential in revising and updating the content. They focus on keeping the content aligned with the brand guidelines and making sure it resonates with the target audience. The content audit may require other creative roles, such as graphic designers, who play a key role in evaluating the visual aspects of content.

SEO specialists

If the content audit includes search engine optimization, involving SEO specialists is essential. Their role is critical in ensuring that the content performs well in search engine rankings. They might focus on areas such as keyword usage, internal linking and overall following best SEO practices.

Subject matter experts

Subject matter experts have an important role in making sure that information is correct and up to date, especially in technical or specialized topics. Their expertise helps maintain the credibility and reliability of the content.

The legal team

In cases where content needs to comply with legal standards or industry regulations, involving the legal team is essential. They review the content to ensure it meets legal and regulatory requirements, helping to mitigate any potential legal risks.

Now that you have an overview of the roles that might need to be involved in your content audit, let’s take a look at how often you should carry them out for the best outcomes.

How often should you do a content audit?

The frequency of content audits can vary based on different factors. Some of them are the following:

• The size of your organization’s website
• The amount of content your organization produces
• How often that content needs updates

For example, businesses with less frequent new posts or smaller websites may only require an annual content audit. On the other hand, organizations that generate a high volume of content frequently might want to consider doing content audits every quarter.

When content audits become a must

Content audits are often more than just a good habit—they are essential to keeping content fresh, and in some industries, they might even be considered mandatory. In highly regulated sectors like healthcare, insurance, finance, or legal services, accurate and compliant content is critical.

For example, healthcare organizations need to make sure their content is always accurate, up to date, and compliant with regulations, as patients and professionals rely on this content to make informed decisions, and on the organization to keep their privacy and data protected. Similarly, financial institutions need to ensure their content aligns with current laws and regulations and that it provides reliable information to clients, as clients depend on this information to make critical choices about loans, investments, and other financial matters.

5 steps of a successful content audit

Conducting a content audit can seem like a big task, especially for organizations that deal with large volumes of content every day. Luckily, breaking the process into smaller phases can make it much more manageable. Let’s take a look at the key steps to help you navigate a successful content audit.

1. Define your goals

At the very beginning, it’s crucial to establish clear goals for the content audit. Is your objective to update outdated content? Do you aim to align the content with your new brand messaging? Knowing your goals will not only help you focus on what matters most during the audit, but it will also guide how you assess content performance and measure success afterward.

2. Compile a comprehensive content inventory

Once you have defined your goals, you can start compiling a detailed inventory of your content. This step involves creating a list of the content you want to evaluate, such as blog posts, landing pages, product pages, or downloadable resources, so you can systematically review it.

As you build your inventory, it’s helpful to include key details for each piece of content, such as URLs, publication dates, or keywords. These details will serve as a foundation for the next stage, where it’s time to dive deeper into evaluating the content.

3. Evaluate content performance and quality

With your goals defined and content inventory prepared, it’s time to analyze and evaluate your content’s performance and quality. The essential details you gathered earlier now come into play—for example, URLs can help you track metrics such as page views, bounce rates, and time on page. These insights can help you identify which content is performing well and which may require updates or improvements.

In addition to looking at metrics, it’s also important to evaluate the content for quality. For example, publication dates can indicate which content might be outdated, and keywords can show if your content is still optimized for search intent. Other things you might check for are broken links, duplicate content, the relevance of visual assets, or consistency with the brand guidelines.

Once you’ve gathered your data, the next step is to evaluate your content against your goals. You can start by identifying which content is still relevant, valuable, and aligned with your objectives, and then mark any pieces that require updating, repurposing, or removal.

4. Create a strategic action plan

Based on your evaluation, you can now create a strategic action plan that outlines the next steps for optimizing your content. This might include updating any low-performing pieces or getting rid of redundant, outdated, or trivial content altogether.

To make this process manageable, it’s important to assign specific tasks to team members to make sure that responsibilities are clear. Setting deadlines can also help keep the project on track and ensure that each task is completed on schedule.

5. Implement the changes

Once your plan is in place, you can start implementing the necessary changes. This process may require collaboration between various teams, such as content creators, designers, SEO specialists, and subject matter experts. This collaborative approach will make sure that every aspect of your content—text, design, and even technical elements—is reviewed and improved.

To make this process easier, we’ve gathered some practical tips from professionals who have been involved in a content audit before. Let’s explore the advice they shared.

Real-life tips for a successful content audit

When it comes to running a content audit, nothing beats learning from real-life experiences. To help you streamline the process, we’ve gathered some practical tips from a professional with firsthand experience. Here’s what Zaneta Styblova, our Content Manager, had to say about consolidating content, creating a single source of truth, and using the right tools when conducting a content audit.

Thomas Murphy, our Sr. Customer Success Manager, adds his point of view on why content audits are essential and which benefits they bring.

“I cannot overstate the importance of content audits. They provide a detailed analysis of existing materials, allowing teams to identify gaps, redundancies, and opportunities for modular, reusable content. By understanding what we have, we can make more informed decisions about how to enhance our content’s effectiveness and ensure it aligns with our goals.”

An SEO-focused content audit is another audit we have experience with. When SEO is the main objective of the audit, paying close attention to your site’s linking structure can make a big difference. Broken or outdated links can negatively impact both the performance and the user experience. Here’s a perspective from Tereza Bruzkova, our Content Writer, on how leveraging tools like Ahrefs helped us identify and fix these issues.

“When we did a content audit focused on SEO, we paid close attention to our internal and external links. We used Ahrefs to crawl our site and we found several broken links that needed fixing, and some of them needed to be redirected. By fixing those broken links and setting up redirects, we made sure we were supporting a strong link structure and following the SEO best practices.”

It’s clear that using the right tools can significantly help you with the whole process. Let’s take a look at tools you might want to consider for your own content audit.

Tools that can help you with the process

Conducting a content audit can be a complex process, but with the right tools, you can make everything more manageable. What are some tools that can help you streamline the process?

• Analytics tools – Tools like Google Analytics are helpful for understanding your content’s current performance. They provide insights into metrics like page views, bounce rates, and conversion rates, helping you identify which content is performing well and which might need a little refresh.
• Content optimization tools – These tools can help you gain a deeper understanding of user behavior on your site. With Hotjar, for example, you can find out where users are clicking, scrolling, or dropping off, helping you discover which content might need adjustments. For example, if users consistently leave a page quickly, you might want to revise the content to make it more engaging or relevant.
• Project management tools – Keeping your content audit organized is crucial for staying on track. Tools like Trello, Asana, or Monday.com can help you manage your content audit by assigning tasks, setting deadlines, and tracking progress. These tools make it clear who is responsible for each task and what needs to be accomplished.
• SEO tools – Tools like Moz or Ahrefs are invaluable for enhancing your content’s search engine performance. They can help you analyze keywords, identify SEO issues, such as missing meta tags or broken links, and help you ensure your content meets search engine best practices.
• Content management systems – The right CMS can significantly help conduct a successful content audit. Platforms like Kontent.ai offer capabilities that simplify the process across various stages. Let’s dive into how Kontent.ai can support your content auditing needs.

Streamline your content audit with Kontent.ai

In this section, we’ll explore how Kontent.ai can simplify your content audit process. With its capabilities, Kontent.ai can help you streamline the process from tracking changes to organizing content and managing technical aspects.

Prepare your content for the audit

Kontent.ai can help you prepare for your content audit with what are known as collections, which simplify the organization of content according to specific business structures and needs. This organization makes the audit process easier by allowing you to review and assess content within specific groups, such as different regions.

You can also get the content ready by using relevant tags. Thanks to tagging, you can later use filters to find the right content faster. In addition, you can also easily perform bulk actions like publishing and scheduling.

For time-limited campaigns like limited-time offers and promotions, or content that’s relevant only for a limited period, you can set up automatic content expiration. This allows you to schedule when content should be unpublished, making sure it’s removed at the right time. Like this, you can keep your content fresh and up-to-date without manual intervention.

Have a clear overview of your content’s status

When running a content audit, having a clear overview of your content’s status is important. This is where what is known as Mission Control comes in—the go-to place to monitor every aspect of your content value chain. It provides you with actionable insights that can help you secure your content deliverables, track tasks and comments, and establish accountability.

The dashboard lets you track the success rate of your content deliverables using widgets. Let’s now take a look at these widgets in more detail.

Content progress

The content progress widget offers a clear overview of your content production at a glance, categorizing items into groups like “On track” or “Delayed.” By hovering over the status bars, you can see how many items fall into each category, giving you immediate insight into your workflow.

Items that are “On track”  or “Scheduled to publish” show that everything is moving smoothly, with no immediate action needed. However “Close to due date” or “Delayed” items signal potential issues that need to be addressed. Similarly, content marked “Without due date” points to items that lack deadlines and could be forgotten.

To make sure your content audit runs efficiently, you might consider assigning deadlines to content that lacks them and addressing delays by reviewing and resolving any issues causing the slowdown.

Tasks done on time

This widget helps you track how well your team is meeting deadlines by showing the percentage of tasks completed on time over a selected period, like the current week or past 30 days. 

If you see a high percentage, your team is hitting the due dates efficiently. If there’s a decline, it could signal issues like too much workload. With this widget, you can spot potential delays and areas where processes might need adjustment to keep everything moving.

Items published on time

The items published on time widget gives you better control over your content deliverables by showing the percentage of items published within their deadlines for a selected period. 

This widget too allows you to compare the current period with the previous one, helping you spot trends in your team’s publishing performance. For content auditing, these insights can help you identify areas where publishing might be falling behind, allowing you to adjust resources or timelines.

Tasks assigned by you

The tasks assigned by you helps you monitor the tasks you’ve delegated to your team. It displays a list of tasks, including who they were assigned to and their due dates, and highlights any tasks that are urgent or overdue.

If you see overdue tasks or upcoming deadlines, it’s a signal to follow up with team members, adjust priorities, or provide additional support.

Overdue tasks

The overdue tasks keep you updated on all tasks that have missed their deadlines. It shows a list of overdue assignments along with their due dates for each team member. This widget signals which tasks are falling behind, helping you identify bottlenecks or issues in your workflow.

Unchanged items

In Kontent.ai, you have an overview of unchanged published items and unchanged unpublished items, that can give you significant insights.

With unchanged published items, you can easily identify content that has been live for a while without any updates. By reviewing these unchanged published items, you can assess if they still align with your current brand messaging, follow the current brand guidelines, or present relevant content. 

Unchanged unpublished items could include drafts or content that was created but never published. Reviewing these items helps you evaluate whether they should be updated and published, repurposed, or discarded.

Track content changes with version history

Many tools, such as Google Docs, offer versioning to track changes over time. Kontent.ai also offers this capability, allowing you to manage and review content updates easily. Version history in Kontent.ai can help you whenever you need to track changes and understand the evolution of your content.

It allows you to see every modification made and who made the change. If you decide that no changes are necessary, you can quickly restore an earlier version. In industries where accuracy and regulatory compliance are vital, such as healthcare or finance, version history also provides a clear record of who made specific changes. This makes it easier for teams to trace the origin of updates and ensure they were properly authorized.

Overall, by reviewing version history, you can quickly assess whether the content revisions align with your overall objectives.

Maintain an organized content repository

Apart from collections, archiving can also help you keep an organized content repository. By archiving redundant, outdated, and trivial content, you can declutter your repository and focus on active, high-value content instead. It also allows you to keep old content for future reference or reuse. During an audit, having a clear distinction between active and archived content makes it easier to prioritize what needs updating.

While archiving preserves content for potential future use, deleting removes it permanently. Deleting might be useful for content that is duplicated, no longer valuable, or unlikely to be used again.

Leverage the audit log of content models

In Kontent.ai, technical teams can leverage the audit log of content models. The audit log provides a comprehensive journal of changes made to content types, content type snippets, and asset types within your project’s environments. It offers visibility into what was changed and when, and who made the modifications. In the long run, this visibility is important for ensuring accountability, and tracking the evolution of your content structure, especially as your project scales.

Achieve valuable content that performs with regular content audits

Regular content audits are more than just a routine check-up—they are key to keeping your content fresh and effective. They can help you spot and deal with content that’s redundant, outdated, or just not useful anymore. By focusing on what really matters to your audience, you can make sure your content is engaging and valuable.

Do you want to know more about how a content management platform like Kontent.ai can support your content audit needs? Request a demo and speak to one of our experts today.