How to perform a content audit

Use this free template

Whether you want to redesign your website and prepare your current content to migrate over, or whether you’re building a new Content Management System (CMS) and need to specify which content modules to include, you first need to audit all your content by performing a complete inventory and then evaluating its quality.

A Content Audit starts with a thorough Content Inventory, cataloging all the content pieces you have. This step is also known as a Quantitative Audit. You discover the what.

After that, you perform a Content Evaluation, aka a Qualitative Audit, for each piece of content. You evaluate its overall ranking or hierarchy on your site and deliberate whether the content can be used as-is, needs to be updated or rewritten, archived, deleted or created from scratch. You discover the why.

The most effective way to perform a content audit is by writing everything down in one simple spreadsheet. I created a Content Audit spreadsheet template in Google Sheets for you to download. There’s no need to sign in. Just go to File at the top, download it as a Microsoft Excel file to your computer and customize it to your needs. For a thorough audit, try to keep most of the columns as they are. You’ll need the info.