Website Architecture Planning | Content Audit

No matter what type of content is on your website, it is vital that you conduct audits every now and then to make sure that it is staying relevant and effective for producing the results that you want. When you create an inventory of your existing content, you will become aware of the gaps in content and will also be able to see the type of content that is performing well. This gives you the information that you need to move forward in being successful.

What is a Content Audit?

A content audit is the process of checking each piece of content on a website, and then compiling it into a large list. When you opt to perform a full content inventory, you will make a complete list of every single item of content on the website. This will include all pages as well as any assets like videos or downloadable files. In lieu of this, you may opt to perform a partial content inventory. This is simply a listing of a specific subset of the website's content. A partial inventory could include the top few levels of a hierarchical website, or the most recent content created in a specific time period (like the last 6 months). This will still include all sections of the website. To dwindle it down even further, a content sample is a less detailed collection of content pieces from the website.

Performing a content audit for SEO on your website does not have to be the hard. Although it has not always been easy, it is vital that it gets done, so that your website and its content can receive the attention that is deserves. Whether or not you agree that content rules when it comes to website success, many others agree that it is one of the most important things to do correctly, so auditing your content is something that must be done. For those that are not familiar with a content audit, this is the process by which you will go through all of the content contained on your website and then determine its relevance and success. You will gather pieces of data about each individual piece of content and then you will analyze the data to conclude which content should be updated, what should be built on, promoted again, or what should even be deleted permanently.

Performing content audits is an essential part of maintaining a website, but you cannot just jump right in and perform an audit. There are several important things that need to happen prior to starting the audit. Because some websites actually have thousands upon thousands of pages with their own text, images, applications, and documents, it is almost impossible to manually audit any website's content. Before even thinking of that, you will need to perform a content inventory. This will organize all of the information on the website into a format that will be easier to read and manipulate.

Monitoring issues on websites will help to keep the operation of the site in line. Because the issues may change, when they arise it can have a negative impact on the SEO and usability. DYNO Mapper will perform a content audit, monitoring every week to make sure that the integrity of the website is still intact. Users can receive weekly notifications as well as progress reports that are charted and available to be made into reports. Performing this action with the content audit tools will guarantee that the content is presented to the search engines in the ideal way, and it will reveal any glitches that are present in the website structure.