Content Inventory And Audit Template

Before embarking on a content inventory and audit process, it is recommended to base the actual work on an existing template. There are many examples online that you can borrow from so long as you get the methodology right. If you use DYNO Mapper’s content inventory, you may not have any reason to find some template because our tool’s dashboard is loaded with all relevant information. Therefore, in case you choose to export a crawl’s result, you already have your hands on the basics in the export, just open it in Excel and you will have a working inventory template that you can supplement with the information you want to track.

Content Inventory

When our tool crawls your website, it will fetch and show the following information, carefully sorted and organized for your review;

• URL
• File type
• Level
• Date
• Meta title
• Description
• Keywords
• List of all images on every page
• List of all audio and video files on every page
• Each page’s document list
• List of inbound and outbound links to each page

For your convenience, you can include Google Analytics in the job set up like page views, bounce, among others. With all the above information, you are ready to start the audit

Auditing with DYNO Mapper

Based on the size, complexity and length of the content project, it is possible to commence the auditing process straight from the interface. You can easily identify some of the common issues you would like to dig deeper into. Look at the detail view, mainly the summary of the types of content that may lead to various questions and conclusions. You can also use the detail view to sieve and identify specific types of content or sort out based on the status codes to spot broken (404) pages or redirects, which is important for SEO. Upon viewing the comprehensive list, you can identify and filter the URL, format, the site level of every page and title. If you find a blank title file, then you sure have come across a page without its Meta title, you should add.

Inventory Details Page

Move to the page containing the details for the specifics about each page; it is here you will find all the metadata like the title, the description, keywords, various clickable lists of video, audio, images and document files connected with the page. Scrutinize the metadata and compare them against the website’s standards, spot pages without images and decide whether to add them, check the links and decide if more cross-linking strategy is necessary. Using the notes section, make your comments regarding the page or monitor the content owners, types of content and review the statuses.

Export your Audit

In case you would like to include additional information so as to finalize the audit process, you can with ease export the results to an Excel file. Consider the following.

• URL: Review the URL structure to understand the length and clarity for both search engines optimization as well as human readability. Long URLs are not recommended because they may not be rendered by some browsers and humans may not remember them. Avoid multiple parameters in URLs.
• Navigational Structure: Use the content inventory as the foundation of your hierarchical sitemap. If it is logical, then you can build your sitemap from there.
• Type: The content’s format is important in helping understand the structure and mix of content on the site. Do you have videos, images, HTML formatted content or PDF files? They need to be in an easy-use format on the site.
• Metadata: Do your keywords appear on the title or descriptions? This is good for SEO because they appear in the search engines results.
• Links In/Out: Understand how your site is cross-linked with the content analysis tool crawl results.

Other information contained in the export will include the number of images, media and documents, Google analytics and a notes column.

Armed with the information provided in the DYNO Mapper interface, plus the Excel file export, you are now ready start a comprehensive audit with a content inventory. 

Additional Resources:

Download the Content inventory spreadsheet - http://maadmob.com.au/resources/content_inventory

What We Learned Analyzing 595 Buffer Blogposts: A Complete Content Audit and Spreadsheet Template, Kevan Lee

How to Perform a Content Audit, Kristina Kledzik

How to Conduct a Content Audit for Quality and Audience Experience, Sonia Simone