Content Audit

What is a content audit?

A content audit is a structured review of every piece of content on a website. It covers pages, blog posts, landing pages, documents, and media. The goal is to decide what to keep, update, merge, redirect, or remove based on clear criteria like accuracy, traffic, readability, and compliance.^[1]

A content audit goes beyond a content inventory. An inventory lists what exists. An audit evaluates whether each piece of content still serves its purpose.

When should you run a content audit?

Site redesigns or migrations. Before rebuilding a site, you need to know which content to bring forward and which to archive. A government agency migrating to a new CMS cannot afford to move 5,000 pages without checking if they are still accurate.

SEO strategy reviews. Content audits reveal pages with declining traffic, keyword overlap, or thin content that can be improved or merged.

Brand or messaging changes. When an organization updates its positioning, tone, or product names, existing content must match.

Regulatory or compliance needs. Audits check whether content meets accessibility standards like WCAG, privacy rules, or industry disclosure requirements. For banking and insurance sites, this is not optional.

Routine maintenance. High-volume publishers need regular review cycles. Without them, outdated statistics, broken links, and incorrect information pile up.

What are the types of content audit?

Quantitative audits focus on data. Page views, organic traffic, backlinks, bounce rate, conversion rate, word count, and page speed. Crawl tools and analytics exports automate most of this work.

Qualitative audits require human judgment. Is the content accurate? Does it match the current brand voice? Is it readable? Is it accessible? These questions cannot be answered by metrics alone.^[2]

Technical audits focus on content health. They flag broken links, missing meta tags, duplicate pages, redirect chains, error status codes, and missing alt text on images.

Most thorough audits combine all three types.

How do you run a content audit?

1. Crawl and inventory. Use a crawler like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Sitebulb to list every URL. Capture HTTP status codes, title tags, meta descriptions, and on-page data.

2. Add analytics data. Merge the URL list with traffic, engagement, and conversion data. This shows which pages get visits and which sit ignored.

3. Evaluate each page. Apply your criteria. Common labels include: Keep, Update, Merge (combine with another page), Redirect, or Remove.

4. Prioritize. Fix high-traffic pages with quality problems first. They offer the best return on effort.

5. Take action. Update content. Set up redirects for removed pages. Add 410 status codes for permanently deleted content.

6. Track results. Monitor organic traffic, rankings, and engagement for several months after making changes.^[3]

What do content audits typically find?

Audits often uncover the same patterns across large organizations:

• Pages with high search impressions but low click-through rates. This usually means weak title tags or meta descriptions.
• Thin content with low word counts and high bounce rates.
• Broken links building up on older posts.
• Multiple pages targeting the same keyword, competing with each other.
• Accessibility gaps like missing image alt text, poor color contrast, or invalid heading structures.
• Outdated statistics, old product names, or regulatory information that no longer applies.

For organizations with hundreds or thousands of pages, these problems compound over time. A content audit catches them before they damage trust, search rankings, or legal compliance.

How Askem Helps

A thorough content audit benefits from tools that cover multiple layers at once. Quality assurance scanners check for broken links, readability scores, spelling errors, and WCAG accessibility problems. Analytics platforms show which pages get traffic and how long visitors engage. Feedback tools reveal which pages confuse users. Platforms like Askem combine all three layers, giving content, IT, and legal teams the data they need to prioritize what to keep, fix, or remove — without stitching together multiple tools.

Sources

1. Content Marketing Institute — How to Conduct a Content Audit: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/content-audit/
2. Nielsen Norman Group — Content Audits and Inventories: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-audits/
3. Ahrefs — How to Do a Content Audit: https://ahrefs.com/blog/content-audit/