run-a-content-audit

name	run-a-content-audit
category	web
description	Inventory and evaluate a content estate by purpose, quality, risk, performance, and ownership. Use when a site, help center, knowledge base, campaign library, or documentation set needs keep, improve, merge, redirect, archive, or remove decisions.

run-a-content-audit

Create an action inventory that owners can execute. Traffic alone does not determine content value.

Procedure

1. Define scope, decision horizon, users, content types, systems, languages, owners, and exclusions.
2. Crawl and combine CMS, analytics, search, support, link, accessibility, policy, and manual inventories.
3. Deduplicate canonical content while preserving URL, locale, version, redirect, and dependency relationships.
4. For each item, record purpose, audience, owner, age, accuracy, evidence, risk, findability, accessibility, use, and downstream links.
5. Sample or fully review according to risk and scale; document the sampling method.
6. Assign keep, improve, consolidate, redirect, archive, delete, investigate, or exempt with rationale.
7. Separate low traffic from low value, especially for safety, legal, accessibility, niche support, and long-tail content.
8. Reconcile decisions with owners and resolve conflicts using explicit criteria.
9. Create a sequenced action backlog with dependencies, redirects, approvals, preservation, and validation.
10. Measure completed actions and update the inventory rather than leaving a static report.

Guardrails

• Do not delete records subject to preservation, contract, policy, or public-duty requirements.
• Treat analytics coverage and search demand as incomplete evidence.
• Avoid exposing unpublished, personal, or security-sensitive content in broad reports.
• Preserve inbound links and user journeys during consolidation.

Done

• A content audit report reconciles URLs, items, owners, and decisions
• Risk and value evidence support every action
• Redirect, preservation, accessibility, and approval dependencies are listed
• Completed actions and validation results update the authoritative inventory