In this session, you'll learn: When it's time do a content audit How to determine what to do with old content: Keep, Kill, or Clean up What gaps exist in your current marketing mix, and how to fill them Where to dedicate resources for new content creation

1. Kondo Your Content
How to Do a Site-Wide Content Audit

2. ● Types of content audits
● When to do them
● How to do them
● What you learn from each audit type
● How to determine what content to keep, kill, and clean up
● What to do with insights from your content audits
What we’ll cover today

4. ● Quantitative inventory
● Qualitative audit: Best practices assessment
● Qualitative audit: Strategic assessment
Types of content audits

5. Quantitative inventory
What it is Why do it
A list of everything you
have, and where it lives
● Show magnitude
and complexity of
content
● Inventory what you
have - like a store

6. Qualitative audit: Best practices assessment
What it is Why do it
Comparison of your content
against industry best
practices
● Prioritize content efforts
● Find low quality content to
kill or clean up
● Find bright spots that you
can benchmark and learn
from

7. Qualitative audit: Strategic assessment
What it is Why do it
Invaluable, in-depth look at
how your content measures
up to strategic goals
● Prioritize content efforts
● Find low quality content to
clean up or kill
● Ensure your content meets
your audience needs and
business goals

8. ● Prepping for a website relaunch
● Change in messaging
● Launching a new campaign
● It’s just been awhile*
*The average website lifespan is 2 years and 7 months, so if you
haven’t done a solid audit in 3+ years, it’s probably time.
When is it time for a content audit?

9. ● What do you want to learn (and why)?
● What do you need to prove (and to whom)?
● How long do you have to get this done?
● What’s the purpose of your audit?
● What are your anticipated next steps?
Which audit(s) should I do?

10. Quantitative Inventory
Just the Facts

19. Remove obvious non-pages

20. Create a tab for each website section

21. Create a tab for each website section

22. Create a tab for each website section

23. Create a tab for each website section

24. ● A clear sense of what content you have, and how well it performs
○ What pages got the most views?
○ The highest engagement?
○ Drive the greatest value? (assuming you have value in Goals)
● Ability to compare content apples-to-apples
○ Blog traffic is likely very different from product pages, for
example
What this gives you

25. ● Pages with such low visibility that no one has seen them
● Any sites *not* included in the View you ran - run those, too!
● Anything you publish from this date forward
What’s missing?

26. Use ScreamingFrog to capture *all* website pages

32. ● Inventory of your entire website with key data about content, SEO
attributes, and performance.
○ Page titles
○ H tags
○ Meta descriptions
● Identified issues you may want to fix now, or as a part of a broader
website project.
○ Broken URLs
○ Crawl issues
○ Missing metadata
What this gives you

33. ● Likely: Subdomains - run this for them, too!
● Any non-website content
What’s missing?

34. Keep. Kill. Clean up.

36. ● Align on criteria and mark to kill:
○ Anything with pageviews over/under X unless something else
stands out
○ Very old content without repurposing/clean-up potential
■ Case studies
■ Blog posts
■ News items
■ Campaigns you forgot still existed
Note: Don’t delete these from your sheet.
Keep. Kill. Clean up.

38. Getting rid of old, outdated, irrelevant, low-quality content helps you:
● Manage your crawl budget
● Manage the authority of your site’s internal links
● Get rid of incorrect/outdated things
● More easily manage migration during website project
● Have less to manage moving forward
Congratulations!

39. Qualitative Audits

40. Add your own data to the spreadsheet: Best practices
Get your free content audit template!

41. Add your own data to the spreadsheet: Strategic
Get your free content audit template!

42. Before audience value check
After audience value check

43. Add your own data to the spreadsheet: Strategic
Get your free content audit template!

44. Keep. Kill. Clean up.

45. ● Lots of green? Good! That’s stuff to keep.
● Lots of red? Bad. That might be stuff to kill.
● Somewhere in the middle? Probably stuff to clean up.
But don’t do anything too hasty …
Keep. Kill. Clean up.

46. “I'd rather make a show 100
people need to see, than a show
that 1,000 people want to see.”
Joss Whedon
Producer, Director, Screenwriter,
Comic Book Writer, Composer

52. Find your gaps: Map remaining content
● Map your “keep” items to your audience personas and buyer
journey.
● Holes = insights for “clean up” and new content.

53. Find your gaps: Check on-site search

54. Find your gaps: FAQs
Hotspots = possible
gaps; areas to improve
on audient value

55. Dust off this bad boy

57. Thanks to all your audit efforts:
● Older but still visible content is now new and visible
● Visitors get a better experience
● Your brand is well represented
● You’re getting closer to your audience by focusing on their needs
● You’re increasing traffic by updating pages with ranking potential
● Your website is easier to manage
○ Cleaner CMS
○ Easier to migrate
Congratulations!

60. Questions?
Shahin Dejy
shahin@orbitmedia.com
773.353.8313
Andy Crestodina
andy@orbitmedia.com
773.353.8301
Laurel Miltner
laurel@orbitmedia.com
440.213.1490