Content Audit
You’ve got 400 pages, and nobody reads most of them.
An audit that ends in a report hasn’t finished. One that ends in a decision per URL has. You decide, one page at a time, and write it down.
Tell us how many URLs you have. Every page comes back with an owner, a decision, and a priority, so the pile finally turns into a plan instead of a maintenance tax.
Or text 562-726-2287. No form marathon, no discovery call.
6 columns
In a working audit sheet
Every URL
Ends in a decision, not a maybe
From the CMS
Pulled in full, nothing hidden
Start here
You decide, one URL at a time, and you write the decision down. An audit that ends in a report hasn't finished. An audit that ends in a decision per URL has.
A working audit sheet has six columns: URL, group, owner, decision, priority, and action and notes. One row per page, and the decision is one of four words, drop, keep, improve or add, never a paragraph.
Pull the URL list from the CMS, never the XML sitemap. Anything left out of the sitemap never enters the record, and those are usually the pages causing the problem. Most pages get dropped, and that's the normal result, not a failure of the content.
Sound familiar
You keep meaning to deal with it, and the pile keeps growing.
There's never a shortage of things to write, but you can't agree, commit, and hold a regular publishing schedule.
The strategy lives in one person's head, and when they're busy, execution just stops.
Every page goes through one senior reviewer, so it sits in a queue while they're buried.
A simple content or page change takes four to eight weeks, stuck behind the dev queue.
You've been adding pages for ten years, and now nobody's sure which of the 400 still earn their place.
The audit itself keeps stalling: no owner, no real priority, and the decisions read like vague prose.
None of this means your content is bad. It means the pile got big and nobody owns the decisions. Here's the version where every page gets one.
The version where this ends
Every URL comes back with a name beside it, a decision, and a priority you can start Monday.
Not a 90-page report that nobody opens. A sheet, one row per page, each row ending in one of four words: drop, keep, improve or add. Most pages get dropped, and that's the normal result, not a failure. You stop maintaining pages you were never going to touch, the ones that survive are the ones worth the work, and the reasoning is written down, so the person acting on it in six weeks doesn't have to remember the meeting.
What a real audit sheet looks like
Six columns, and every row ends in a decision.
Pull the URL list from the CMS, never the XML sitemap. Anything excluded from the sitemap never enters the record, and those are usually the pages causing the problem. The decision column is the one that turns a spreadsheet into an audit.
| URL | Group | Owner | Decision | Priority | Action & notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /products/old-kit/ | Product | Blank | Drop | P1 | Still taking deposits for a product that's gone. 301 to /products/. |
| /services/ | Service | Content | Improve | P0 | Ranks and converts, but thin. Rewrite, keep the URL. |
| /guides/onboarding/ | Guide | Content | Keep | P4 | Still accurate, still gets traffic. Leave it alone. |
| (none yet) | Guide | Content | Add | P2 | Buyers ask this constantly and no page answers it. Brief it. |
| /blog/2019-year-in-review/ | Blog | Blank | Drop | P3 | Dated, no traffic. Redirect to /blog/. |
Why audits stall
Where audits usually die before anyone acts.
- No owner column. Every decision needs a name next to it. Without one, the sheet becomes a document everyone agrees is important and nobody acts on.
- Priority that isn't really priority. If two thirds of the rows are high priority, there is no priority. Force the distribution.
- Decisions written as prose. "Consider consolidating with the services page, possibly" is not a decision. Drop, keep, improve, add. Four options, one per row.
- Auditing quality before deciding what stays. Reviewing 400 pages for quality when 250 of them are going to be deleted is weeks of wasted work. Decide first, then improve what survives.
What we deliver
What you get back.
- The full URL list. Pulled from the CMS, with nothing quietly missing.
- A decision for every row. Not just the interesting ones. Every page ends in drop, keep, improve or add.
- A priority order. One an actual person can start on Monday, not a wall of equally urgent rows.
- A redirect map for everything being dropped. So nothing that had value 404s.
- The reasoning, written down. Because the person executing it in six weeks won't remember the meeting.
Before you hire us
What an audit doesn't include.
Writing the replacement content
That's a separate engagement, and it's quoted separately. The audit decides what stays and what goes. Writing what replaces the dropped pages is its own project.
Doing the deletions and redirects
We can, and it's scoped as implementation. The audit is the decision document. Carrying it out, the drops and the redirect map, is a separate line you can hand to us or to your own team.
A ranking report
An audit is a decision document, not an SEO report. If a ranking report is what you actually want, say so and we'll tell you whether you need one.
What it costs
What an audit costs.
Content strategy engagements start at $10,000.
An audit on its own usually sits at the lower end, depending on how many URLs you have. Ongoing strategy runs $5,000 to $15,000 a month. Full detail is on the pricing page.
Related
If it's a different problem.
Content strategy
The whole picture. The audit is one spoke of it.
Information architecture
If the problem is that nobody can find things, rather than that there's too much.
CMS migration
If the audit is happening because you're moving platforms.
Questions we get
What people usually ask.
No. That's a separate engagement, quoted separately. The audit decides what stays and what goes. Writing what replaces the pages you drop is its own project, and we'll scope it once you know what's surviving.
We can do both. The audit is the decision document. Carrying out the drops and building the redirect map is scoped as implementation, so nothing that had value 404s. Tell us which part you want.
No. An audit is a decision document, one row per URL ending in drop, keep, improve or add. If a ranking report is what you actually need, say so and we'll tell you whether you need one.
That's the normal result, not a failure. Dropping most of the pile is what ten years of publishing looks like. You decide first, then improve only what survives, instead of reviewing quality on pages you're about to delete.
Content strategy engagements start at $10,000, and an audit alone usually sits at the lower end, depending on how many URLs you have. Ongoing strategy runs $5,000 to $15,000 a month. Detail is on the pricing page.
Close
You'll know what to do with every page.
One decision per URL, a priority order you can start Monday, and the reasoning written down.
An audit ends in a decision per URL, never a report nobody reads.