Three myths about content audits

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. A few things about content audits that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

“It only matters for big sites”

Most sites have pages nobody has read in years. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

“Our platform handles it”

Thin content drags down the pages around it. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

How to tell if yours is fine

Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. Three things worth confirming about content audits before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Thin content drags down the pages around it — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.