What to ask your agency about content audits
The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on content audits, these questions are worth asking early.
Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
Questions worth asking
- Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
- How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
- What happens if it needs changing in a year?
- What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?
What a good answer sounds like
Most sites have pages nobody has read in years. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
Thin content drags down the pages around it. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.
What this looks like day to day
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
- Most sites have pages nobody has read in years — 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.