To create a solid content strategy for the web you need to first start with a content audit

We all know by now that engaging and fresh content is crucial to the success of your website. But before you start spending more time and money wildly adding new pages to your site, do you know what content you already have? And is it helping you meet your website goals? To answer these questions, you need to do a content audit.

Simply put, a web content audit is a full accounting of all the content your organization currently has online. I know, I know, it sounds tedious and time-consuming. But the results are incredibly valuable. In fact, an audit is the first step in developing a content strategy that helps you meet the goals of your website-and its stakeholders.

Besides helping you develop a strong content strategy to meet your website goals, a content audit can also:

• Make it clear exactly what content you have and where it lives (including its quality and usefulness), if only just for updating, maintenance or removal;
• Demonstrate to stakeholders the enormity of the content that needs to be considered;
• Help you scope out and budget for future content projects;
• Act as a reference for existing content, making it more efficient for your writers during content development.

How do you perform a web content audit?

Goals: First off, you need to have a clear understanding of the goals of your website. Be sure you know who the different users of the site are, and what they're hoping to achieve when they use the site. That way, you can tailor the types of information you record in your audit, helping to produce more specific and, therefore, useful results.

Quantitative Audit: Next up, you'll want to fire up an Excel spreadsheet to document the content that currently exists on each page of your site. At this stage, all you really need are three columns: one for a numbering system to show the hierarchy of the pages, one for the page title, and one for the page URL. You may also want to make a note of who is responsible for each page. It's important to document every single page, especially those deeper ones where the content has a greater chance of running amok.

Qualitative Audit: After indexing the pages of the site, you'll want to do a qualitative audit, which analyzes the quality and effectiveness of the content. This is where it really starts to get interesting. Some of the questions you may want to look at include:

• What are the topics of each page?
• Is the content accurate and up-to-date?
• Is the content useful to the user and to the organization?
• Is the content actually used by the user? (check out your web analytics for this)
• Is the content written professionally and appropriately for the web?
• Is the content user-friendly?

Develop a ranking system for the answers, and add them to your spreadsheet.

Results: From the spreadsheet, you'll be able to clearly see where your content is working, and where it is failing. Send it along to those who need to see it. Once you've got their attention, you then have the opportunity to present a business case for your web project or initiative, which will include your informed and achievable recommendations. And so starts your journey into web content strategy.

Emily Amos is a Halifax copywriter specializing in writing for the web. She helps companies convert more people into clients by writing key marketing messages that resonate. Check out some of her work at www.wordsavvy.ca.