Starting a Content Audit for Your WordPress Website

Jun 21 2019 Updated Mar 04 2020

It may be the most ubiquitous marketing cliché of all time, but it’s still true: Content is king. That’s especially true on your WordPress site, where your content deserves the royal treatment. That means it’s a good idea to regularly content audit throughout the site.

Cohesive content (or a lack thereof) can make or break the user experience. Sloppy content that’s out of date, hard to read, or riddled with typos is not only unprofessional, but it’s likely to confuse your visitors. By shoring up your content, you’ll be able to maintain a consistent brand voice, ensure key information is up-to-date, and keep your readers happy.

Content Audit Checklist

Ready to get started on your content audit? We’ve put together a checklist to help you hit the ground running and see what’s working, what needs to be updated, and what could benefit from some tweaks.

✅ Review your traffic

Take a deep dive into your WordPress analytics to see what types of content perform best and to take a look at what’s driving traffic on your site. Is it Google searches? Outside links? Which content performed best (and worst) last year? The answers will help you clean up your existing content and create even better content moving forward.

Many folks use Google Analytics to track these types of things. There are plenty of plugins to integrate it into your WordPress site and give you visibility into your online traffic to start your content audit. You can also try Jetpack, which is by Automattic and built specifically for WordPress.

✅ Remove outdated or unnecessary content

It’s a good idea to delete outdated content and old events from time to time to keep things running smoothly. Luckily, this process can be automated, which saves you time and hassle. Don’t forget to put redirects in place for any posts or pages you delete.

✅ Check for consistent copy

Now is the time to click back through your content and spend time updating old copy that may not match your current style. This is especially true if you’ve made any recent changes to your editorial guidelines or brand voice. Plus, it never hurts to re-read old content and fix any typos you catch.

Oh! And if you’re new to editorial guidelines and style guides, check out Mailchimp’s Voice & Tone. It’s an excellent example of establishing content standards.

✅ Make product and service updates

Look, we get it. Sometimes you’re so busy running your business that your website becomes an afterthought. That includes the most basic elements of your site, like your services and products pages. Check these important pages to make sure all product and service information is current and that they’re easy to find.

✅ Update contact information

And while you’re tackling the tip above, click over to your “Contact Us” page to make sure email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, and staff directories are correct. If you have contact information in your site’s footer or in a widget, be sure to update it there, too.

✅ Improve content organization and user friendliness

Improving your site’s user-friendliness will always be time well spent. Start by reviewing your navigation—are there ways you could streamline links to help visitors quickly find what they’re looking for? Same goes for making your content more scannable by thoughtfully using bold text, italics, pull quotes, and bullet points to break up large chunks of copy.

Another reason content organization is important: it guarantees an accessible experience for users. Even if the CSS of the site is missing for some reason, or a user intentionally disables JavaScript.

📝 Happy auditing!

We hope these content audit tips give you a good starting point for creating a better user experience. Good content helps users get what they need from your site. A site without content might be sparkly, but it fails to communicate what’s important. That makes content a core component of user experience.