Content Audits and Inventories: A Handbook for Content Analysis

By Paula Ladenburg Land

The second edition of Content Audits and Inventories, by veteran content strategist Paula Land, updates and expands the first edition, focusing on the importance of the strategic, as well as the tactical, aspects of the content audit. This edition includes expanded chapters on planning and preparation, building a business case, getting buy-in from your organization, working with teams, selecting and defining audit criteria, incorporating audits as part of ongoing governance, and much more.

New in this edition are chapters on auditing social media channels, apps, brand/messaging, content structure, and accessibility. Also new in this edition are case studies from industry professionals who share their audit experiences and outcomes.

Successful content strategy projects start with a thorough assessment of the current state of all content assets: their quantity, type, and quality. The audit process begins with a data-rich inventory and layers in a qualitative assessment, empowering content owners and business stakeholders to make informed decisions.

This practical, tactic-filled handbook walks you through setting up and running an inventory using an automated tool, setting the stage for a successful audit. Specific audit tactics addressed include auditing for content quality, performance, global considerations, and legal and regulatory issues. You will also learn how to do a competitive audit and incorporate personas into an audit. Tips on presenting audit results to stakeholders will help you deliver effective strategies.

Content Audits and Inventories: A Handbook for Content Analysis is a must-read for content professionals seeking to improve their content management strategy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: XML Press
• Release date: May 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781934434826

Paula Ladenburg Land

Paula Land is a content strategy consultant and technology entrepreneur. As founder and principal consultant at Strategic Content, she develops content strategies and implementation plans for private clients ranging from nonprofits to large e-commerce sites. Paula has also worked as a Senior Content Strategist at NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) group. As co-founder of Content Insight, she was the impetus behind the development of CAT, the Content Analysis Tool, which was designed to create automated content inventories. Before founding her own businesses, Paula was a user experience and content strategy lead for Razorfish, a leading digital agency, where she led the content strategy on the development of enterprise-level websites, redesigns, and CMS implementations. Paula has worked for over thirty years in content-related roles, spanning all aspects of the content lifecycle, with a focus on delivering large-scale, complex websites. Paula is a frequent speaker at conferences and presents workshops and webinars on the topic of content inventories, audits, and analyses. She contributed the essay on the term content inventory to the book The Language of Content Strategy

Book preview

Front cover of Content Audits and Inventories

Content Audits and Inventories

Table of Contents

Foreword

Kevin P. Nichols

Preface

What’s New in This Edition

What Hasn’t Changed

How this Book is Organized

Acknowledgments

Note

Introduction

The Audit Mindset

Getting to Know Your Content

Getting Started

Defining Our Terms

What is a Content Inventory?

What is a Content Audit?

I. Planning Your Audit Project

1. Setting the Context

1.1. In this Chapter

1.2. Establishing Context

1.3. Before You Begin

1.3.1. Why Are You Auditing?

1.3.2. What Do You Need to Learn?

1.3.2.1. Identifying the Site’s Structure

1.3.2.2. Seeing the Big Picture of the Site Content

1.3.2.3. Managing Content Quality and Performance

1.3.3. Audit Inputs

1.3.3.1. Business Goals and Outcomes

1.3.3.2. Understanding Stakeholder Goals

1.3.3.3. Customer Research and Data

1.3.3.4. Site Data

1.3.3.5. Brand and Style Guidelines

1.3.4. What Will You Do with What You Learn?

1.3.5. Summary

2. When Do You Inventory and Audit?

2.1. In this Chapter

2.2. Deciding When to Inventory and Audit

2.2.1. Initial Project Scoping

2.2.2. Site Redesign

2.2.3. Before a Migration

2.2.4. New Products, New Markets, New Audiences

2.2.5. Job Immersion

2.2.6. Ongoing

2.3. How Frequently Should You Inventory and Audit?

2.3.1. Governance

2.3.2. Publication Frequency

2.3.3. Business Landscape

2.3.4. Currency and Accuracy

2.4. When Not to Audit

2.5. Summary

3. Building the Business Case

3.1. In this Chapter

3.2. A Framework for Improvement

3.3. Making the Case for Change

3.3.1. Return on Investment

3.4. Organizational Readiness

3.4.1. Identify Sources of Resistance

3.4.2. Leading from the Side

3.5. Summary

4. Planning an Inventory and Audit Project

4.1. In this Chapter

4.2. Create a Project Plan

4.2.1. Document Your Vision and Goals

4.2.2. Define Roles and Responsibilities

4.2.3. Choose Your Tools

4.2.4. Communicate Early and Often

4.2.5. Set Milestones and Exit Criteria

4.3. The Basic Elements of a Project Plan

4.3.1. Scope

4.3.2. Schedule

4.3.3. Resources

4.3.4. Budget

4.4. Summary

5. Ready, Set, Audit!

II. Building the Audit

6. Preparing for a Content Audit

6.1. In this Chapter

6.2. From Inventory to Audit

6.3. Choose Your Audit Focus

6.4. Choose Your Criteria

6.5. Scope Your Audit

6.5.1. Your Time

6.5.2. Project Type

6.5.2.1. Content Strategy Initiative

6.5.2.2. Website Redesign

6.5.2.3. Content Management System Migration

6.5.2.4. Global Market Rollout

6.5.2.5. Governance Initiative

6.5.2.6. Ongoing Maintenance

6.5.3. Business Context

6.5.4. Project Timeframe

6.5.5. Project Limits

6.5.6. Select Your Tools

6.6. Summary

7. Creating a Content Inventory

7.1. In this Chapter

7.2. Why Inventory?

7.3. Creating the Inventory

7.4. The Inventory Process

7.5. Basic Elements of an Inventory

7.6. What We Learn from These Elements

7.6.1. URLs

7.6.1.1. Length and Clarity

7.6.1.2. Navigational Structure

7.6.2. Type

7.6.3. File Size

7.6.4. Metadata: Title, Description, Headings

7.6.5. Analytics

7.6.6. Word Count

7.6.7. Links In and Out

7.6.8. Images, Media, Documents

7.7. Beyond the Basic Inventory

7.8. Refreshing the Inventory

7.9. When is an Inventory a Quantitative Audit?

7.10. Turning an Inventory into an Audit

7.11. Summary

8. Selecting and Defining Audit Criteria

8.1. In this Chapter

8.2. Selecting and Defining Criteria

8.3. Potential Criteria

8.3.1. Business Purpose and Value

8.3.1.1. Serves a Purpose

8.3.1.2. Supports Brand and Messaging

8.3.2. Performance

8.3.3. User Value

8.3.3.1. Relevant

8.3.3.2. Audience-appropriate

8.3.3.3. Appears in Context

8.3.3.4. Supports User Activities

8.3.3.5. Current

8.3.3.6. Accurate

8.3.3.7. Engaging

8.3.3.8. Easy to Read

8.3.3.9. Consistent

8.3.3.10. Sufficiently Broad and Deep

8.3.4. Breadth

8.3.5. Depth

8.3.6. Content Presentation

8.3.6.1. Format

8.3.6.2. Imagery

8.3.6.3. Labeling and Structure

8.3.6.4. Content Types

8.3.7. Usability and Interaction

8.3.7.1. Usability

8.3.7.2. Shareability

8.3.7.3. Discoverability

8.3.7.4. Accessibility

8.3.8. Actionable

8.3.9. Trustworthy

8.3.10. Search-friendly

8.4. Choose a Rubric

8.5. Summary

9. Selecting Tools and Templates

9.1. In this Chapter

9.2. Creating Your Inventory with a Web Crawler

9.3. Setting Up Your Template

9.4. The Dreaded Spreadsheet

9.5. Supplementing Your Audit

9.5.1. Analysis Tools

9.5.2. Readability Tests

9.5.3. Accessibility

9.5.4. SEO

9.5.5. Uniqueness

9.6. Choosing Tools

9.7. Summary

9.8. Case Study: Data-Driven Content Inventory and Audit

9.8.1. Challenges

9.8.2. Solution

9.8.2.1. Step 1: Inventory in Screaming Frog

9.8.2.2. Step 2: Data clean up and additional data appends in Python

9.8.2.3. Step 3: Audit in Python

9.8.3. Results of audits

9.8.4. Biographies

10. Onboarding the Team

10.1. In this Chapter

10.2. Challenges and Opportunities

10.3. Who Should Audit?

10.3.1. Content Strategists, Content Marketers, and Content Creators

10.3.2. Information Architects and User-Experience Designers

10.3.3. Content Managers and Site Managers

10.3.4. SEO Analysts

10.3.5. Customers

10.4. Choosing Your Team

10.5. Dividing the Work

10.6. Roles and Responsibilities

10.7. Summary

11. Conduct a Pilot

11.1. In this Chapter

11.2. Why Do a Pilot?

11.2.1. 1. Test your criteria

11.2.2. 2. Test your velocity

11.2.3. 3. Validate your process

11.3. Steps to Set Up a Pilot

11.3.1. 1. Determine a reasonable sample of pages

11.3.2. 2. Assign pages to your team

11.3.3. 3. Audit as a group

11.4. Summary

III. Conducting the Audit

12. Getting Started

12.1. Review Your Audit Context

12.2. Evaluate the Content

13. The Qualitative Audit

13.1. In this Chapter

13.2. Auditing for Content Quality

13.3. What to Assess

13.4. Audit Inputs

13.4.1. Brand Guidelines

13.4.2. Voice and Tone Guidelines

13.4.3. Editorial/Style Guide

13.4.4. Content Models and Requirements

13.4.5. Plain Language Guidelines

13.4.6. Legal Guidelines

13.4.7. Globalization Standards

13.4.8. Audience Expertise

13.5. Summary

14. Auditing for Content Effectiveness

14.1. In this Chapter

14.2. Measuring Content Success

14.2.1. Getting Started with Analytics

14.2.2. Which Data Are Most Meaningful?

14.3. Does Your Content Have ROT?

14.4. Consider Site Search Keywords

14.5. Other Performance Measures

14.6. A Note of Caution

14.7. Audit Inputs

14.8. Summary

15. Auditing Content Structure

15.1. In this Chapter

15.2. Assessing Structural Elements

15.3. Templates, Components, Content Types

15.4. Content Reuse

15.5. Content Uniqueness

15.6. Assets

15.7. Content Workflow and Lifecycle

15.8. Audit Inputs

15.9. Summary

16. The Multichannel Audit

16.1. In this Chapter

16.2. Auditing across Channels

16.3. Getting Started

16.4. How to Audit Multichannel Content

16.5. Audit Inputs

16.6. Summary

17. Auditing for Brand and Messaging

17.1. In this Chapter

17.2. Auditing for Brand

17.3. Audit Inputs

17.4. Criteria

17.5. Scope

17.6. Summary

18. Auditing Competitor Sites

18.1. In this Chapter

18.2. The Competitive Content Audit

18.3. How Competitive Audits Differ

18.4. Getting Started

18.5. Set Your Scope

18.6. Select Competitors

18.6.1. Create Your Scorecard

18.7. Choose Your Criteria

18.7.1. Breadth and depth

18.7.2. Consistency

18.7.3. Completeness

18.7.4. Currency and frequency

18.7.5. Findability

18.8. Conduct Your Audit

18.9. Competitive Analysis

18.10. Audit Inputs

18.11. Summary

19. Auditing for Accessibility Issues

19.1. In this Chapter

19.2. Why Accessibility Matters

19.3. Auditing for Accessibility

19.4. Tools for Checking Web Accessibility

19.5. Audit Inputs

19.6. Summary

20. Auditing for Legal or Regulatory Issues

20.1. In this Chapter

20.2. Conducting an Audit for Legal Issues

20.2.1. Copyright

20.2.2. Trademark

20.2.3. Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

20.2.4. User-Generated Content

20.2.5. Regulatory Issues for Nonprofits

20.2.6. Links

20.3. Audit Inputs

20.4. Summary

21. Auditing Social Media Channels

21.1. In this Chapter

21.2. Auditing Your Social Media Presence

21.3. Tools for Auditing Social Media Channels

21.4. The Competitive Social Audit

21.5. Audit Inputs

21.6. Summary

22. Auditing for Global Issues

22.1. In this Chapter

22.2. The Global Audit

22.3. Optimizing for Localization

22.3.1. Consistency

22.3.2. Content Length

22.3.3. Cultural References, Colloquialisms, and Jargon

22.3.4. Terminology

22.4. Language and Communication Style

22.5. Design

22.6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

22.7. Summary

23. Auditing Apps and Single-Page Sites

23.1. In this Chapter

23.2. Moving Beyond the Page

23.3. Selecting Criteria

23.4. Process

23.5. Audit Inputs

23.6. Summary

23.7. Case Study: Audit of the Retzhof App

23.7.1. Audit context

23.7.2. Audit process

23.7.2.1. Content inventory

23.7.2.2. Content audit

23.7.2.3. Competitive audit

23.7.3. Challenges/differences from conventional website audits

23.7.4. Results/takeaways

23.7.5. Biography

24. Using Personas and Customer Journeys in Audits

24.1. In this Chapter

24.2. Personas or Archetypes?

24.3. The Role of Personas in Audits

24.3.1. Understanding Users

24.3.2. A Collaborative Approach

24.3.3. Using Personas

24.4. Communicating Personas

24.5. Adding Content Strategy to Personas

24.5.1. Getting Started

24.6. Measuring Against Goals

24.7. Adding Persona Data to Your Audit

24.8. Customer Journey Maps

24.9. Gap Analysis

24.10. Summary

IV. Turning Analysis into Insights

25. Delivering Your Audit

25.1. In this Chapter

25.2. Analyzing Results, Finding Patterns

25.3. Communicating Audit Findings

25.4. Telling the Audit Story

25.5. Presenting the Findings

25.5.1. Just Say No to Sharing Spreadsheets

25.5.2. Focus on Persuasion

25.6. Creating the Audit Document

25.6.1. Overview

25.6.2. Assessment

25.6.3. Recommendations

25.6.4. Next Steps

25.7. Summary

25.8. Case Study: Dashboard

25.8.1. Biography

26. Achieving Long-Term Change

26.1. In this Chapter

26.2. The Role of Content Audits in Governance

26.3. The Rolling Inventory and Audit

26.4. Summary

27. Conclusion

27.1. Inventory, Audit, Analysis

27.2. Select Your Tactics, Know Your Goals

27.3. Learn By Doing

V. Inventory and Audit Resources

A. Sample Content Inventory

B. Stakeholder Interview Template

B.1. Questions for Business Owners

B.2. Questions for Content Creators and Site Management

B.3. Questions for Site Users

C. Content Audit Checklist

D. Competitive Audit Scorecard

E. Defining Audit Criteria

F. Customer Journey Map

G. Sample Gap Map

G.1. IT Professionals

G.2. Decision Maker/C-Suite

G.3. Career Seeker

H. Content Audit Report Template

Additional Reading

Glossary

Index

I. Copyright and Legal Notices

Content Audits and Inventories

A Handbook for Content Analysis

Paula Ladenburg Land

XML Press and The Content Wrangler logos

Foreword

By Kevin P. Nichols, Executive Director, Experience at AvenueCX

In Chapter 3 of Content Audits and Inventories: A Handbook for Content Analysis (2nd Edition), Paula Land writes: The value of the audit is that it helps us make evidence-based decisions and avoid jumping to conclusions based on assumptions. Paula’s observation correctly frames why audits prove necessary for decision making, especially when we think of content as a business asset and as useful and necessary for customers.

Done well, a content audit helps an organization understand what content it possesses and the value of that content to the business and its customers or consumers. Many content-related projects start with a content inventory and audit, but what Paula advocates goes much further than just leveraging a content audit for a new platform design or a website refresh.

Paula writes of the strategic importance of audits for the overall content ecosystem and for the realization of business goals and objectives. She avers that such work remains a part of the overall content lifecycle and is a critical part of content experience evolution.

She speaks of the audit mindset, which requires a business to consider thinking about the value its content adds to its business and to the customer on an ongoing basis.

Paula makes the case successfully that we should incorporate audits as part of an ongoing process in our content strategies, processes, planning, and operations. The case to do so seems relatively straightforward, and yet, I have not seen it completed by large, global brands—​let alone smaller organizations—​as a standard practice.

And why is this so important? Well, first we know that consumer behaviors change. If the shelter-in-place policies because of COVID taught those of us in digital strategy, customer experience, and marketing anything about our customers, it is that customer behaviors and trends can shift quite remarkably and in ways that we might not see coming.

For example, today in 2023, many customers desire self-service content solutions, but they also crave in-store experiences and person-to-person interactions more than they have in decades. Customer journeys remain nonlinear with multiple channel touchpoints, but what customers expect on each of those channels differs from what they may have expected two, three, or even four years ago. (And if you have not audited your content within these periods, you are at a loss to address these issues.)

Second, businesses make new goals and objectives on an annual basis, or at least optimize their targets. For content to prove a true asset, one must measure it against the goals of the business and its effect on the customer (including here the potential customer and existing ones). The best way to understand the true value of content as an asset is to cross reference the cost of the content, which comes from internal metrics, against its performance with its audience. Performance indicators change based on business goals and metrics and performance expectations, which means you should evaluate content against current objectives.

Third, we know that most businesses operate through performance models—​did our organization accomplish our revenue or profit targets? Are our products or services meeting the needs of our customers? Are we gaining traction on market performance? How then, do businesses often fail in evaluating one of the most important manifestations of their brand experience—​content. Next to product or service, content is often the most important factor in a customer’s brand perception. It also significantly influences a customer’s experience with the brand, and it can make or break an existing customer experience when it comes to the use of a product or service.

Smart businesses can use content to quantify brand experience, customer experience efforts, and product and service quality. That is not to say that content is the only mechanism available to offer insight on the value each of these offers, but it can and should be a primary consideration.

Why then, would businesses not want to audit the performance of content against each of these levers on an annual or semiannual basis? Why would not content audits be built into the DNA of an organization’s business strategy and operations?

Fourth, competitive differentiation remains even more important as we move to a world where the Metaverse, AI and machine learning, and hyper-personalization become part of consumer experiences with brands. One of the best ways to remain competitive is to thoroughly understand the strengths and weaknesses of your content within each channel or customer touchpoint versus that of your competitors. Staying on top of this challenge will help provide the insight necessary for a truly differentiated and better content experience. Such work means that an organization builds auditing into the ongoing content processes and does not make it an afterthought or a singular project in and of itself.

Content audits should be a required part of any content program or organization. As a baseline, a content audit should answer questions such as: Is my content helping the business further its goals and is it meeting the needs of our audience? And such a practice should be built into the content lifecycle, in the same way that a legal or brand review is built into the content creation process.

Paula not only shows you how to do this, but she also offers you the mindset, the framework, and the tools required to do so. This book should not just be required reading for content folks, but also for those wanting to understand how to effectively use measurement and performance of content as a key lever in evaluating the success of business strategies, customer experience strategy, brand impact, and efficacy of business solutions.

Kevin P. Nichols

Kevin is an award-winning thought leader, digital industry expert, and author with more than 25-years experience in digital strategy, user experience, and content. He was a key contributor to creating MIT OpenCourseWare, grew one of the largest content strategy teams in the world at SapientNitro, and has worked on content for dozens of global brands. At AvenueCX, Kevin takes his passion about content and works with global brands to improve their overall content and customer experiences. He is author of Enterprise Content Strategy (Nichols 2015) and co-author of UX for Dummies. Kevin is also the chair of Content Strategy Alliance Best Practices initiative.

Preface

What’s New in This Edition

The field of content strategy is ever evolving. In the years since the first edition of this book was published, disciplines or sub-disciplines within content strategy have arisen, and many strategists’ job descriptions have been altered. Content design, UX writing, and structured content have all become common terms (whether or not the work itself is new). But the need for, and practice of, conducting content inventories and audits remains, and in fact, audits need to evolve along with the field. For the first time, for example, I was asked about how to audit an app.

As this book was going to press, the content world was being rocked by the rise of artificial intelligence, with programs like ChatGPT receiving a lot of press about the potential effects AI might have on content creation. Although I have not yet seen the same level of attention paid to the potential of AI to revolutionize content analysis, it seems inevitable that some entrepreneur will soon be developing an AI-based audit tool.

A goal for this edition, therefore, is to address how auditing evolves along with the practice. I have enhanced the section on data and how to choose and incorporate data points into an audit. The tools landscape has changed, as well. When I wrote the first edition of this book, I included references to an inventory tool I had developed called the Content Analysis Tool (CAT). That tool no longer exists, but others have sprung up, and much more sophisticated tools offering much broader types of analysis and reporting are available (because their pricing may make them more appropriate to enterprise-level projects and organizations, I also discuss simpler, less-expensive, and less-extensive tools). I’ve also expanded the social media chapter and added chapters on accessibility audits and brand audits.

What Hasn’t Changed

The expression the more things change, the more they stay the same, comes to mind. Despite the prolific growth of the web, despite the presence and sophistication of tools, and despite the different ways we create and present content, the need to evaluate and understand our content stays the same. Whether it’s presented in an app, a web page, a video, or a PDF, the quality, usability, and usefulness of content matters. And the only way I know to ensure that is to regularly audit content against business goals and user needs. So, although I’ve updated and enhanced the content of this book, including adding input from others in the field, the core concepts and process remain the same.

How this Book is Organized

In the years since