Content Audits and Inventories
Before you can plan new content, you need to know what you already have and how it performs. I inventory every page, score it against your goals and audience, and tell you what to keep, fix, merge or retire.
A content inventory is the complete record of what lives on your site: every URL, its title, template, format, owner, publish date, last update and the metrics attached to it. A content audit is the judgment layered on top. I assess each page for accuracy, relevance to the people you serve, readability, search intent and fit with the rest of the site, then record a decision for it. The two together replace guesswork about the site with evidence.
I approach an audit as a roadmap exercise, not a cleanup. At UnitedHealth Group I owned the website roadmap and prioritized projects by impact, resources and business objectives. That taught me to treat every page as something with an owner, a purpose and a review date. An audit that does not end in prioritized decisions your team can act on has not finished its job.
I work with the people who own the content, not around them. Page owners, subject experts and compliance reviewers see the scoring criteria before I apply them, so the results are not a surprise. Findings come back as a working spreadsheet your team can filter and sort, plus briefs for writers and developers where a page needs rewriting, consolidating or redirecting. You keep the inventory afterward as a living record of the site.
What a content audit includes
Content Inventory
A spreadsheet with a row for every URL recording title, template, content type, owner, publish and last-updated dates, word count, CMS identifier and inbound internal links, built from a crawl and a CMS export.
Scoring Rubric
The criteria each page is judged against, written down before scoring starts: accuracy, audience relevance, readability, search intent match, brand voice, accessibility basics and legal or compliance status, each with a defined scale.
Performance Overlay
Analytics and search data joined to every row: sessions, entrances, organic landings, ranking keywords, conversions and assisted goals over an agreed period, so quality scores sit next to evidence of use.
Gap and Overlap Analysis
A map of topics against audience questions and journey stages showing where coverage is missing, where several pages compete for the same subject and where content has drifted off strategy.
Disposition Plan
A recorded decision for every URL (keep, fix, merge, redirect or retire) with the reason, a redirect map for anything that moves and the order in which the work should happen.
Findings Readout
A written summary of the patterns behind the row-level data: which templates, sections and owners drive the problems, what to fix first and what the inventory says about how content gets published today.
How I run a content audit
Scope the inventory
You and I agree which properties, sections, languages and content types are in scope and what the audit must decide. I build the URL list from a crawl, the sitemap and a CMS export.
Score every page
I apply the agreed rubric to each URL and join analytics and search data to the same row, so every page carries both a quality judgment and evidence of how it is used.
Find the patterns
I group the scored rows by template, section, topic and owner to see where problems cluster, where topics overlap and where the site is silent on questions your audience asks.
Decide and hand off
Each URL gets a disposition and a reason. I review the calls with page owners, write briefs for the rewrites and redirects, and hand over the inventory as a file your team maintains.
Where this comes from
I have spent years building and running the kind of customer-facing websites and content programs I now audit. At TN Marketing I ran subscription-based instructional web communities and oversaw CMS publishing, on-page SEO and UX, where articles and instructional videos were what subscribers paid for. At UnitedHealth Group I owned the website roadmap and made sure healthcare content met strict regulatory, risk and security standards. As an independent consultant I define content governance for clients and manage delivery across design, content and development teams.
See my experienceBrittany is a detailed, organized, well-rounded worker. She takes the word specific to a new level. She compiles research after research to make decisions that will best benefit clients.
Procurement and Strategic Sourcing
Worked on different teams
Frequently asked
What is the difference between a content inventory and a content audit?
An inventory lists what exists and an audit judges it. The inventory is the quantitative record: every URL with its metadata and metrics. The audit applies criteria to that record and ends in a decision for each page. I deliver both, because a decision without the record behind it is hard to defend later.
How do you decide what to keep and what to retire?
Each page is judged on the rubric you and I agree on at the start, alongside its traffic, search visibility and conversions. A page that scores poorly and gets no use is a candidate to retire. A page that scores poorly but performs well is a candidate to fix. Page owners review every call before it is final.
What do you need from us to run an audit?
Access to your analytics, your CMS or an export of it, and a crawlable site. I also need a contact who knows who owns which sections and any legal or compliance rules that govern the content. With those in hand I can start building the inventory right away.
What happens to the audit after you hand it over?
It becomes the working record of your site. The inventory is built so your team can keep it current as pages are added, changed or removed. The disposition plan feeds directly into a migration, an editorial plan or a governance model. I can stay on to run the resulting work or hand it to your team.
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