Analytic Design Group

To quote Peter Morville: "Information that's hard to find will remain information that's hardly found."

We all want to be sure our content gets found both in the larger context of the World Wide Web and in the smaller context of the site itself. We would argue that the concept is also applicable at a micro level as well, it must be findable at a page level too.

The first step in ensuring findability is to understand what you've got. Only then can we start talking about structuring the content in a way to ensure that its findable.

We do this by conducting a content audit (also called a content inventory). Here we troll through all of the current and proposed content making note of:

• Content relationships
• The specifics about each piece of content
• Who "owns" or is responsible for the content
• The currency of the content
• Etc.

The result is an in-depth understanding of the content, the opportunity to make decisions about what content needs to be included, and an excellent tool for tracking content if it is to be migrated to a content management system.

What is a Content Audit?

A Content Audit is a list of all of the content on your existing site, the content you know you wish to add (even if it's not on the site yet), along with descriptive notes, page identifiers (URL, page ID, type) and ownership information.