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Audit content

Audit your content to get a clear understanding of your digital estate or service. Create evidence to improve, remove or change.

Why audit content

With millions of gov.au web pages, we need to reduce the clutter. A content audit is where we begin. An audit will help you to plan and budget for content improvement and reduction projects. It will also give you baselines, so that you can report on what you have improved during the content lifecycle.

Did you know?

Research shows that 50% of users of government services have difficulty finding information online. Of those, 24% resort to making a telephone call.

Source: KPMG study: Digital Government Ease of Use Index 2015

How to conduct your audit

Prove the value

One of the first questions you will need to answer when pitching a project to audit content, is what the return on investment will be.

Plan your audit

To plan your content audit, focus on the extent each website or application is still fulfilling its purpose.

Engage your stakeholders

Content audits often involve a lot of negotiation and value judgments. Throughout the audit you’ll need to work hard to maintain good relationships.

Conduct the audit

Collect everything you can find out about your content. This includes web pages, content types, content owners or subject experts, users and metadata.

Analyse and evaluate

Analyse and evaluate your content for accuracy, relevance, quality and performance. This helps to make decisions based on evidence.

Action your audit

You’ll need to report your findings to get stakeholder support to action your findings and improve your content.

Content strategy output

What you'll get

  • A detailed view of your content
  • A content audit spreadsheet

What to do

Add to Part 4: Current content, in the Content Strategy Template

← Do before: Define user content needs

    Research and analyse phase

Do next: Set goals and measure success →

Develop your strategy phase  

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