How to Conduct a Website Content Review

A website content review is essential if you want to increase your online presence.

It involves assessing every text, picture, and multimedia asset on your site to ensure it supports your company objectives and appeals to your target audience.

This process may also help you find areas for improvement and make the required changes to optimize your website for success.

But how can you perform your website content review effectively?

Here are four sets of steps to follow to achieve the best results.

1. Gather tools for review

When conducting a website content review, you and your entire team must have the right tools for the job. Here are some you'll need:

Spreadsheets or note-taking apps. You'll need Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel or note-taking apps, such as Evernote or Notion, to document your findings, observations, and recommendations. You may also need AI templates, such as Release Notes from Writer. All these tools will help you with organizing and presenting your data.
SEO tools. Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz can help you analyze your website's SEO performance, keyword rankings, backlinks, and overall search visibility. Most of these tools do the same thing, so you'll need just one of them.
Grammar and spell checker. Grammarly, Hemingway, and similar tools can help you identify and rectify your content's grammar, spelling, and readability issues. These tools are essential because content quality affects user experience.
Analytics tools. This type of software will help you track the performance of your site content before and after the content review. Google Analytics can help you gather insights into user behavior, traffic sources, and content performance. Hotjar, Crazy Egg, and similar tools, meanwhile, can provide heatmaps, session recordings, and other insights into how users interact with your B2B website's content.

Those tools will allow you to analyze your content's performance from multiple angles. Together, they can give you valuable insights into how you can improve your overall content strategy.

2. Create a sitemap of content assets

A content sitemap is a graphic summary or outline of all the content you have produced. That may include case studies, videos, infographics, whitepapers, and blog posts, among other content assets.

A sitemap helps you classify all of those resources and can help you plan your website's structure for optimal user experience.

Here's an example of a sitemap:

The first step in creating a content sitemap is to identify and organize your content's components.

You or your review team should assess all the current material on your website, including webpages, blog posts, photos, videos, and downloadable files.

Then, as part of your website content review, make a list of core parts or top-level pages that encapsulate your various content types—for instance, your Home, About Us, Pricing, Blog, FAQ, and Contact Us.

Under each primary section, define the subsections or subcategories of content. For instance, under Products/Services, you might have various product categories or service offerings.

Similarly, for each subsection, identify the distinct content assets, which may include specific webpages, blog posts, videos, downloadable resources, etc. Include relevant details, such as titles, descriptions, and URLs.

Organize everything in a hierarchical framework, with primary parts at the top and subcategories and individual content elements nested underneath.

You can use sitemap generators for this task, such as XML Sitemaps.com, Slickplan.com, and Octopus.do. You can also use mind-mapping software, diagramming tools, or even a simple spreadsheet.

Once you have your sitemap, you can better visualize the different topic clusters on your website and the areas that require improvement. You can also identify gaps or inconsistencies in your material. For instance, you may notice missing pages that should exist to meet informative or navigational requirements. Similarly, you may discover duplicate content that should be removed.

Use your sitemap to evaluate each page's quality and relevancy. Decide whether pages should be updated, consolidated, or removed depending on what they contribute to your objectives.

3. Review content's accompanying images

Images play a crucial role in enhancing the overall user experience and engagement on a website.

They break up long pieces of content, making them more visually appealing and ensuring they convey information more effectively. Moreover, high-quality and properly optimized images can improve the website's performance in SERPs.

Images, used the right way and combined with fastest available Web hosting, can enhance the user experience, lower bounce rates, and increase conversions.

Accordingly, you or your content team should examine each image to ensure it meets desired quality standards. For example, the standard website background image size is 72ppi (pixels per inch) and should be no more than 20MB.

In addition, review image alt texts and make sure they're optimized with relevant keywords.

Also, ensure the style, format, and tone of the images are consistent with your website's branding guidelines so that you maintain a cohesive and professional appearance.

Evaluate, as well, whether each image effectively supports the corresponding content and contributes to the communicated business message.

Finally, verify that all images are properly licensed for use on your website and comply with copyright laws.

4. Fix issues right away

Various issues can come up during a website content audit—such as problems with content clarity or coherence, inconsistencies in messaging or tone, inaccuracies or outdated information, and a lack of supporting evidence or examples.

These issues affect your site content's quality and credibility. They can also make it difficult for potential clients to grasp the intended message or take the necessary action. Therefore, you must thoroughly review and address such issues to ensure your content is accurate and clear for the people you're trying to reach.

To execute your content assessment action plan...

Prioritize content issues based on their severity and impact on the user experience, credibility, and compliance. Based on that assessment, you might decide to delete a duplicate blog post first before creating an entirely new one, for example.
Replace outdated content. You might need to do more research, double-check your sources, and talk to subject-matter experts. Also, anticipate what potential clients might ask and give them timely responses. Include any missing information.
Swap out low-quality or irrelevant graphics with high-quality photographs, videos, or other visual components consistent with the website's identity and message.

You or your content reviewers should revise content to correct misspellings, grammatical errors, and awkward wording. Consider using tools like Grammarly or, if necessary, consult professional editors to ensure high-quality content.

Verify that all the pages and sections of the website have the same style, tone, terminology, and formatting.

Finally, ensure you implement SEO best-practices related to content to increase exposure and organic search ranking. As part of your regular reviews, include the right keywords, meta titles and meta descriptions, headings, and other on-page SEO elements to make your site content more search engine-friendly.

meta description best practices

Conclusion

Reviewing the material on your website is crucial for improving your online footprint and profile, and ensuring it fits your business goals.

Gather the right tools for your site review, create a sitemap, and review your images. Then quickly fix the issues you find.

With effective content reviews, businesses can improve the user experience, their own trustworthiness, and the general performance of their website. They can also rank higher in search engines.

Ultimately, a content review can ensure you generate more site visitors and engage them. That can, in turn, translate to more customers for you.