Content Audit Template for Product Teams

Run a full audit annually and a targeted audit quarterly. A targeted audit focuses on one content area (e.g., onboarding flows) or is triggered by a specific event (product redesign, rebrand, new audience). Full audits are time-intensive, so reserve them for major strategic shifts.

For a help center with 50-100 articles, expect 2-4 hours for inventory and 4-8 hours for scoring and action planning. Larger libraries (500+ articles) may take a full sprint. The inventory step is mechanical and can be partially automated with a sitemap crawler. The evaluation step requires human judgment and cannot be rushed.

Audit in-app content. Tooltips, empty states, error messages, and onboarding copy directly impact the user experience. In-app content is often the most neglected because it lives in code files rather than a CMS, making it harder to inventory. Start with a grep of your codebase for user-facing strings.

Archive it rather than deleting it. The content is correct but serves a niche or declining use case. Move it to an archive section, remove it from primary navigation, and add a canonical redirect if the URL had traffic. If support tickets reference the topic, keep it accessible but deprioritize maintenance.

Establish a content governance process. Assign owners to every content area, set review cadences (quarterly for high-traffic content, annually for long-tail), and build content review into your product release checklist. Every feature change should trigger a content review for affected articles, tooltips, and onboarding flows.