Technical content audits help you make sure your technical documents, like user manuals, help guides, and knowledge articles, are accurate, available, and useful. A technical content audit checks all existing content to find any errors, outdated information, and areas that need improvement.
First, we gather all the technical documents. This sounds much easier than it is usually because most companies have content scattered all over their intranet.
Next, we check each document for accuracy, relevance, completeness, and consistency. Accuracy means the information is correct. Relevance means the content is useful for the audience. Completeness ensures that all necessary topics are covered. Consistency checks if the style is uniform across all documents. Hint: It usually isn’t any of these things.
SEO optimization can be important in the audit. We check each document for keywords, meta descriptions, headings, and internal links, if appropriate for that content. Good SEO practices help the content rank higher in search engine results, making it easier for people to find.
We also gather feedback from users and stakeholders, as well as dig into any analytics available for the content. This feedback shows what needs to be improved based on the experiences of those who use the content regularly.
Finally, we create an action plan to address the issues found in the audit. This may include updating old information, rewriting unclear sections, adding new content, and improving SEO. It may include retiring existing content.