People expect to find accurate information and working links on our site; they don’t want broken links or content that is old, incorrect or doesn’t meet their needs.
Our goal is to provide user-focused, concise information in a clear, organized way.
Keeping content fresh and accurate requires regular maintenance and review. Neglect has caused many departments/groups to have redundant, outdated or irrelevant content on their websites.
If you're responsible for your department/unit website, you must regularly review, reassess and refresh content.
Remember: Less (content) is More!
Less content:
- improves communication, findability, usability and usefulness.
- is easier to maintain.
- is easier to measure.
Webpages with excessive, irrelevant information provide the opportunity for a search engine to return the wrong result and for a user to end up on the wrong page.
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Generate a Content Audit
Contact Us for a content audit. Our office will generate a content audit for you to review your site
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Review each page, keeping in mind
Is this relevant to the audience?
- Determine who the audience is (it cannot be “everyone”) and ask: What are they looking for? What do they need? How will they use this information?
- Our website exists for the end user.
- Always keep the end user in mind when creating and posting content.
Is this the most accurate, up-to-date information available?
- Review all content, paying close attention to old events or news listings, newsletters, guides, policies, department and academic program information, faculty/staff listings, contact information, photos, video.
Is this content unique? Can it be consolidated?
- Avoid duplicating identical or similar content. It hinders search, usefulness, usability and relevance, and is harder to maintain.
- Don’t have two pages on your site with identical/almost identical content.
Can this be simplified? Is it written and structured appropriately for the web?
- Review pages for unnecessary information and wordiness.
- Keep writing clear and direct; keep paragraphs and sentences short.
- Remove words, descriptions, photos and video that don’t add value.
- Remove PDFs posted to your site and convert into webpages
Is this communicating clearly?
- Does the content meet your communication goals. If not, remove it. When content doesn’t communicate, it confuses.
Is this in an appropriate format?
- Evaluate the types of content on your site – text, video, photos, slideshows, interactive guides, PDFs, social media – and consider whether the format is appropriate for the topic and the audience.
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Clean out your OU folders
Delete all old webpages, photographs, documents and anything else you don’t or won’t need from your OU folders. Some items are visible only on the production server, so check there, too.
If you’re uncomfortable deleting information forever, create an archive document (Word/Google doc) and move the content there. It will still be accessible to you, but it will be out of the way of search and public audiences.
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Create new content
Once you have thoroughly reviewed and updated your content, create any new content you feel your audience needs.
