Editorial audit: diagnosing and improving your content assets

In September 2026 we scrutinised our own website. Three of its pages split the subjects of editorial audit and content audit between them. The most visible appeared 6,758 times in Google’s results over a year and drew two clicks. Another does not show up when people search for “audit éditorial” (editorial audit), the very term in its own address.

The analysis first settled a question we had left open: should these pages be merged? No. Each already owns its query. Above all, it showed us what we had not been looking at: one page seen but never chosen, another missing from the results for the term it displays. That is what an editorial audit is for. It establishes what your body of content really says, to whom, and to what effect, before you decide what to rebuild, optimise or govern.

What is an editorial audit?

An editorial audit is a structured diagnosis of a body of content. Where an SEO audit checks the technical set-up and the keywords page by page, an editorial audit reads the whole: what you say, to whom, how, and to what effect.

It examines four dimensions:

• Inventory: what you actually own (pages, articles, resources, documents) and how it is all organised.
• Structure: the themes and how they group together, the information architecture, and the queries each page targets.
• Performance: what each piece produces in traffic, in enquiries, and in visibility on search engines and AI assistants.
• Alignment: the gap between what your content says and what your brand promises its audiences.

Editorial audit, content audit, SEO audit

The three overlap, but they do not answer the same question.

A content audit often supplies the raw material: it scores pieces one by one, and the editorial audit starts from those scores to judge the whole.

How AI reads your content

An audit carried out today also checks that your content can be read by answer engines and conversational assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini): an explicit structure, terms defined when they first appear, direct answers to questions, metadata filled in.

The method in four steps

We run the audit in four stages. Each one produces a deliverable that feeds the next.

Step 1: take stock of your content assets

We start by drawing up a complete list of what exists:

• every piece of content, whether pages, articles, white papers, videos or infographics;
• its type, its creation date and its status (live, obsolete, due for an update);
• the subjects covered twice, and those not covered at all;
• where each piece sits, and whether a reader can find it.

Deliverable: an annotated content inventory, the basis for every step that follows.

Step 2: read the structure

Next we look at how the pieces relate to one another:

• the main themes and their sub-themes;
• orphan content, which nothing connects to the rest of the site;
• redundancy, where several pieces say the same thing;
• the queries each page targets, and those that two pages compete for;
• the pieces worth adapting into other formats through upcycling.

Two pages targeting the same query compete against each other in Google. On our own site, this step showed that each of our three audit pages already owned a French query of its own: “audit éditorial” (editorial audit) for the first, “audit de contenu” (content audit) for the second, and “analyse de la performance éditoriale par IA” (AI-based analysis of editorial performance) for the third. There was no case for the merger we had been considering.

Deliverable: a query map, showing which page targets which term and where two pages compete.

Step 3: measure what the content produces

Then we measure the real effect of each piece:

• organic traffic: which pieces attract readers, and which stay invisible;
• conversions: which pieces trigger enquiries;
• rankings: which queries you rank for, and where there is room to improve;
• engagement: time spent, citations, inbound links;
• legibility to AI: does the structure let an answer engine extract the content without distorting it?

Before reading those figures, you have to check what they measure. At a public institute we work with, the IT department cleaned up the server logs over the summer of 2026: roughly half of all PDF downloads turned out to come from AI crawlers. The indicator the institute had tracked for twenty years lost half its volume. An audit that took it at face value would have judged the content on readings that never happened.

Deliverable: a performance record for each piece, built on verified indicators.

Step 4: decide and prioritise

To sort the content, we score each piece from 1 to 3 on three pillars (strategic, narrative, operational). This is the 3D Content Score. A total of 3, the lowest possible, marks a piece to archive or to reposition thoroughly; 4 to 6, a piece to consolidate; 7 to 9, a piece to build on.

The resulting roadmap sets out the actions and their order of priority:

• the pieces to create, where an expected subject is missing;
• the pieces to update, because they are out of date or produce nothing;
• the pieces to merge or delete, with their redirects;
• the pieces to adapt into other formats;
• the quick fixes, often a title or a meta description;
• the editorial governance rules that stop duplicates and out-of-date content from coming back.

What the audit leaves in your hands

At the end of the audit, you receive:

• an annotated inventory of your content;
• a query map: which page targets which term, and where two pages compete;
• the score of each piece and the action that follows from it;
• a prioritised roadmap;
• governance rules: who publishes, who approves, who archives.

These deliverables change how you decide. On our site, it was the query map that ruled out the merger we had been considering for our three audit pages. Choices are then made from a list rather than on instinct, and a new piece of content finds its place in a structure that already exists instead of opening yet another section.

A case in point: the OFDT

The Observatoire français des drogues et des tendances addictives (OFDT), France’s national monitoring centre for drugs and addictive behaviours, asked us to carry out an editorial and usability audit of its website and to define its editorial governance.

The site held hundreds of pieces of content, organised in an architecture that had become hard to follow. It addressed audiences with very different expectations: researchers, professionals and the general public. The audit covered the entire body of content. It led to a semantic restructuring of the site and to editorial governance rules.

With audiences that far apart, every piece of content calls for a decision about who it is for. Until that choice is made, the same document tries to speak to the researcher and to the general public, and is fully legible to neither. The audit is what makes those decisions possible.

Frequently asked questions about editorial audits

What is the difference between an editorial audit and an SEO audit?

An SEO audit starts from the technical side: crawling, indexing, keywords, links. An editorial audit starts from meaning: what the body of content says, to whom, and to what effect. The two complement each other, in this order: the editorial audit first, for the overall diagnosis, then the SEO audit on the pieces the editorial audit has flagged as priorities.

How long does an editorial audit take?

It depends on the volume of content and the scope agreed. The inventory alone takes one to two days per hundred pieces, provided Search Console and analytics data are available. At WeAreTheWords, the audit is the opening phase of two separate engagements. The Clarity engagement runs for six to twelve weeks, depending on the size of the team and the scope under review. The Growth engagement runs for 90 days, audit included. In both cases the audit is carried out in stages, so that you can act without waiting for the final report.

Should you run an editorial audit before a website redesign?

Yes, it is the best time to run one. A redesign forces a decision on every piece of content: migrate it, merge it or delete it. Without an audit, those decisions are taken page by page, under pressure from the project schedule. Redirects in particular are prepared from the inventory: a piece deleted without a redirect takes the rankings it had earned with it.

Where to start

Two ways in:

• Clarity: the audit opens the engagement, which reframes your promise and documents your brand voice.
• Growth: the audit of your editorial chain opens a 90-day engagement devoted to modelling that chain (roles, rituals, tools, indicators, content).

To discuss your situation, book a call.