For ten years, companies lived under the imperative of the feed. They had to keep the algorithms supplied, stay visible, publish to exist. That race left behind a liability that few organisations have ever recorded on their balance sheet: editorial debt.
You recognise it by signs everyone has come across: orphan pages no longer linked to anything else on the site, contradictory messages piled up by teams that do not talk to one another, a tone that shifts with every new hire, out-of-date content that stays online and blurs what the brand says about itself, and yesterday’s promises contradicting today’s.
What is editorial debt?
Editorial debt is the cumulative cost of having no editorial system. It grows with every piece of content produced outside a framework. It is paid every month, in production time, in rounds of approval and in inconsistencies that have to be fixed one by one.
The metaphor comes from software. In 1992, the developer Ward Cunningham compared shipping first-time code to going into debt: a little debt speeds development, provided it is paid back promptly with a rewrite; the danger starts when it is not, because every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest. Content works the same way. An article published without a template, a page launched without deciding which search query it answers, a campaign that invents its own vocabulary: each saves time on the day, then costs something every time it has to be found, corrected or explained.
Three tiers of debt
We distinguish three tiers of debt, because they are not paid back in the same way.
- Content debt is operational: content that is out of date, badly structured or cut off from any reading path. It is dealt with piece by piece.
- Editorial debt comes from having no system: without rules, templates or anyone to make the call, every new piece adds its share of inconsistency.
- Systemic editorial debt affects the whole system: the editorial remit, governance and the body of content drift together. Fixing individual pieces is no longer enough.
Too much content is only the symptom
Many executives diagnose a problem of volume: “We produce too much; we need to cut back.” The remedy that follows, publishing less, brings relief for a few weeks; then the debt starts growing again, because its cause lies elsewhere: in a lack of architecture, which leaves a body of content with no common logic and nobody to decide what goes in and what comes out.
An organisation can publish little and still carry heavy debt, if each of its few pieces invents its own terms. Another can publish a great deal without going into debt, if every piece finds its place in a structure that already exists. Volume worsens a debt that the lack of structure created.
Generative AI speeds up the borrowing
For a long time, scarcity sat on the production side. Few companies had the means to produce content in quantity, and those that could enjoyed an advantage. Generative AI has removed that barrier: volume is now within reach of any team.
Scarcity has moved to structure, consistency and governance, in other words to the ability to turn an expense into an asset. An organisation that plugs AI into a production chain with no system behind it produces debt, and faster than before.
What editorial debt looks like: two documented cases
On our own website
In September 2026, we reviewed the internal links on wearethewords.com that carried the anchor text “calendrier éditorial” (editorial calendar). Sixteen led to an old overview page that received just two clicks in a year. Ten led to another page that received none. Only six led to the page that covers the subject in depth, our article on the editorial calendar.
The same review showed that the highest-ranking piece of content for “calendrier éditorial pdf” (editorial calendar pdf) was an old downloadable booklet, in position 1.95 with 19 clicks over the year. It still carried the agency’s former tagline and a positioning we have since moved away from. Nobody had decided to keep it at the top; nobody had decided to take it down.
Each of these situations goes back to a decision nobody took at the time of publishing: which page to link to, when to retire a piece, which page should own which term. That is how debt accumulates, and why it is rarely visible from the inside.
MGDIS: 602 keywords reduced to 247
A software company for the public sector (local authorities, central government, healthcare institutions), MGDIS offered several solutions, each with its own identity, its own messaging and its own keywords, all competing with one another, with nobody arbitrating across the range. During our work together, the SEO phase led the team to clean up its keyword list: 602 keywords at the start, 247 kept, organised by solution, by service and by search intent.
Simona Vasile, Marketing Director at MGDIS, sums up the cost of repayment: “It was very tedious, but it was necessary, and we have the sense of a job done.” You settle the debt by deciding, one term at a time, what deserves to stay.
From expense to asset
Most organisations treat content as an expense. They pay for writers, an agency and tools, and the cost disappears into the year’s marketing budget, as a campaign’s does.
Editorial engineering sets out to treat content as an intangible asset, on a par with a registered trademark or a customer base. An asset produces value over time, can be measured, resists copying and can be passed on. The question itself changes. Before commissioning new pieces, you try to get more out of the content that already exists. Measurement follows: alongside the return on a campaign comes the return on attention, on content and on effort.
| Dimension | Content as an expense | Content as an asset |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Produce volume | Draw value from what exists |
| Horizon | The campaign | The system |
| Measurement | Traffic, leads, conversions | Return on attention, on content and on effort |
| Accounting | Marketing expense | Intangible investment |
| Value | Fades with the campaign | Builds up year after year |
| Advantage | None: anything can be copied | Lasting: a system is hard to copy |
The rule fits in two sentences. An editorial system is paid for once. Editorial debt is paid every month.
Paying the debt back: editorial engineering
A tent goes up quickly and moves easily, but stands up to neither wind nor rain. A cathedral means digging foundations before laying the first stone; in return, it lasts for centuries and becomes a landmark. For ten years, companies pitched tents: short-lived campaigns, disposable content, messages that changed with every trend.
Editorial engineering is the discipline that designs the architecture in which a brand’s voice can unfold without falling apart. It covers the whole editorial system (its language, roles and governance), which makes it broader than content engineering, the term English generally reserves for structured-content work. It pays the debt back in an order that is not up for debate: you do not raise the walls before the foundations are poured.
First level: clarity
In a complex system, vagueness is the main source of cost. If the offer is poorly defined, every piece of content amplifies the confusion. If teams lack a common language, every exchange becomes a negotiation.
The work therefore starts with the company’s language. What does the word “innovation” mean to R&D, to marketing, to the client? As long as those three meanings coexist unreconciled, each piece of content picks one at random, and the debt grows. This work involves power: imposing a vocabulary means imposing a way of seeing, and that provokes resistance which has to be addressed rather than ignored.
This is what the Clarity engagement delivers: a reworded promise, tested in the field, a documented brand voice, and a message library every team can use. The method has been proven across 195 companies.
Second level: the system
Once the voice is defined, it has to be set in motion. This is where the ad hoc approach most often fails: the intentions are good, but nothing connects them to day-to-day production.
The system answers precise questions. How does an idea become a piece of content? Who approves it, and on the basis of what data? Where do the signals get lost? Editorial engineering maps that chain, sets the roles and rituals, and creates the templates that save the team from reinventing everything for each piece. Together, these make up what we call a Content Operating System.
The Growth engagement puts it in place in 90 days. It aims for three effects: nobody asks who signs off on what any more; a piece of content goes from brief to publication with no intermediate decision point; content you published months ago generates enquiries with no further investment.
Third level: governance
When the system is running, another risk appears: you produce because the machine allows it, and stop asking why. Editorial governance sets the rules, roles and approvals that let an organisation coordinate its voice at scale without leaving every call to individual judgement.
At this level, a brand that is already consistent becomes a reference point in its field. What we call editorial sovereignty is the ability to keep control of your voice without depending on tools, trends or suppliers. This is the ground covered by the Elite engagement.
Machines for the structure, people for the voice
With generative AI, the temptation to hand thinking over to the tool is strong. AI is an excellent bricklayer and a poor architect: it lays bricks at great speed without deciding what the building should say.
So our division of labour is simple. Tools and data serve the structure, by auditing, tagging, organising and measuring. Human intelligence serves the voice, through nuance, judgement and relationships. People often fear that a system will stifle the voice. Well designed, it spares teams the rounds of approval and gives them back the time to think about what they write.
Measuring your editorial debt
A first test takes an hour. Pick the last ten pieces of content you published and count how many are cited, reused or revived elsewhere in your set-up: a link from another page, a mention in a newsletter, an argument used by the sales team. A piece that nothing reuses is an expense that goes nowhere.
Beyond that, debt is measured through an editorial audit, which reads the body of content as a system, starting from a complete content inventory. The inventory reveals the orphan pages, the duplicates and the terms that two pages are competing for; the audit sets the order in which to tackle them.
Frequently asked questions about editorial debt
How can you tell whether your organisation carries editorial debt?
Three signs are enough to suspect editorial debt: content no longer linked to the rest of the site, pages competing for the same term in search engines, and older content still carrying messaging the brand has moved away from. As a first check, take the last ten pieces you published and count how many are cited, reused or revived elsewhere in your set-up. Editorial debt is the cumulative cost of having no system: every piece published outside a framework, with no template, no assigned term and no retirement rule, adds a little to it.
What is the difference between editorial debt and content debt?
Content debt is operational. It covers content that is out of date, badly structured or cut off from any reading path, and it is dealt with piece by piece. Editorial debt comes from having no system to produce that content: as long as it is left untreated, every piece that gets fixed is replaced by another with the same problems.
How long does it take to pay back editorial debt?
It depends on which tier the debt sits at. Content debt is handled in batches, at the pace of the inventory. Editorial debt requires establishing clarity first, then putting the system in place: the Clarity engagement runs for 6 to 12 weeks, depending on the size of the team and the scope under review; the Growth engagement runs for 90 days. Systemic editorial debt also requires governance, which takes hold over time.
Paying back your debt with us
Three ways in, following the order of repayment:
- Clarity: clarify your offer and your language before producing anything more.
- Growth: put in place the system that stops the debt from building up again.
- Elite: govern a voice that sets the standard.
To discuss your situation, book a call.