Higher Education Website Content Audit Agency for Colleges and Universities

A college brand will rise or fall based on its ability to curate and sustain great content. Other things matter, but nothing matters like content. Great content will galvanize prospects, faculty, staff, alumni, donors and partners to take action. Great content will grow enrollment, endowment and reputation. Great content will liberate prosperity by tapping unrealized energies and potential.

Goals of Website Content Audit

A thorough website content audit will help realize four key goals:

1. Alignment – with the college brand and institutional strategic priorities
2. Effectiveness – ensuring content accuracy, relevance, audience resonance and freshness
3. Performance – certifying SEO friendliness, responsiveness and accessibility
4. Creation – identifying gaps and opportunities to create fresh content

What Constitutes Content

Our wide-angle view of website content includes:

1. Visible – copy, photography, graphics, iconography, videos, infographics, interactives, and links
2. Invisible – meta-data, xml sitemap, robots.txt, 301 redirects, 404 pages
3. Intangible – responsiveness, accessibility and page speed on various devices

Elements of Website Content Audit

Our audit begins by using tools like “Dubbot” and “Siteimprove” to create content inventory. Next we evaluate the content from four perspectives:

1. Quality Audit
2. SEO Audit
3. Compliance Audit
4. Performance Audit

Let’s take a closer look at each.

Quality Audit

Universities which express, with clarity, verve and imagination why the institution attract success. To win the hearts and minds of 10+ audiences a college serves, its brand needs:

1. Content that resonates with their sensibility.
2. Compelling and concise program pages.
3. Story-driven videos both impeccably orchestrated and carefully paced.
4. Headlines aimed at rifling through message clutter.
5. Photos of such rare compositional quality and emotional impact that even the busiest or most distracted user drops into the moment.
6. Honest stories.
7. Content without misspellings.

Everyone will argue for “getting by” with substandard content. Our litmus test of great content is this: will a college brand voice awaken the imagination of its audiences to take action? 

SEO Audit

Google page one is destiny. Colleges and universities that pursue and achieve top organic Google rankings using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. The best prospects prefer to “discover” the college of their choice through “accidental finds” on Google page one and via word-of-mouth on social media. They out-convert paid advertising leads by three-folds (which, in turn, out-convert purchased names by three-folds).

Our SEO Audit includes:

1. Meta-data analysis – looking for completion, relevance and keyword stuffing
2. Links analysis – identifying broken or working links within the website and outbound links
3. Robots.txt file analysis – ensuring maximum content visibility and data protection, and to minimum duplicate content penalties
4. XML sitemap – guiding search engine bots to pick up critical site pages
5. 301 redirects analysis – ensuring they are minimized
6. 404 analysis – certifying that it is user-friendly

Compliance Audit

Our thorough compliance audit enhances user trust and reduces legal risk. It ensures that content meets WCAG AA 2.2 standards, and legal policies such as privacy, title IX, accessibility, data protection and consumer information are all readily reachable. It validates that content meets both institutional brand and writing guidelines.

Performance Audit

Our performance audit measures various metrics to ensure that website loads quickly and performs across popular devices and browsers. We check to see if all links are working. We confirm that content is reachable with a minimum number of clicks, and through sitemap and site search.

If you are seeking an higher education marketing to complete your website content audit, consider partnering with us.