Carnegie Mellon University
CMU Web

A service provided by the University CMS Team

CMU Web  ›  Best Practices  ›  Search Engine Optimization  ›  Auditing and Updating Website Content

Auditing and Updating Website Content

Regularly auditing and refreshing your website content is essential to providing a high-quality, up-to-date digital experience. Carnegie Mellon University is committed to maintaining websites that are accurate, accessible, and engaging. By proactively reviewing your pages and acting on data insights, you ensure that visitors find relevant information and have a positive web experience.

Why Do Regular Audits and Updates Matter?

Keeping your site content fresh and accurate isn’t just housekeeping – it directly impacts your site’s effectiveness and reputation. Outdated information or broken pages can frustrate users and hurt credibility, while well-maintained pages build trust. From an SEO perspective, search engines favor sites that are active and relevant; consistently updated content can help maintain or boost your search rankings.

Regular audits also ensure your site meets accessibility standards and university policies, so more users can benefit from your content. Periodic reviews let you catch issues, ensure content is aligned with current goals, and continuously improve the user experience.

How Frequently Should You Audit and Update Your Pages?

How often you need to review and update your pages depends on the type of content, but as a rule of thumb, every page should be reviewed at least once a year. Mission-critical pages should be reviewed and then updated far more often.

Most Common Types of Pages

  • School/College Homepages – Monthly
  • Departmental Homepages – Quarterly
  • Institute/Initiative Homepages – Quarterly
  • Main Menu Pages – Review Quarterly, Update Bi-Annually
  • Side Menu/Inner Pages – Review Bi-Annually. Update 5–10 Bi-Annually
  • News/Press Pages – Review Annually. Update outdated links, remove pages as necessary
  • Event Pages – Review Annually. Remove past events as necessary

These frequencies are guidelines for best practice, but always use judgment. If a page contains time-sensitive content (application deadlines, event details), update it immediately when information changes. And if analytics show a heavily trafficked page (like an admissions FAQ) is getting stale, don’t wait for a scheduled review—update it proactively.

Using The Rales Fellowship as an example, best practice indicates to update the main Rales page quarterly, the main menu pages (About, Admission, and Our Fellows) should be updated bi-annually, and the remaining pages should be reviewed annually.

Where do I start in a content audit review?

1. Start with Google Analytics

A good place to start with an audit is in Analytics. Look at overall page performance using filters for a period of time. Use compare metrics (found as an option within the date range selector on the left of the screen) to get a detailed view of what content has improved, declined, or stayed the same.

In most instances, we want traffic to increase. So using the Page report within Analytics, see if traffic has increased over a period of time. If so, great! Keep doing what you’re doing.
If results are flat or have decreased, look for reasons why. Did you update any content? It may have had a negative impact. Did you not update content at all? If so, the content is likely now considered stale.

  • Use Google Analytics to identify top-performing and underperforming pages.
  • Use filters and comparison tools to assess trends.
  • Check engagement metrics like page views and average time on page.
  • Look for flat or declining traffic as a signal for content improvement.
  • If you've tracked changes over time, compare performance before and after edits to evaluate effectiveness.

Have your pages crawled

Request a Screaming Frog Site Crawl. Compare to how things look within your CMS. Use your site crawl data to look for the following:<

  • Identify broken links (especially in navigation).
  • Detect orphaned pages (pages not linked from anywhere).
  • Discover duplicate pages or outdated content.

Use Siteimprove for Quick Wins

CMU’s instance of Siteimprove, which is freely available for our domain, can help you:

  • Spot accessibility issues.
  • Flag broken links.
  • Prioritize SEO and quality assurance updates.

Review Pages in Your CMS (Drupal, Cascade, or elsewhere)

Check for:

  • Orphaned pages not caught in crawl tools.
  • Duplicate or outdated versions of existing content.
  • Missing or incorrect metadata, images, or components.