How Content Health Check works

Content Health Check starts by surveying your whole site, so you can see exactly what you have. It then helps choose the pages that matter most for a closer look.

Add your website

Add your website’s address on the Dashboard. We scan the site to find its pages, which takes a minute or two. We filter out addresses that aren’t pages, such as file downloads, images and log-ins.

Check the list before you go on. Add a rule to leave out anything you don’t want included. Rules apply every time we scan.

If your organisation has more than one website, add the others the same way, now or later. Your plan counts the pages across all of them.

Survey the whole site

Next, start the survey. We read every page on your websites and note what each one is, who it’s for, how long it is, how old it is and whether it has spelling mistakes. It takes about ten minutes for 500 pages and a little over an hour for 4,000. Results → Estate then shows the whole site at a glance, and the Inventory lists every page.

The survey also suggests what to do with each page: keep it, revise it or retire it. That’s especially useful when you’re planning a big change, such as a new website, or your sites need a spring clean. The survey populates your inventory, gives you an invaluable overview and helps you choose which pages to analyse in depth. If your websites have more pages than your plan covers, we survey the most important first and tell you how many are left.

Analyse the pages that matter in depth

The Inventory suggests a list to start from; analyse this list as it is, adjust it, or choose your own, and the full results arrive within 24 hours, usually much sooner.

Read your in-depth results

Each page gets an assessment and score against the 15 content health criteria, with examples from the page and how to improve it.

The tool also analyses all the findings and shows you how healthy your content is across your whole estate. It tracks content health over time too, so you can see how you’re improving and what to focus on next.

A report gives you the big picture and highlights the biggest opportunities for improvement.

Each month

On your monthly date we check everything again, so your results describe your site as it is now, not as it was when you started. Your monthly date is the day your plan started, or on Free the day you joined. The check always runs: there’s nothing to start or remember.

First we scan every website. New pages join your Inventory, and pages that have gone are marked as gone. Then we survey every page your plan covers and compare it with how it was last time:

• A page that hasn’t changed keeps its survey results. We still check the dates on it against today. If one has passed, such as an event that’s happened or a closing date that’s gone, the page is out of date, and we survey it again.
• A page that has changed is surveyed again, with a short note of what changed.
• A new page is surveyed for the first time. It isn’t added to your in-depth list: add it from the Inventory if it matters.

Then your in-depth pages. A page that hasn’t changed keeps its scores. For a page that has changed or gone out of date, we compare what it says now with what we last scored. If anything that bears on its scores has moved, we analyse it again in full, as it stands now. If not, it keeps its scores and is marked as changed with scores kept.

A page that has gone keeps its last scores for the record, and a page we couldn’t read keeps its scores until we can. In-depth results are ready within 24 hours, usually much sooner.

If your plan has no in-depth room left that month, the pages due a new analysis are held back. Their scores stand until next month’s check analyses them first, and we email you to say how many.

When the check is done, we email the project’s owner what it found: how many pages were surveyed, changed, new, gone or out of date; which in-depth pages were analysed again and which kept their scores; which pages we couldn’t read; and which have something ending in the next 14 days.

Start from the Dashboard, where What changed shows what moved and links to the pages. In the Inventory, filter by Last check for the pages that changed, went out of date or have something ending within 14 days. On Results, the score trend shows your content’s health month by month, and each page analysed again shows its scores before and after.

Your re-checks refresh on your monthly date, ready for the pages you change in the month ahead.

Re-check a page you’ve changed

When you’ve changed a page, you needn’t wait for the monthly check. Re-check it straight away: tick it in the Inventory and choose Re-check now, or use Re-check this page on its results. We fetch the page at once. If it has changed, we analyse it again in full, and it uses one of your re-checks. If it hasn’t, it’s free and keeps its results. Each page can be re-checked once a day.

Your plan’s re-checks are a tenth of its in-depth analysis: 62 a month on Medium. They refresh on your monthly date. With none left, a changed page keeps its results until the monthly check analyses it again.

Planning a big change?

If you’re planning a new website, bringing sites together or giving your content a spring clean, start from the survey. For every page it suggests whether to keep, revise or retire it, and says why:

• Keep: it’s current and doing its job.
• Revise: it’s still needed, but something on it is out of date, unclear or wrong.
• Retire: it has done its job, so take it down or redirect its address.

Results → Estate shows how many pages fall into each. In the Inventory, filter by Recommendation to work through them, a list at a time.

Much of what we suggest retiring is old news, press releases and job adverts. That follows your retention settings: news is kept for six months and job and volunteer adverts for three. Blog posts are checked after a year and retired after three; personal stories are checked after two years and retired after five. Change any of these on Dashboard → Lists and rules, along with the page types, topics and audience segments the survey sorts your pages into. Our suggestion stays beside your choice.

The monthly check keeps the picture up to date as pages come and go, so you can see the site getting healthier as the work goes on.

Your plan

Your plan is set by the number of pages across all your websites. Medium, for example, covers up to 2,500 pages. Each month it:

• surveys all of them;
• analyses up to 625 in depth and keeps those results up to date;
• re-checks up to 62 pages you’ve changed.

The Dashboard shows how much of your plan you’re using. Your monthly date is the day your plan started, or on Free the day you joined: the monthly check runs then, and your re-checks refresh.

If your websites grow beyond your plan, we survey the most important pages first and tell you how many are left out. Move up a plan on the Billing page whenever you like: it takes effect straight away. Moving down takes effect at the end of the period you’ve paid for.

A few more things

People. Medium is for three people. People who only need to read the results can view them free, as many as you like, and don’t take a seat. Invite people on Account → People, or give someone one project’s results from that project’s Dashboard.

Clients. Give each client a project, with its own brand and strategy, and share its results with them free. On Medium and above, you can also give each client its own organisation, with 2 people of their own, so they can work in it themselves. Their websites use your plan.

Brand and strategy. Tell us how you sound, who you’re writing for and what you’re trying to achieve, on Dashboard → Brand and strategy. The in-depth analysis then judges each page against them too: those are the on-brand and strategic criteria.

Pages we couldn’t read. Some pages can’t be read: not found, blocked, or with no readable text. Results → Estate lists them, and we try them again at each monthly check.