What is a content health check? Definition, criteria and how to run one

Most organisations have far more content than they think, and far less of it in good shape than they'd like. A health check is how you find out where you stand – calmly, criterion by criterion – and what to do about it.

How is a content health check different from a content audit?

A content audit is typically a one-off stocktake: what content exists, what it's for, and broad decisions to keep, update or remove it. A content health check goes deeper on quality – scoring each piece against explicit criteria – and works best as a repeated practice rather than a single event.

The two overlap, and the terms are often used loosely. A useful way to keep them straight:

Content inventory – what do we have? A list of your content: URLs, titles, owners, dates. The raw material for everything else.
Content audit – what should we do with it? A review of the inventory, usually ending in keep / improve / consolidate / remove decisions.
Content health check – how good is it, and is it getting better? A criteria-based quality assessment, scored and repeatable, so you can track improvement over time.

An audit gives you a snapshot. A health check gives you a baseline, and then a trend line.

What does a content health check cover?

A thorough health check assesses every dimension of quality that affects whether content serves its readers: from mechanical basics like spelling and structure to harder questions like whether a page is convincing, on-brand and strategically worthwhile.

Our Content Health Framework uses fifteen criteria. Whatever framework you use, it should cover this ground:

Accessible – can everyone consume it, regardless of ability or context?
Actionable – does it give readers a clear, relevant next step?
Comprehensive – does it cover what readers reasonably expect, without padding?
Convincing – are claims supported by evidence and credible sources?
Engaging – does it hold attention rather than merely occupy space?
Error-free – is it free of spelling, grammar and factual mistakes?
Meaningful – does it have a clear point a reader could summarise afterwards?
On-brand – does it sound like you, consistently?
Readable – is the language right for the audience?
Shareable – does it contain ideas worth passing on?
Strategic – does it serve both reader needs and organisational goals?
Structured – do headings and flow help people scan and understand?
Succinct – could it deliver the same value in fewer words?
Up-to-date – does it reflect current facts, terminology and practice?
Useful – does it actually help someone do or decide something?

Each criterion is defined in detail – why it matters, how it's evaluated and what good looks like – in the framework.

How do you run a content health check?

Build an inventory, choose your criteria, score a representative sample of content against them, prioritise fixes by impact, then re-check on a regular cadence. You can do this manually with a spreadsheet, or use a tool to assess at scale.

The manual process:

Build the inventory. Crawl your site (or export from your CMS) to list every page worth assessing. Note URL, title, owner and last-updated date.
Choose your criteria. Use the fifteen above, or a subset. The discipline matters more than the exact list, but write down what each criterion means before you start scoring, or your scores won't be comparable.
Score a sample. For a large estate, start with your most-visited and most strategically important pages. Score each against each criterion on a consistent scale (we use five levels). Be tough; charitable scoring defeats the purpose.
Prioritise. Cross-reference low scores with high importance. A weak page nobody visits can wait. A weak page on your money path can't.
Fix, then re-check. Make the improvements, and put a date in the diary to score again. Content decays: strategy shifts, facts age, links rot. One pass is a clean-up; a cadence is a practice.

Two people scoring the same page will disagree, scoring 200 pages by hand takes weeks, and consistency drifts as fatigue sets in. That's the limitation of the manual route, and it's fine for a first pass on a small site.

Should you use a consultant or a tool?

It depends on what you need. A consultant brings judgement, context and a fresh pair of eyes, and suits a one-off strategic review. A tool brings consistency, scale and repeatability, and suits ongoing monitoring of a larger content estate. Many organisations sensibly use both.

A skilled human reviewer will catch things no automated system will: organisational politics baked into a page, a tone that's technically fine but subtly wrong for a moment. If your estate is small and your need is a one-time expert opinion, a consultant review is a good investment.

Where humans struggle is scale and consistency: hundreds of pages, scored the same way, re-scored quarterly. That's the job Content Health Check was built for: AI-assisted assessment against all fifteen criteria, with page-level detail and an estate-wide view that tracks change over time.

Frequently asked questions

What does a full content health check include?

A full check includes a content inventory, quality scores for each piece against defined criteria, specific recommendations per page, and an estate-wide summary showing patterns and priorities. Good ones also establish a baseline so you can measure improvement at the next check.

How often should you run a content health check?

Quarterly is a sensible default for most organisations; high-velocity publishers may check monthly, smaller sites twice a year. The key is regularity: content decays continuously, so a one-off check captures a moment while a cadence captures a direction.

What's the difference between content health and content performance?

Performance metrics – clicks, views, time on page – tell you what happened. Content health tells you whether the content itself is any good: accurate, readable, useful, on-brand. Healthy content tends to perform; performance data alone can't tell you why something underperforms or how to fix it.

How many pages should a health check assess?

All of them, ideally: problems hide in the pages nobody looks at. Practically, start with your highest-traffic and most strategically important pages, then expand. Automated assessment makes whole-estate checks feasible where manual review forces sampling.

Do you need brand guidelines before running a health check?

No, but they help. Criteria like readability, accuracy and structure can be assessed without them. Judging whether content is on-brand requires a reference point: a voice and style guide. If you don't have one, Voice, Tone and Style can help you build one.