Your Intranet Needs a Content Audit

We work with hundreds of organizations of all sizes, and one thing remains true for nearly all of them, and probably for you: content audits matter.

Internal Comms tools and technology evolve faster every year, but teams that stay grounded in the fundamentals will continue to get the most out of them.

We hope you find value digging into the details in this guide, but if you want a quick TL;DR, here it is:

1. Define the purpose and scope
2. Build your content audit team
3. Create a content inventory
4. Evaluate relevance & performance
5. Keep, Update, Remove
6. Make life easier with maintenance

Why Intranet Content Audits Matter

Information overload is a constant challenge for most workplaces. Back in 2012, a McKinsey Global Institute study found employees spend up to 20% of their time searching for information. Two decades later, you might think organizations found a way past this, but in a much more recent academic study, Nakash et. al. found the same problem persists, and might even be getting worse.

If employees are struggling to find what they need in order to be productive, it follows that any time or effort spent making knowledge easier to access should produce a strong ROI.

That’s where regular content audits come in. They ensure your intranet (or whatever system of record you use) is always a valuable resource where employees can find what they need quickly, rather than a dumping ground nobody’s willing to sift through.

The efficiency gains alone make the effort worthwhile, but that’s just a fraction of full value of an intranet content audit. Intranet content audits also often result in:

• Improved findability: Audits help everyone find information faster by clearing out clutter and organizing content in a way that feels intuitive to the average user.
• Increased alignment: Accessible, relevant, and clear information leads to better alignment across the organization.
• Better governance: Audits support intranet governance by identifying governance issues and clarifying ownership responsibilities

But isn’t AI supposed to fix this?‍

AI can be powerful and transformative, but it’s not magic. If you use LLMs at work, you know they rely on accurate, well-structured primary data to perform their best (and not give incorrect or misleading answers).

AI won’t fix an intranet full of outdated or incorrect information. Intranet content audits will.

So, let’s get started on one. Whether this is your first time, or you’ve done it before, expect to walk away feeling prepared to kick off the best content audit you’ve ever run.

Step 1: Define the purpose and scope

Scoping your audit is step one because an improper scope can turn the whole project upside-down. In some cases, a broad scope is necessary, but not every content audit needs to be a full top-to-bottom ordeal.

Audits can seem unnecessarily daunting because they’re poorly scoped. That daunting-looking chunk of work gets put off, accumulates debt, and then it grows into something daunting.

Let’s not do that to ourselves.

Here are some common audit goals:

• Content cleanup: Removing outdated, inaccurate, or duplicative content
• Migration preparation: Getting ready to move to a new platform
• Compliance review: Ensuring all content meets regulatory requirements
• User experience (UX) improvement: Making content more findable and usable

Decide which areas of your organizational knowledge to include, and what types of content to evaluate. You might focus on HR policies, news archives, or team pages. Then scope your intranet content audit based on that.

Set realistic timelines based on your scope, and budget that time. Smaller content audits may take a few days, and larger ones could require a week or longer.

To help get you started, we built a content audit scope calculator for you:

Step 2: Build your content audit team

Unless it’s a small audit in an area where you’re the subject matter expert, don’t try to go it alone. Having people from different parts of your organization on your audit team will help you see the full picture and catch things you might otherwise miss.

Depending on the environment you work in, it may be critical to have a member of your HR or legal, or other key representative included to ensure you’re staying compliant.

The size of your team should match your organization's size. Make sure you have senior leadership’s backing for the project, because their support is essential to getting the resources and interdepartmental buy-in you need to do this right.

Step 3: Create a content inventory

This is an essential work product you’ll be producing in any successful audit. It should be thorough, easy to access, and easy to update.

Find all your content

Identify all places where organizational knowledge lives. That includes your intranet, if you have one, connected document libraries, apps, and collaboration spaces.

This is a great chance to determine if key resources are living in the best, most accessible place, because important knowledge often hides in unexpected places.

Start with the obvious places like your main intranet and team pages. But don't stop there. In helping customers work through content audits, we frequently find critical knowledge hiding in Slack channels, old Asana projects, and that one Google Drive folder everyone swears they'll clean up next quarter.

Other content repositories to check:

• Document libraries and knowledge bases like Confluence, Dropbox, OneDrive, or SharePoint
• Company news archives
• Company-wide emails

This is just an example of a few common places you might find important company knowledge. Your company may have crucial knowledge hiding in any of these, or other even less likely places. Think outside the file storage box, because, unfortunately, you’ll probably find lots of critical knowledge there.

Note key details

Collect some essential details (metadata) for each item, like title, owner, creation date, last modified date, and content type. Use a content inventory spreadsheet to organize this information.

If a key piece of information doesn’t have an owner, this is your chance to make that connection. If a timely document is out of date, you can flag it for an update.

Here’s an example of what one of these spreadsheets could look like.

If you use a modern intranet like Haystack, a lot of this work is already done for you. Ownership is clearly defined, and tools like the Freshness Engine can help you automate content updates and get a big headstart on your next content audit.

Step 4: Evaluate relevance & performance

Now that you have the content cataloged, how do you separate valuable intranet content from digital clutter?

Check usage metrics

You need to know what's actually getting used and what's collecting dust. Modern intranets like Haystack have built-in analytics features that can give you lots of information about content usage and access. That data can help inform decisions about what to keep, move, or remove.

Pay attention to content that gets steady traffic and positive reactions from employees.

Don't automatically write off low-traffic pages—some information might be crucial for specific situations, even if people only need it once in a while.

Assess content value

Now that you have your objective measurements from analytics, it’s time to bring your knowledge and intuition into the mix.

Give your content a quick rating based on what matters most to your organization. Think about things like: Is this business-critical? Is it accurate and up-to-date? Can people find this information anywhere else? When you focus on quality content, you're making sure your team can actually find what they need to do their jobs well.

Spot outdated or duplicate items

The last thing you want in your digital workplace is to have content sit there and rot on the vine, and ROT doubles as a really convenient mnemonic device:

• Redundant: Multiple versions of the same policy
• Outdated: Events from previous years
• Trivial: Content with no clear business purpose

Remove the ROT from your intranet content mix to make sure everything there brings value to visitors.

Step 5: Keep, update, remove

You’ve catalogued and ranked your content and identified any ROT that might be in there. Now it’s time to take some decisive action. Having a simple framework for the action step can be really helpful for reducing your team’s mental load at this stage, especially if your content library is large. There’s always grey area, but Keep, Update, Remove as a basic framework works to help narrow your choices and bias toward action.

Keep high-value content

Did you identify some content that is current, accurate, well-used, and business-critical? Great. Keep it! Try to home in on some aspects of that content that helped it perform so well. Use what you learn to build more of that successful content.

Update or combine similar items

Consolidate related content for clarity and consistency. For example, merge multiple onboarding guides into a single, comprehensive resource.

Consistency is key. If you’ve found a format that works really well, borrow that for your other content. Consistent formatting and templates can really help improve usability.

Remove irrelevant or old content

Don’t hesitate to delete content that no longer serves a purpose. It’s not just taking up space, it’s adding noise, and might even be providing inaccurate information.

Decide between archiving (for reference) and permanent deletion. Communicate with stakeholders before removing content to avoid surprises.

Remember that some content may be important for compliance purposes, so having someone knowledgeable about these issues on your audit team is especially important at this stage.

Preventing common pitfalls

It’s pretty rare for a process like this to go perfectly smoothly, but you can increase your chances of a flawless intranet content audit by keeping an eye out for common speedbumps.

• Underestimating time requirements: If this is your first pass at running a content audit, add some padding to your time budget. It’s much better to get done early than to get done late.
• Focusing only on surface content: Surface level tidiness is important, but dusting off the top of a big tangled mess still leaves a big tangled mess underneath.
• Working in isolation: Involve content owners throughout the process. Much of the content in your catalog is going to have special importance to someone in your organization. Make sure those stakeholders are involved and informed.
• Neglecting governance: You can avoid a lot of future work by establishing content governance plans during your audit, and sticking with them after.
• One-and-done mentality: It’s a lot like cleaning house. Maintaining order over time is much easier and less stressful than waiting until things get so bad you need another gloves-on deep clean.
• Ignoring change management: Content audits fail when people resist. No mention of getting buy-in from territorial content owners or dealing with "but we've always done it this way"

Step 6: Make life easier with maintenance

Long-term intranet health depends on strong governance.

Schedule regular short-form content reviews

Conduct quarterly quick checks and annual deep dives. Use a content review calendar to stay organized and make reviews part of regular workflows.

You don’t have to go overboard with a hyper-detailed calendar outlining everything down to the last character. Even something as simple as this is better than winging it:

• January: HR policies
• April: Company news archives
• July: Team pages
• October: Next year’s events

Set Smart Ownership Policies

Assign clear content ownership and make sure you have a plan in place for when employees change roles. Weaving governance into your internal communications audit process makes it easier to keep everyone up to date with the right information.

Make use of automated tools like Haystack’s Freshness Engine help support ongoing maintenance and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Future-proof your intranet

Think strategically about your intranet’s future. Modern intranets are evolving with AI-powered search and personalization. Clean, well-structured content is essential for everyone to get the most out of these AI tools.

AI search is excellent at finding and packaging information for your users. It’s up to you to make sure the information it finds is accurate and current. Strong intranet governance and regular content audits ensure your digital workplace stays reliable, and only becomes more valuable as your organization grows.

Frequently Asked Questions about Intranet Content Audits

How long does a typical intranet content audit take to complete?

A typical intranet content audit takes between 2-6 weeks depending on your organization's size and content volume, with larger enterprises requiring more time for thorough evaluation and stakeholder coordination.

What tools can I use to automate parts of my intranet content audit?

You can use built-in analytics from an intranet platform like Haystack, content inventory tools like Screaming Frog, or specialized governance software to automate data collection and analysis during your content audit.

How do I convince stakeholders that an intranet content audit is worth the investment?

Demonstrate the business value by highlighting how content audits reduce wasted time searching for information, decrease risk from outdated policies, and improve employee experience—all factors that directly impact productivity and engagement.

Should I audit all intranet content at once or take a phased approach?

For most organizations, a phased approach focusing on high-traffic or business-critical areas first provides quicker wins and more manageable workloads than attempting to audit all intranet content simultaneously.

What's the difference between a content inventory and a content audit?

A content inventory is simply a catalog of what exists on your intranet, while a content audit involves evaluating that content for quality, relevance, and performance to make strategic decisions about what to keep, update, or remove.