Key takeaways:

  • Regular content audits are important for healthcare organizations.
  • Translating data from content audits into stories is important to share wins with the C-suite.
  • Bringing an outside organization on board to perform a content audit provides a valuable outside perspective.


Author: WG Content & Stella Hart
Last updated: 02/19/24

When you are trying to determine both your organization’s marketing strategy and its return on investment, you need data — cold, hard facts that show stakeholders what’s working and what’s not. And the best way to obtain that data is by performing a content audit.
In fact, 54% of marketers conduct content audits on their marketing materials at least twice a year. That means they have seen the value of constantly reevaluating their strategy and revising it accordingly. “It’s our job to figure out, how do we marry the business need to what the target user wants to learn?” says Stella Hart, a healthcare content strategist at WG Content.

The value of content audits

Content audits look closely at your organization’s individual assets. It answers questions like:

  • Is the web content written in a way that follows best practices for healthcare web writing?
  • Is it structured so that it’s easy for the reader to scan the content?

Many organizations aren’t aware of how much content exists on their site, so a content audit is a good way to take stock of your assets. You can use your strategic plan to measure how well the content is helping you meet your goals by weeding out information that is old or outdated or that replicates content on another page.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare organizations were publishing a lot of time-sensitive content on their website. Five years later, if users find that now-outdated content on your site, they may mistakenly think it’s still accurate. That can affect their perception of your brand.

Along with refreshing your content, an audit is a great way to understand which pieces of your content are performing. Perhaps a blog post you wrote on nutrition a few years ago is still performing well, but it has no connection to your current services. A content audit will show that you should refresh the blog, for instance by adding a quote from one of your providers and linking to the provider’s profile.

Content audit storytelling for the C-suite

Content strategists dive into metrics and uncover a story — the story of user behavior, search engine optimization (SEO) and engagement metrics. But you can’t just present executives with an Excel document full of data and expect them to understand it; instead, you need to translate that data into a story.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you have learned from your hospital’s data that 90% of the women who go on a tour at your birthing center eventually deliver there. Through your website content audit, you discover that X visitors clicked on the call to action to schedule a tour, and 90% of those women showed up for their tour. That means you can calculate how many patients you gleaned from your website’s “schedule a tour” feature.

“That’s a way to tie data to dollar amounts,” says Stella. “Some people need that cold, hard data.”


The formula for content audit storytelling is simple:

  1. Identify key metrics (in this case, X visitors clicked on the website’s call to action, and 90% showed up for the tour).
  2. Connect metrics to user behavior (90% of women who tour the birthing center deliver their babies there).
  3. Build the narrative around audience insights, content gaps and opportunities (there might be a way you can make the call to action more visible, or you can specifically cross-promote it on social media or other parts of your website).

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A writer’s perspective on content audits

When WG Content senior writer and editor Colleen Weinkam refreshes web content, she often relies on content audits to drive the changes she makes.
“A content audit can help identify gaps in content,” she says, “such as topics or keywords that are missing or aren’t used as much as they should be.”
She says it can also help ensure the audience is getting what it needs from the content. “You’re serving it to them in a way that resonates, so they’ll engage better.”
“Additionally, a content audit is a great consistency check,” Colleen adds. “It can tell you if your voice, tone or style isn’t unified across a website, for example.”

WG Content can help with content audits

It’s highly valuable to bring in an external person who approaches your content with fresh eyes. That’s where WG Content comes in — we can help you audit your information to determine what’s missing, and then help refresh it with our findings. Reach out to us to start your project today.

More tips on content audit data storytelling:

There are different situations in your organization that might trigger a content audit. Generally, however, you should conduct an audit once or twice a year.

A content audit allows you to make sure each piece of content is consistent with your brand and all of your other content.

Graphics are a great way to highlight key insights to create a compelling story for your audience; essentially, “showing” the data through visuals rather than just presenting raw numbers.

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