How long has your site been around — 5, 10, 20 years? Odds are, you’ve experienced enough turnover on your team during that time that nobody really knows all the content you have. There may even be one-off sites that were created and forgotten about.
Next time you have a new content project, start by thoroughly searching for what already exists. Instead of starting from scratch, you can likely reuse or at least recycle some existing content. That will save time — and money.
For each page we’re asked to create, we follow these steps:
- Search on site. This may not reveal much you don’t know about, but you could find some relevant facts or quotes you’ve forgotten about.
- Search in CMS. A CMS search will help pick up unpublished pages.
- Search Google for “[client name] + [page topic].” This is where the magic tends to happen. You’ll find all sorts of pages and sites that you’ve forgotten about — blog and social media posts, articles on other sites, and more.
We then take the best of what we find, add in new details, and produce a fresh piece of content with minimal effort.
The final step — and a key to keeping your content accurate and up-to-date — is making sure you remove the old content that’s no longer needed.
Need help figuring out what content you have? Learn about content inventories.