Content Inventory

What is a Content Inventory?

A Content Inventory is a comprehensive listing of all content assets within a website or digital platform. It's a quantitative catalog that documents what content exists, where it's located, and its basic attributes. Unlike a content audit, which evaluates quality and performance, a content inventory is primarily focused on creating an accurate record of all existing content.

A typical content inventory is usually created as a spreadsheet that captures information such as page titles, URLs, content types, file formats, metadata, publication dates, owners, and hierarchical relationships. It serves as a foundation for content strategy work, providing a clear picture of the current content landscape before any analysis or decision-making takes place.

Why are Content Inventories Important?

Content Inventories are important because they provide a complete picture of existing content assets, which is essential for effective content management and strategy. They create a baseline understanding of what content exists before making decisions about what to keep, update, or remove. Without a thorough inventory, content can be overlooked, duplicated, or inconsistently managed.

Content inventories are particularly valuable during website redesigns, content migrations, or when implementing new content management systems. They help identify content ownership, reveal the true scope of content to be managed, and provide insights into content structure and organization. A good inventory also serves as the foundation for more detailed content audits and helps track content changes over time.

How to Create a Content Inventory?

To create a content inventory, define the scope of what content to include (all pages, specific sections, or content types), use automated crawling tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to generate an initial list of URLs and basic metadata, supplement automated data with manual review to capture content not accessible to crawlers, and organize the inventory in a spreadsheet with clear columns for all relevant attributes.

Best practices include documenting the site structure and hierarchy to show how content relates to each other, including all content types (not just web pages but also PDFs, videos, images, etc.), capturing key metadata that will be useful for later analysis, updating the inventory regularly to keep it current, and using the inventory as a living document that evolves with your content strategy. For large sites, consider a phased approach focusing on the most important sections first.