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Plan a Content Audit Sample for a Large Website Redesign
Choose a defensible mix of templates, traffic tiers, ages, owners, languages, and risk cases for outsourced review.
**Published: September 4, 2026**
When a site has thousands of pages, reviewing the first hundred URLs produces a neat spreadsheet and a poor picture. A sampling plan should deliberately cover the differences that affect redesign and migration decisions.
Define the population
Combine the CMS export, sitemap, analytics inventory, search data, and known orphan lists. Preserve the source and extraction date for every route. Resolve obvious duplicates without erasing alternate URLs that need migration decisions.
Create useful strata
Select examples from each important group and add deliberate outliers such as very long pages, missing owners, and unusual media.
Write the review rubric first
Define what reviewers record for accuracy, usefulness, duplication, accessibility, metadata, component use, ownership, and disposition. Calibrate with the same small set before splitting the sample across people.
State what the sample cannot prove
A sample can reveal patterns and estimate workload; it cannot certify every page. Keep critical and regulated content on a separate complete-review path where required.
Related guides
Frequently asked questions
Can analytics alone define the sample?
No. Low-traffic pages can still carry legal, support, accessibility, or migration risk.
Who approves the sample?
The client content owner should approve its coverage, exclusions, and separate critical-page review.