Website content review checklist

A website content review checklist helps you check whether a page is still accurate and useful. Confirm its purpose, compare important facts with current sources, try the visitor’s next step, check links and readability, then record what to keep, fix or ask an owner to verify.

Start with one public page. You need permission to edit it, or a way to reach the person who does. Keep a separate note of anything you cannot confirm. This is a human content review, not a complete security, technical SEO or accessibility audit.

Use the Staleaway reminder workflow if a nudge helps you begin. The checklist works without an account, too.

The checklist to use on each page

1. Purpose: Who is this page for, and what should they be able to do after reading it?
2. Facts: Are the offer, dates, contact details, instructions and eligibility rules still correct? What current source confirms them?
3. Next step: Does the main link, form or download take the reader to the right place?
4. Supporting material: Are linked pages, documents, screenshots and examples still relevant?
5. Reading experience: Can you understand the headings, follow the instructions and use the page on a narrow screen?
6. Decision: Keep it, fix a confirmed problem, or ask an owner to resolve an uncertainty.
7. Follow-up: Record what you checked, who owns unfinished work and when it needs another look.

A page can pass some checks and still need work. “The links work” does not establish that the opening hours are right. Write down the specific conclusion rather than giving the whole page an unsupported pass.

Georgia Tech’s content update checklist is a useful reference for facts, links, media and presentation. Adapt checks to your page; its institution-specific requirements are not rules for every website.

1. Choose a page and name the reader’s task

Pick a page with a concrete job: explain a service, accept event registrations or help someone finish a procedure. Write that job in one sentence. For example, “Help a prospective customer decide whether this service fits, then make an enquiry.” That sentence gives the review a stopping point.

Open the live page, not only the editor preview. Have the current source for important facts nearby: an approved service list, an organizer’s event details or the version of the product a tutorial describes. Another old page repeating the same claim is not strong confirmation.

Prioritize a page you know has changed, or one where a mistake could send someone to the wrong place. A reminder can help you notice overlooked pages, but a known incorrect date should not wait its turn.

For legal, medical or other high-consequence material, the content owner may need a qualified reviewer. This checklist helps organize the work; it does not supply that expertise.

2. Check the facts and try the next step

Read as someone who has not seen the page before. Can they tell what is offered, who it applies to and what to do next? Compare changeable claims with the source you chose. Note any disagreement before rewriting: sometimes the source itself needs confirmation.

Follow the main call to action. Does “Book a consultation” lead to the relevant booking flow, or to a general homepage? Open the linked PDF and inspect its content, not merely whether it downloads. For forms or bookings, use an approved test route; do not place real orders or submit invented enquiries to third parties.

Check a narrow-screen view for cut-off instructions, unreadable tables and missing controls. Try keyboard navigation through the important links and fields. These checks can reveal obstacles, but they do not certify accessibility compliance. Record anything that needs a more thorough review.

Do not rewrite correct paragraphs solely to make the page look recently updated. The useful outcome is a clearer or more reliable page, not a newer date.

3. Record a decision, with evidence

Use three outcomes to keep the review manageable. These are suggested labels for your manual log, separate from Staleaway’s reminder status.

Keep means the content still does its job and the important facts you checked agree with current evidence. Record that evidence. You do not need to invent an edit to justify the time spent reviewing.

Fix means you have identified a specific problem and know the approved correction. Change it if you have permission; otherwise assign it to the editor. Leave the task open until someone checks the published result.

Escalate means you cannot safely decide. Name the uncertainty, the person who can answer and a follow-up date. If the claim could materially mislead visitors, ask the responsible owner to decide whether it needs an immediate correction or temporary removal.

Peterborough City Council’s content auditing process provides a real example of recurring reviews, content-owner follow-up and ad-hoc checks. Its local schedules and escalation policy are specific to that organization; borrow the habit of explicit ownership, not an assumed universal timetable.

Three worked reviews

The following are fictional teaching examples, not customer stories or measured results.

A service page promises Saturday consultations. The approved service list now says weekdays only. That is a confirmed mismatch: fix the availability statement, check that the enquiry link still reaches the correct service and inspect the live correction. Record the approved list as the evidence. If nobody can confirm whether Saturday appointments ended or merely paused, the decision changes to escalate. Do not guess the new promise.

An event page still invites registrations after the event. Ask the organizer whether the event finished, moved or was cancelled. If it finished, fix the misleading invitation and label the page appropriately under your site’s archive policy. Preserve useful directions to a recap or future-event listing where relevant. A working registration link does not make the invitation current. Do not delete the URL or redirect it to an unrelated event merely to clear a checklist.

A how-to guide shows an old menu label. Reproduce the procedure with safe test data in the version the guide covers. If the task still works but a label changed, fix that instruction or screenshot and keep the accurate explanation. If the named version is still supported and its instructions remain correct, keep them and make the version clear. If you cannot reproduce the result, escalate the uncertainty instead of recording a successful test.

4. Recheck fixes and keep a short review log

After an edit, load the public page again and repeat the check that failed. Confirm that the corrected fact appears and the next step still works. This is where “change requested” becomes “change verified.” They should be separate states in your notes.

Copy these fields into your existing notes or task system:

Public page:
Checked on / reviewer:
Reader’s task:
Finding and evidence checked:
Decision: keep / fix / escalate:
Unfinished work and owner:
Follow-up due:
Live correction verified on:
Next review date or change trigger:

For the fictional service page, a useful finding is “Saturday availability disagrees with the approved service list.” “Reviewed website” is not enough to tell the next person what happened.

This log is a manual aid, not a Staleaway feature or a compliance certificate. Use public page addresses where appropriate; keep private review-link tokens, customer details and restricted source material out of shared notes and screenshots.

Hand unfinished work to a named owner

Before a reviewer goes on leave or changes roles, hand over the open findings as well as the page list. Name the person who can confirm the facts, the editor who can publish a correction and the person who will check the live result. One person may do all three jobs. Ask the receiving owner to accept the work and agree a follow-up date; a forwarded reminder alone does not record that agreement.

Add these handoff fields to the same review log:

Public page / unresolved finding:
Evidence checked / question still open:
Receiving owner / pending or accepted / accepted on:
Editor / live-result checker:
Next action / follow-up due:
Fallback contact if no response:

For example, continue the fictional Saturday-consultation review above. The current service list confirms weekday availability, but the reviewer cannot publish. The operations owner accepts responsibility for getting the correction published; the website editor agrees to update the availability statement. Before the reviewer leaves, a colleague agrees to check the published wording and enquiry link by the recorded follow-up date. Until that check happens, the log says “correction requested,” not “fixed.”

If nobody accepts responsibility, leave the finding open and use the fallback contact you agreed with the site owner. Do not reset its original finding date or replace its follow-up with the next routine review. A potentially misleading claim still needs the urgent owner decision described above.

Peterborough City Council records service conversations so another team member can follow progress when someone is away. Essex County Council describes training and guidance as part of handing a service to its ongoing owners. These examples show institutional practice, not measured results for this suggested handoff.

The record stays outside Staleaway; it does not add assignments, approval tracking or verified completion to the app. Share only what the recipient needs. Transfer access through your approved process for granting access, not passwords or private review-link tokens pasted into the log.

5. Choose a review schedule you can maintain

Separate time to do reviews from when a particular page must be checked. You might reserve a weekly session for a small batch while checking an event page immediately when its date changes. A quiet evergreen page may need less frequent attention than a service page with changing availability.

Choose an initial review date using two questions: how likely is the information to change, and what happens if someone acts on an error? Bring the date forward when either risk is higher. After a few sessions, adjust the workload to what you can actually finish. An overloaded calendar with unresolved tasks is not evidence that the pages are maintained.

Known changes override the calendar. Examples include a new service offering, an event cancellation, a changed contact address or a product release that alters instructions. Keep the unresolved-work follow-up separate from the next routine review; a monthly reminder is not a reason to leave a confirmed error live for a month.

Before committing to a batch, try the free content review planner. Enter your page count, estimated minutes per page and available review sessions to see how many whole pages fit and whether your target leaves unfinished work. No account is needed. It estimates a manual pass you organize yourself, not Staleaway’s reminder coverage.

Where Staleaway fits

Staleaway lets you add a sitemap and choose daily, weekly or monthly reminder settings and a number of pages per email. It supports the habit of opening a few pages for human review. All features are currently free, and the technology behind Staleaway is documented publicly.

Opening a Staleaway review link marks that page as reviewed and redirects you to it. It does not establish that you checked the content or finished a fix. Keep unfinished work in your own log. The email cadence is not a promise that every page will be revisited on that interval; do not use it as a guaranteed full-site review calendar.

If that reminder workflow fits, create a free account and add your sitemap. Start with a batch you can finish, use the checklist on each page, and give every uncertainty a named follow-up.