You know you need to run a website content audit to uncover your firm’s old, stale, and outdated pages. But where do you start? How do you even start? Outdated information doesn’t scream out from the traffic analytics. In fact, they could even still be drawing traffic to your site.
Your website content audit should handle both those factors. Start small and simple. Find each page, and determine whether the information it contains is accurate enough to rely on. For example, a popular child support explainer written before this year’s guideline changes can be both well read and wrong.
Find the URLs That Have Disappeared From Navigation
Always use the backend content management system instead of the front-facing site. WordPress, in particular, can show you years’ worth of posts that may not appear in menus. Some survive only because an outside site links to them.
A crawler finds URLs reachable through internal links, and the XML sitemap gives a second list. Google Search Console’s Page Indexing report shows indexed and non-indexed URLs Google knows about. None of these sources are infallible, so it helps to compare them all.
For each URL, the inventory can record the practice area, the page type, and the last legal review. It should also note whether the page mentions a fee, a filing deadline, or a figure set by law. Traffic and backlink data go in too, with room for an attorney to mark what needs fixing. The review-date column may be blank for much of the site.
Running this inventory before a lawyer website redesign keeps outdated legal statements from moving into new templates unchanged.
A Website Content Audit Puts Legal Accuracy Ahead of Rankings
New Jersey’s ethics rules treat a lawyer’s statement as misleading if it gets a fact or the law materially wrong. That doesn’t mean every single piece of outdated information constitutes an ethics violation, though. But a service page presenting a legal precedent that’s recently changed needs attention.
Recent Legal Changes That Date a Page
Let’s look at an example here. In April 2026, the NJ Supreme Court published amendments to its yearly child support guidelines, which took effect in June. They changed how the guidelines are used, the child care cost worksheet, and the tax withholding tables. Thus, any pages with that data needs a check.
Federal estate tax law is another great example. The exclusion rose from $13.99 million in 2025 to $15 million in 2026 after Congress changed it in July 2025. An older trusts and estates article that calls $13.99 million the current amount, with no year attached, is now broadcasting the wrong number.
Dated articles that clearly describe an old rule for their own time are a different case. Always include that human element of asking whether a reader could mistake the old data for current data.
Attorney Bios, Fees, and Case Results Need Separate Checks
Take an attorney bio. If the lawyer has left, the bio may still show up in branded searches after the firm drops the attorney from its team page. Visitors may think that lawyer is still taking clients. Firms can update the bio to note the departure, remove it, or redirect it to a fitting page.
Fee statements need the same review. An old flat fee may no longer match firm policy, and a free consultation may now cover fewer services. Marketing staff can flag the wording, but the attorney who handles that service should confirm what the firm offers.
Testimonials need a closer look because the rules changed recently. New Jersey’s Committee on Attorney Advertising issued Opinion 49 on September 30, 2025, replacing its earlier testimonial opinions. It calls for a clear disclaimer with testimonials and bars comparisons in them. An older testimonial calling a lawyer “the best in New Jersey” needs to come down or be rewritten.
In a Website Content Audit, Corrections Come Before Traffic
A general website content audit sorts URLs into keep, update, merge, or remove. Once you have the inventory, sort it into those buckets. Even if a few people read it, an article with an outdated filing deadline needs fixing. But on the other hand, an accurate practice page might be good to go once someone’s looked at it.
Suppose a firm has several posts on prenuptial agreements, each covering the same basic rules with small differences. If they’re accurate but repetitive, the material may belong in one fuller marital agreements page. Before merging, an attorney should confirm that nothing important gets lost. Posts about different legal changes may need to stay separate.
Merged URLs can redirect permanently to the new page when it covers the same subject. Sending someone who is reading about an old rule to an unrelated homepage just for the sake of traffic isn’t helpful. In fact, it can be actively harmful; it’s certainly detrimental to the user experience. Pages with no fitting replacement can return a 404 or 410 instead, unless outside links make a dated note the better choice.
Redirects, menu changes, and new internal links should be tested together. A website design checklist helps catch broken links before visitors find them.
Changing the Publication Date Doesn’t Correct the Article
You can’t just slap a new publish date on unchanged content and call it a day, either. It’s a hollow, meaningless change that doesn’t fix the underlying problem. Deleting huge swaths of your site just to make what remains seem fresh is the same; you’re treating cancer with cold medicine.
Real updates that change the substance are what you need. You might have to replace an old figure, explain a new court rule, correct a fee, or add a new missing caveat.
This doesn’t have to be done to every single post, either. Use your judgment. A post about a 2019 court decision may be worth keeping because it records what changed that year. If later law replaced that decision, a dated editor’s note can point readers to the current page without erasing the original.
Firms can track a last-reviewed date internally, with the responsible attorney’s initials. A public review date should appear only when someone has done that review.
Give Every Practice Area an Attorney Responsible for Updates
Marketing staff can find old URLs, spot overlapping topics, and flag figures that look stale. But they can’t determine the legal accuracy of the claims within. Only a lawyer can. Each practice area needs an assigned attorney and a record of when its pages were checked. An estate planning lawyer can recheck exemption figures when new amounts come out, and a family lawyer can review child support pages after the yearly amendments.
Older articles deserve the same review the firm gives new compliant legal blogs before they go up. That means checking legal statements, sources, and claims about the firm’s services. A short change log showing what was reviewed, what changed, and who approved it makes the next audit faster.
Questions About a Law Firm Website Content Audit
How often should a law firm run a website content audit?
Once a year works as a starting point for the inventory, traffic, and site structure. Legal accuracy needs its own schedule. Pages with figures set by law, filing deadlines, or recently changed rules should get a check whenever those rules change.
Should a firm delete old posts about legal changes?
Not automatically. A post that was accurate in its day may still draw readers through outside links. Adding a dated note that explains later changes often serves them better than deletion. If a current page now covers the same subject, a permanent redirect to it can work.
Can AI tools help with a website content audit?
Yes. They can sort URLs, spot duplicate topics, and flag statements with dates, dollar figures, or references to new laws. Those flags are leads for an attorney to check. An AI tool can miss an amendment or misread whether a rule applies.
Start With the Statements Someone Could Rely On Today
A first website content audit doesn’t need to cover every paragraph of every article. Attorney bios, consultation policies, and pages with deadlines or dollar figures come first, and merges or menu changes can follow. Indexing, traffic, and backlink data from an SEO team can then show how each corrected page should be handled. For each fixed URL, the audit record keeps the original wording, the source used to verify the change, and the approval date.
Sources
New Jersey Courts, Order: Child Support Guidelines Annual Updating Amendments (Effective June 1, 2026)
New Jersey Courts, Committee on Attorney Advertising Opinion 49: Use of Client Endorsements and Testimonials