We often talk about technical debt when it comes to maintaining projects. Whether it's prioritizing speed over textbook-correct code or skipping documentation because it's not in the budget, we've all experienced both the necessity and harm of letting this debt build up.
One thing we don't acknowledge as much is a concept I call content debt. Content debt is real and it can have a major impact on your next project.
What Is Content Debt?
Content debt, like technical debt, is the result of cutting corners in the management, organization, and documentation around website content. For our purposes, content is all the structures, pages, words, and assets that are controlled by the CMS admin (Jen Wolke wrote a great article defining content in this very magazine!).
When you let this debt accumulate, it becomes the silent killer of CMS projects. Bloated media libraries, outdated content, confusing taxonomies: these problems aren’t just messy. They slow down editors, frustrate users, and make redesigns exponentially harder.
In Umbraco terms, content debt is everything that lives inside the tree or in your Media section that’s no longer doing its job. It’s the stuff your migration scripts have to untangle later, or the clutter that makes editors think, “Wait, which image is the current logo again?”
There are four main sources of content debt, and each one causes its own set of issues. Let’s dig into how to spot them, why they matter, and most importantly how to beat them.
1. Outdated, Duplicate, or Redundant Content
What it is
When I gave a talk about content debt at the recent Umbraco US Festival, a woman stopped me afterward to tell the story of a site audit her team had just completed. They found dozens of blog articles referencing the client’s open hours during the holidays going back multiple years.
Now, in what universe does a patron need to see that a business was closed on Thanksgiving five years ago? Whether or not a blog post is the right place to share that info, we can all agree: it’s not serving the user or the business anymore.
Old pages, one-off landing pages, outdated event listings, duplicate news posts. They’re like forgotten boxes in your digital basement. They accumulate quietly, and before you know it, your CMS is a maze of irrelevant content.
How to spot it
You don’t need to run a full crawl to see the signs. Just take a quick look at your Umbraco content tree:
- Random pages floating outside logical hierarchies
- Multiple versions of the same campaign page
- Page names like 2021-summer-catalog or old-homepage
These are clues that content hasn’t been audited in a while.
You can also use tools like Screaming Frog to flag near-duplicate pages, thin content, or redirects that should have been retired long ago.
Why care
Old or redundant pages don’t just clutter the CMS. They erode your SEO, analytics accuracy, and even AI training data. If your outdated PDFs and press releases are still live, search engines (and large language models) can easily surface stale or incorrect info about your organization.
How to fix it
If you’re inheriting a messy site or preparing for a migration, resist the temptation to just bring everything over.
Start with a ROT audit — Redundant, Outdated, Trivial content.
- Redundant: Merge or delete duplicates.
- Outdated: Archive or update pages with time-sensitive info.
- Trivial: Cut anything with no measurable purpose or audience.
In Umbraco, you can take advantage of content expiry dates, page properties, and workflow approvals to help keep things fresh. Build a cadence (ideallyg quarterly but at least annually) to review what’s still earning its place.
Pro Tip: Create a “Relevance Score” column in your audit spreadsheet. Rate each page 1–5 based on its usefulness to users and alignment to your goals. Anything scoring 2 or below is fair game for cleanup.
2. Disorganized Assets
What it is
Let’s be honest: most media libraries are a mess. Files named new-logo-final-FINAL.png, random screenshots directly uploaded without even being renamed, and a dozen headshots named team-photo.jpg.
Over time, the Media section in Umbraco becomes a digital junk drawer. And when you migrate or redesign, bring that mess over is the last thing you should be doing.
Why care
A messy media library creates problems across your site lifecycle:
- Editors waste time hunting for the right image.
- Duplicate files increase storage and can impact performance.
- Migrations become risky because no one knows which version is the most reliable.
This is especially painful in Umbraco, where we have so much freedom to design a media library that works well.
How to spot it
You can usually tell at a glance:
- Long, flat folder structures with hundreds of assets.
- No clear or inconsistently used naming conventions.
- Duplicates of the same file in multiple folders.
- Media items that aren’t actually in use on any live pages (ie, using the media library as a digital file cabinet)
When editors use the website as a shared drive, you know you’re looking at content debt.
How to fix it
Start by defining a consistent folder structure. Organize by type (images, documents, icons), category (department, campaign, product line), or site section. Whatever system you choose to follow, document it and keep it shallow.
Pro Tip: It’s not that deep. If your folder structure goes beyond three levels, it’s probably too complicated to maintain. By providing the least amount of structure necessary, you increase the likelihood that editors done the road will follow it.
Encourage editors to upload images before they start creating content. In Umbraco, that ensures consistent paths and metadata tagging. It also leads to a better workflow when mupltipe pages are being created at once. Win-win!
For ongoing hygiene, consider using Umbraco Workflow or Contentment to add required fields like alt text or usage notes before publishing. And during migrations, run an automated media de-duplication check — tools like uSync or Our.Umbraco.Community.MediaCleaner can help you clean up before launch day.
3. Broken or Bloated Taxonomies
What it is
Taxonomy debt is sneaky. It starts small. A few new categories added to a blog, a new tag for a product filter, and before long, your filtering system makes no sense.
One of my favorite examples of this is when podcasts started to become more common for businesses. You could tell marketers were trying to shove their podcasts into the news section of their sites without changing overarching structures, because suddenly “podcast” was a topic in the news section. Not only does this look sloppy, it’s confusing.
Why care
When your taxonomy is inconsistent, users can’t find what they need and editors can’t decide where new content belongs. It also messes with related content modules, search filters, and analytics segmentation.
You’ll often see this debt show up as:
- Too many or too few categories
- Jargon-heavy naming conventions
- Unused or inconsistent tags
- Filters that confuse users more than they help
How to fix it
Taxonomies should evolve but that evolution should always be deliberate. Start by auditing your current setup:
- Export your categories, tags, and filters.
- Group similar terms and merge duplicates.
- Decide which terms are user-facing vs. internal-only.
- Create a taxonomy governance document outside of Umbraco. A simple spreadsheet works fine.
Pro Tip: Get a UX designer involved early. They’ll help map categories to actual user journeys, not internal org charts.
If you’re migrating an old site into Umbraco, take the time to clean and normalize your taxonomy before import. Getting new structures set up in the old site makes migration so much easier and cleaner.
Finally, consider locking down tag creation permissions. Give editors a defined list of terms instead of letting new tags spawn endlessly. Your future self (and your search results) will thank you.
4. Lack of Ownership (a.k.a. No Content Champion)
What it is
This one might be the most damaging of all: no one truly owns the content.
When every department, agency, or intern has CMS access but no one’s accountable for quality, content debt is inevitable. You end up with half-finished pages, broken links, outdated PDFs, and no clear path to improvement..
Why care
Without ownership, even the best CMS devolves into chaos. The issue isn’t Umbraco, it’s governance. If no one’s empowered to make decisions about what stays, what goes, and what needs updating, your content ecosystem will drift out of alignment within months.
How to fix it
Every organization needs a Content Champion — a person who:
- Understands and wants to maintain the publishing workflow.
- Knows what the CMS can do — and what it shouldn’t be asked to do.
- Has authority to say “no” when something breaks standards.
- Is confident translated SME input into the right formats for the site.
Ideally, this person isn’t just reactive (“Can you fix this page?”) but proactive. They should be conducting quarterly audits, managing permissions, and keeping editors aligned on best practices.
In Umbraco, you can support this role with clear user group permissions, content review dashboards, and training materials built right into the back office.
Pro Tip: Add a “Content Champion Checklist” to your project handoff. Define who owns what, how audits will be tracked, and where documentation lives. When clients know what stewardship looks like, the site stays healthy long after launch.
From Content Debt to Content Calm
Every project accumulates some debt, technical or otherwise. But content debt compounds quietly, eating away at your team’s efficiency and your site’s long-term value.
The good news? You can get ahead of it.
Start small:
- Schedule regular content and media audits.
- Document naming conventions and taxonomy rules.
- Define a clear content governance process.
- Make content ownership part of every project’s success criteria.
And when you’re scoping a new Umbraco build or migration, budget time for content cleanup. It’s not busywork. It’s a strategic investment that saves you hours down the line.
At the end of the day, a clean, organized CMS isn’t just nice to have. It’s the foundation for great user experiences, confident editors, and sustainable growth.