"To make even the most basic decisions about your content—like deciding where to focus your resources and budget—it’s good to know how much content you have, where it lives, what it’s about, and whether it’s any good" (Halvorson, Rach, & Cancilla, 2012, p. 47).
The first step of any website project is to figure out whether or not you need a website project. This might sound curious, but sometimes a website is good enough that it's not worth putting more effort into it for very small improvements. This is why a good audit is one of the "most powerful tools when making a business case for any web content project" (Halvorson et al., 2012, p. 47).
Audit types
There are a number of different ways to audit a website. Choose the type of audit that fits your needs. In addition to conducting an audit, website reports like Google Analytics reports, can help inform your decisions.
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Once you've completed your audit, you should have a better idea of the improvements you'll need to make and you'll be ready to define your Core content strategy.
References
Content strategy for the web by Kristina Halvorson, Melissa Rach and Sarah Cancilla