- Why Run a Content Audit
- Six Steps to a Content Audit
- Keep, Update, Merge or Remove
- A Simple Audit Spreadsheet
- How Often to Audit
- How to Judge Quality Consistently
- Spotting Cannibalisation and Duplicates
- Turning Findings Into New Content
- Audit Mistakes to Avoid
- A Worked Example
- Technical Checks Worth Including
- Who Should Be Involved
- After the Audit
- Frequently Asked Questions
A content audit is a structured review of everything your organization has published, such as web pages, blog posts, guides and downloads, to judge what is working, what is outdated and what is missing. It replaces guesswork about your content library with evidence, and it usually reveals that a small share of pages produce most of the results while many others quietly harm the reader experience.
Why Run a Content Audit
- Find quick wins: pages ranking just off the first page of search results often need only an update.
- Remove dead weight: thin, duplicate or outdated pages confuse readers and dilute the quality signals of the site.
- Fix cannibalisation: several pages targeting the same topic can compete with each other.
- Spot gaps: questions your customers ask that no page answers.
- Prepare for a redesign or migration: know what to keep before you move anything.
Six Steps to a Content Audit
- Set the goal. Improve search traffic, support sales, clean up before a redesign, or all three. The goal decides which data matters.
- Build the inventory. List every URL with a site crawler, your sitemap or your CMS export.
- Collect data. For each URL: traffic, search impressions and clicks, conversions, backlinks, word count, last updated date, and topic.
- Assess quality. Read the pages. Is the information accurate and current? Does it match what searchers want? Is it the best answer available?
- Decide an action for each page (see below).
- Prioritize and plan. Turn decisions into a schedule, starting with high-impact, low-effort changes.
Keep, Update, Merge or Remove
| Decision | When | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Keep | Performs well, accurate and current | Leave it; add internal links to it |
| Update | Valuable topic but dated, thin or underperforming | Refresh facts, expand, improve structure and title |
| Merge | Several pages cover the same topic | Combine into one strong page and redirect the others |
| Remove | No traffic, no links, no value, or no longer accurate | Delete, redirect to the closest relevant page if it has links or traffic |
Removing pages feels risky, but a smaller library of genuinely useful pages generally serves readers, and search engines, better than a large library of weak ones.
A Simple Audit Spreadsheet
| URL | Topic | Sessions (12 mo) | Conversions | Last updated | Quality (1 to 5) | Decision | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /guide-a | Pricing | 4,200 | 38 | 2023 | 3 | Update | Sam |
| /post-b | Pricing | 90 | 0 | 2021 | 2 | Merge into /guide-a | Sam |
How Often to Audit
A full audit every twelve to eighteen months suits most organizations, with a lighter quarterly review of the top pages and any that have lost traffic. Large sites often audit one section at a time on a rolling schedule.
How to Judge Quality Consistently
Numbers tell you what is happening; reading tells you why. Use a short scoring rubric so different reviewers judge pages the same way.
| Criterion | Question |
|---|---|
| Accuracy | Is every fact, price and statistic current and correct? |
| Intent match | Does the page answer what someone searching its topic wants? |
| Depth | Does it fully answer the question, with examples where needed? |
| Originality | Does it add something other pages do not? |
| Readability | Is it clear, scannable and free of jargon? |
| Next step | Does it guide the reader to a relevant action? |
Spotting Cannibalisation and Duplicates
Sort your inventory by topic and look for clusters of pages answering the same question. In Search Console, queries where several of your URLs swap positions are a common sign. Pages that repeat large blocks of text, whether within your site or copied from elsewhere, should be merged or rewritten, because search engines typically show only one version and readers gain nothing from duplicates.
Turning Findings Into New Content
An audit should end with a list of what to create, not only what to fix. Compare your topics against the questions customers ask sales and support, the queries in Search Console where you have impressions but no strong page, and the subjects competitors cover well. Each gap becomes a brief in the content plan.
Audit Mistakes to Avoid
- Collecting data without reading the pages.
- Deleting pages with valuable backlinks without redirecting them.
- Judging pages on traffic alone when they serve sales or support.
- Producing a spreadsheet that nobody turns into actions.
A Worked Example
A B2B software company with 180 blog posts ran an audit before a redesign. Fifteen posts drove most organic traffic; around forty had received no visits in a year; and three separate posts targeted the same question about pricing models. The team updated the fifteen strongest posts with current figures and better calls to action, merged the three pricing posts into one comprehensive guide with redirects, removed the forty dormant posts that had no links or value, and briefed twelve new pieces on questions sales heard every week but the blog never answered.
The result was a smaller, clearer library where every page had a purpose, and a content plan grounded in evidence rather than opinion.
Technical Checks Worth Including
- Pages returning errors or redirect chains.
- Missing or duplicated titles and meta descriptions.
- Pages blocked from indexing by mistake.
- Broken internal links and orphan pages with no links pointing to them.
- Slow-loading pages and pages that break on mobile.
Who Should Be Involved
A content audit benefits from more than one perspective. The content or marketing lead owns the process; an SEO specialist interprets search data and technical issues; a subject expert checks accuracy; and someone from sales or customer success confirms which pages actually help customers. For large libraries, split the inventory by section among reviewers, but have one person make final decisions so standards stay consistent.
After the Audit
Treat the audit spreadsheet as a living document. Assign owners and dates to every action, track completion weekly, and record the before and after metrics for updated pages. Three to six months later, compare results: did updated pages gain impressions and clicks, did merged pages consolidate rankings, and did removing weak pages improve overall engagement? Those lessons shape the next audit.
Frequently Asked Questions
To evaluate existing content against goals and quality standards, so you can decide what to keep, update, merge or remove and where to create new content.
A site with a few hundred pages typically takes one to three weeks, depending on how much data you collect and how carefully pages are read. Large sites are often audited section by section.
A crawler or CMS export for the inventory, web analytics, Search Console for search data, and a spreadsheet to record decisions.
Delete or redirect posts that are inaccurate, duplicated or have no value to readers. Update posts on valuable topics instead of deleting them.