Content audit
What is a content audit?
A content audit is a systematic review of all the content on a website, using performance data, to decide what to do with each page: keep it, update it, merge it with another page, redirect it or remove it. It starts with an inventory of every indexable URL and adds data such as traffic, rankings, backlinks, conversions and age.
A content audit differs from a technical site audit, which looks at crawling, indexing and site health. The two are often run together, because technical problems such as duplicate content or orphan pages show up in both.
Why content audit matters for SEO
Most sites accumulate pages that no longer earn their place: outdated posts, thin pages, near-duplicates and articles competing for the same keyword. These dilute the site’s quality and waste crawling. An audit finds them, and also finds the pages that are close to ranking well and only need an update.
Google’s helpful content guidance looks at whether content across a site is helpful to people, so cleaning up unhelpful pages and improving promising ones can benefit the whole site.
How to do a content audit
- Crawl the site to list every indexable URL, with title, word count and status.
- Add data: clicks and impressions from Search Console, sessions and key events from GA4, backlinks and rankings.
- Tag each page with an action: keep, refresh, merge, redirect or remove (content pruning).
- Look for keyword cannibalisation: several pages ranking for the same query.
- Work through the actions in priority order, starting with pages that have traffic or links at stake.
- Re-run the audit every 6-12 months.
Content audit FAQ
How often should I do a content audit?
Once or twice a year for most sites; more often for large or fast-growing sites.
What data do I need for a content audit?
At minimum, a list of URLs with Search Console clicks and impressions, analytics sessions and conversions, and backlink counts.
Related SEO terms
Content pruningWhite hat
Content pruning is removing, merging or redirecting low-value pages so a site’s remaining content is stronger and easier to crawl.
Content refreshWhite hat
A content refresh is a substantial update of an existing page to make it current, accurate and more useful, so it regains or improves rankings.
Content decay is the gradual decline in a page’s rankings and organic traffic over time, after an initial period of good performance.
An SEO audit is a review of a whole website’s search performance: its traffic, rankings, keywords, backlinks and competitors, and the opportunities worth acting on first.
Thin content is a page with little or no useful content of its own, such as near-empty pages, copied text or doorway pages.
Keyword cannibalization is when several pages on one site target the same keyword and intent, so they compete and none ranks as well as it could.