Content audit
A structured review of everything you have published, scoring each page so you know what to keep, refresh, merge or delete.
In depth
What it really means
A content audit is a structured review of everything on your site, scoring each page against traffic, rankings, conversions and business relevance, then assigning one of four decisions: keep, refresh, merge or delete.
Most sites past 100 pages carry a surprising amount of dead weight. A first audit commonly finds 20% to 40% of pages generating no meaningful traffic, some of them actively competing with the pages that do.
The scoring model
| Score each page | Signal |
|---|---|
| Organic sessions, last 6 months | Is anyone arriving |
| Trend against the previous 6 months | Is it decaying |
| Average position for its target query | How close to page one |
| Conversions or assisted conversions | Does it do commercial work |
| Backlinks | Is there equity worth preserving |
| Business relevance, 1 to 3 | Does the topic still matter |
The decision rules
Keep: stable traffic, relevant topic, no competing page. Do nothing.
Refresh: declining traffic, position 4 to 20, still relevant. Highest return action.
Merge: another page targets the same query. Combine into the stronger URL, 301 the other.
Delete: no impressions in six months, no links, no relevance. Redirect to the nearest relevant page rather than 404.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Turns a vague sense that the blog is not working into a ranked action list.
- Finds cannibalization and orphan pages that nothing else surfaces.
- Refresh candidates identified in an audit usually return more than the same budget spent on new content.
- Gives you a defensible reason to stop publishing for a quarter.
Cons
- Time-consuming. A 300-page site takes two to four days done properly.
- Produces a list nobody actions unless the work is scheduled immediately.
- Requires connected analytics and Search Console data, which many sites do not have cleanly.
- Deleting is emotionally hard, and teams keep pages for sentimental reasons.
The mistake people make
Auditing on traffic alone. A page with 40 visits a month that closes two deals a quarter outranks a page with 4,000 visits that converts nobody. Pull conversion or assisted conversion data before you score anything, and if you cannot, at least ask sales which pages they send to prospects.
Best practices
- Audit annually, or after any migration or major publishing push.
- Export from Search Console and analytics into one sheet before scoring.
- Score on business relevance as well as traffic.
- Schedule the resulting work before the audit is finished, or it will not happen.
- Redirect rather than delete outright, to keep any link equity.
- Re-audit the same sheet next year so you can see what the work achieved.
FAQs
What is a content audit?
A structured review scoring every published page, ending in a keep, refresh, merge or delete decision for each.
How often should I run one?
Annually for most sites, and immediately after a migration or a large publishing push.
What data do I need?
Organic sessions and trend, average position, conversions or assisted conversions, backlinks, and a business relevance rating.
Should I delete underperforming pages?
Only after checking for backlinks. Merge and redirect where there is equity, delete and redirect where there is none.
How long does an audit take?
Roughly a day per 100 pages including the decisions, more if the analytics need cleaning first.
Keep reading
Related on LymLyt
Beyond LymLyt
Further reading
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