Content audit: inventory, score, then keep, refresh, prune or merge

A content audit is a structured review of the pages on your site. You list every page, record data for each one, score it, and decide whether to keep, refresh, merge or prune it. The result is a sheet with one decision per URL, not a report that nobody reads. This article gives five steps, a column template for your sheet, and the rules that Google documents for merging and removing pages.

What a content audit is

A site content audit looks at what you have published and asks what each page does for the site. The method is the same whatever you call it. An SEO content audit judges pages by search data: clicks, impressions, position and links. Some teams also check tone, accessibility and brand rules in a web content audit. This article covers the SEO kind.

The audit has two outputs. The first is an inventory of every URL with the data you need. The second is a decision for each URL. Without the second output you have a list, not an audit.

A plan alone does not tell you whether a change worked, so step 5 adds a measurement.

How to do a content audit in five steps

1. Build the inventory.
2. Add data to each row.
3. Score each page.
4. Decide: keep, refresh, merge or prune.
5. Act, then measure.

Each step has one job. Finish a step for every page before you start the next, so that you compare pages on equal terms.

Step 1: Build the inventory

You need a list of every URL that is live on the site. First decide what counts as content: articles, guides, documentation and landing pages. Leave out utility pages such as login and cart. One source is never enough.

• A crawl finds pages by following links. A page that nothing links to does not appear. Read website crawlers for how a crawl works.
• The sitemap lists the pages you chose to list. Google says a sitemap "doesn't guarantee that all the items in your sitemap will be crawled and indexed", so a listed page can be missing from search.
• Search Console shows pages that got impressions. A page with no impressions does not appear in it.

Merge the three lists and remove duplicates. Treat https://example.com/page and https://example.com/page/ as one URL if the site serves one of them. Mark URLs that carry tracking parameters, so that they do not count as separate pages.

Search Console data needs care at scale. Google states that the Search Analytics API "exposes a maximum of 50K rows of data per day per search type", sorted by clicks. For a large site, page through the results and run the query by date.

Strategist's site audit crawls the site and lists each page it finds with its issues, which gives you the crawl list for this step.

Step 2: Add data to each row

The sheet is your content audit template. Add one column for each question you will ask in step 3, and no more. These columns cover most sites.

Column	Source	Why it helps
URL	Inventory	The key for every other column
Title and H1	Crawl	Shows the topic the page claims
Status code	Crawl	Finds errors and redirects before you judge the content
Word count	Crawl	Flags thin pages for a closer look
Last updated	Content management system (CMS) or page	Shows how old the content is
Clicks, impressions, position	Search Console	Shows whether the page earns visits
Internal links in	Crawl	Shows how well the site supports the page
Backlinks	Link tool	Shows what you lose if you remove the page
Owner	Your team	Names the person who decides
Decision and reason	You	The output of the audit

Pick one date range for the Search Console columns and use it for every page. Google's report lists Pages as a dimension, so you can export one row per page. It also warns that "the newest data can be preliminary, meaning it's still being collected and might change in the next few hours". End your range a few days before today.

Step 3: Score each page

Scoring turns the data into a comparison. Use a short scale, such as 0, 1 or 2, on four to six criteria. Choose criteria that match your goals. These four work for most sites:

• Value. Does the page add something beyond other pages in the results?
• Accuracy. Are the facts correct and current?
• Performance. Do clicks and position hold, rise or fall?
• Overlap. Does another page on your site cover the same intent?

Google's guidance on helpful content gives you questions for the first two. It asks, for example, "Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?", "Does the content provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?" and "Does the content have any easily-verified factual errors?". Use them as a checklist. They are Google's self-assessment questions, not a score that Google calculates.

Add the scores for each page, and write the rule that maps a score to a decision before you start. A rule you set after you see the data bends to the result you want. Here is a starting rule:

• A low score on Accuracy with a good topic points to a refresh.
• A low score on Overlap, meaning another page covers the same intent, points to a merge.
• A low score on both Value and Performance points to a prune.
• A high score on all four points to keep.

For performance, compare two equal windows. A page whose clicks fell between the windows needs a different decision from a page that never earned clicks.

Strategist's refresh classifier sorts pages from Search Console data into four buckets: declining pages, pages below the expected click-through rate, pages in striking distance, and pages on page two.

Step 4: Decide: keep, refresh, merge or prune

Every page gets one decision. The figure shows the four options and the condition for each.

Keep

Keep a page that meets its goal and is current. Write the reason in the sheet. A page you keep this time may need a decision next time, and the note saves you the work.

Refresh

Refresh a page whose topic is right and whose content is weak or old. Update it in place, on the same URL. The URL keeps its links and history. Check each fact and example, add the questions that the current results answer and your page does not, and fix a title that no longer matches the content. Then check that the internal links still point to useful pages.

Google warns against fake freshness. Its helpful content guidance lists as a warning sign "changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed". Change the visible date only when the content changes. Google's date guidance says to show a visible date and to set datePublished and dateModified in structured data.

Merge

Merge two pages that cover the same intent. Keep the stronger one. Google's guide to duplicate URLs lists the signals that make a URL canonical, from strong to weak:

• A redirect is "a strong signal that the target of the redirect should become canonical".
• A rel="canonical" link is "a strong signal that the specified URL should become canonical".
• A sitemap entry is "a weak signal".

Duplicates split signals such as links, and they waste crawl time that could go to other pages. A merge follows four steps.

For the redirect, use a permanent one. Google says to "use permanent redirects when you're sure that the redirect won't be reverted", and recommends a permanent server-side redirect whenever possible.

Prune

Prune a page that has no purpose and no demand. First check the data: backlinks, internal links and any traffic. If the page has links or visits, redirect it to the closest relevant page. If it has none, remove it. Keep a row for the removed URL in your sheet, with the date and the redirect target if there is one, so that the history stays readable.

For a page you removed for good, return a 404 or 410 status. Google's crawl budget guide says a 404 "is a strong signal not to crawl that URL again". Do not let a removed page return a normal page with a "not found" message. Google says these "soft 404 pages will continue to be crawled, and waste your budget".

Do not prune to make the site look fresh. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether you are "removing a lot of older content primarily because you believe it will help your search rankings overall by somehow making your site seem 'fresh'", and it answers "No, it won't". Prune because a page has no use, not because it is old.

Step 5: Act, then measure

Make the changes in small batches, so that you can tell which one moved the numbers. Log each change with five facts: the URL, the date, the decision, the reason and the baseline numbers. Then wait for the data to settle and compare it with the baseline you recorded in step 2.

Compare equal windows, as in step 3, and compare each page only with itself. A page you merged has no clean before-and-after, so compare the target page's totals with the combined totals of both pages. Wait until Search Console no longer shows the newest days as preliminary.

A rise after a change does not prove the change caused it. Search results move for many reasons. Record what you did, what happened and when, and treat the result as evidence to weigh.

Strategist's content refresh stages each AI rewrite for your review, updates the page in place on publish, and can roll the text back; the page refresh decaying content describes it. To make refresh a routine, read content refresh.

Content audit for SaaS sites

A software as a service (SaaS) company has page types that other sites lack. Audit each type against its own question.

• Documentation and help pages: does the page match the current product?
• Changelog and release notes: keep them as a record, and link the newest ones from a hub.
• Integration pages: does the integration still exist and work as described?
• Comparison and alternative pages: are the claims about other products dated and sourced?
• Blog posts: does the post still answer a question people ask?

Product pages go stale faster than articles, because the product changes. Sort the sheet by page type before you score, so that you compare like with like. A changelog entry and a long guide do not need the same word count or the same traffic. Assign each type an owner who knows the product, and check the page against the live product during the audit.

FAQ

How often should you conduct a content audit?

This article cites no official schedule, so tie the audit to events. Run one after a migration, after a large traffic change, and when you take over a site. Between audits, review one section at a time on a rolling basis.

Why run a website content audit?

A site grows by adding pages, and weak pages often stay. An audit shows which pages earn visits, which compete with each other, and which need work. It gives every page an owner and a decision.

Next steps

• Read Content refresh to update the pages you marked Refresh.
• Read Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool to learn when to use it after you update or remove a page.