How to Run a Content Audit: 6 Easy Steps
A content audit is a page-by-page review of everything on a website, scored against performance data and quality questions. To run one, list every URL, add traffic and search data, score each page, and decide whether to keep, update, merge, or remove it. Then prioritize the work and schedule the next review.
This guide covers what a content audit is, how it differs from a content inventory, and the six steps with a reusable spreadsheet template. It also shows where AI speeds up the sorting and where your judgment still matters.
What a content audit is
A content audit answers one question for every page on a site: is this page earning its place? It combines three kinds of evidence. There is the inventory of what exists, the data on how each page performs, and a quality judgment about whether it still helps readers.
The output is a decision for each URL, not just a list. That is what makes an audit useful. A spreadsheet of 800 pages with traffic numbers is a report. The same spreadsheet with an action on every row is a plan.
Most teams run a content audit for one of four reasons. Traffic has dropped, or a site redesign or migration is coming. The content team may have grown and lost track of what exists. Or a new strategy needs a baseline.
Content audit vs content inventory
The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they describe different stages.
| Content inventory | Content audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Question | What do we have? | What should we do with it? |
| Contents | URLs, titles, dates, authors, content types | Everything in the inventory, plus performance data and scores |
| Output | A complete list | A decision for each page |
| Effort | Mostly automated | Needs judgment on every row |
An inventory is the first step of an audit. You cannot judge pages you have not listed.
What you need before you start
Prepare four things.
A goal. "Improve organic traffic to product guides" produces a different audit from "cut outdated pages before a migration." The goal decides which data columns matter and which pages are in scope.
A full list of URLs. Your XML sitemap is the quickest starting point. A site crawler catches pages the sitemap misses, such as orphaned pages with no internal links.
Search performance data. Google Search Console's Performance report gives clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position per page. Its help page notes that "Many reports provide an export button to download both the chart and table data."
Engagement data. An analytics export by page adds sessions and engagement. Our guide to building a landing page report covers pulling that view from Google Analytics.
How to run a content audit
The six steps below take a site from a raw URL list to a prioritized plan.
Step 1: Build the inventory
Export your sitemap URLs into a spreadsheet, one row per page. Add columns for title, content type, publish date, last updated date, and author.
Run a crawler over the site as well, and merge its list with the sitemap list. Any URL found by the crawler but missing from the sitemap deserves a note. It may be an orphaned page, a duplicate, or a page that should not be public.
Remove obvious noise before moving on. Tag pages, search result pages, and thin archive pages usually belong in a separate list. They need a technical decision, not an editorial one.
Step 2: Add performance data
Export the Search Console Performance report with the Pages dimension selected. The help page says the default view covers "the past three months," so widen the date range if seasonality matters. Twelve months is a common choice.
Match each URL in your inventory to its clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position. Then add sessions and engagement from your analytics export.
Watch for URL mismatches. Trailing slashes, uppercase letters, and tracking parameters stop rows from matching. Clean the URLs to one format in both files before joining them.
Step 3: Score each page against quality questions
Performance data tells you what is happening. Quality questions tell you why. Google's guidance on creating helpful content offers a ready-made set.
A few of its self-assessment questions work well as audit columns:
- "Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?"
- "Does the content have any easily-verified factual errors?"
- "Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?"
Google also suggests evaluating content by who created it, how it was created, and why. It describes the last of those as perhaps the most important question.
Score each page on a simple scale, such as 1 to 3, for three or four questions. Keep the scale small. Fine-grained scores slow the audit down without changing the decisions.
Step 4: Decide keep, update, merge, or remove
Now combine the data and the scores into one action per page.
| Action | Typical signal | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Keep | Good traffic, high quality score | Leave it, and check links and dates |
| Update | Impressions but weak clicks, or outdated facts | Refresh the content, title, and examples |
| Merge | Two or more pages covering the same topic | Combine into one stronger page and redirect the others |
| Remove | No traffic, low quality, no strategic value | Delete or unpublish, and redirect if it has links |
Merging needs evidence, not a hunch. In Search Console, filter by a query and switch to the Pages tab. If two of your pages both collect impressions for the same query, they are competing with each other. Merging them into one page usually gives a clearer answer to the reader and a single URL to rank.
The "update" group is usually the most valuable. Pages with many impressions and few clicks already rank. A better title or a fresher answer can lift them quickly.
Be careful with "remove." A page with no search traffic may still serve customers who arrive from email or support links. Check with the teams who own those channels first.
Step 5: Prioritize the work
An audit of a large site can produce hundreds of actions. Rank them so the first month of work has the largest effect.
A simple priority score multiplies potential by ease. Potential comes from impressions or business value. Ease reflects how much work the change needs. A title rewrite on a high-impression page scores high on both.
Group the work into batches by action type. Updating twenty pages with the same outdated fact is faster as one task than as twenty. Assign an owner to each batch, and set a date for it, so the plan turns into scheduled work rather than a list.
Step 6: Track results and schedule the next audit
Record the date and the action for every page you change. After six to eight weeks, compare clicks and impressions for the changed pages against the period before.
Share a short summary with the team: pages changed, actions taken, and early results. It makes the case for the next round of work.
Then set a schedule. Large, fast-moving sites often review quarterly. Smaller sites can review once or twice a year. A full content audit every time is rarely needed. Rolling reviews of one section at a time keep the work manageable.
Keep the audit spreadsheet as the record. Next time, start from it rather than from scratch, and add only the pages published since the last review.
What to look at in an SEO content audit
An SEO-focused content audit uses the same six steps, with extra attention on a few patterns in the search data. None of these patterns is a verdict on its own. Each one is a reason to open the page and read it before deciding.
High impressions, low click-through rate. The page appears in results but people do not choose it. The title and description are the first things to rewrite.
Positions just off the first page. Pages with an average position between roughly 8 and 20 sit at the bottom of page one or the top of page two. They are often the best candidates for a content refresh.
Declining clicks over time. Compare the last three months with the same period a year earlier. A steady decline often means the content has gone stale or a competitor has published something better.
Several pages for one query. As described in Step 4, two pages competing for one query usually perform worse than one combined page.
Pages with no impressions at all. A page that never appears in search may not be indexed. Check it in Search Console before deciding it has no value.
A page-by-page checklist
When you score each page in Step 3, a short checklist keeps the review consistent across reviewers.
- Does the title describe what the page actually delivers?
- Is the publish or update date recent enough for the topic?
- Are the facts, figures, and screenshots still accurate?
- Do all links work, including internal links to related pages?
- Does the page link to at least one related page on your site?
- Is the author or owner clear?
- Does another page on the site cover the same topic?
Record a yes or no for each item. The pattern of answers usually points straight to the action. A page with an outdated date and broken links is an update. A page that duplicates another is a merge.
How long a content audit takes
The time depends far more on the scoring than on the data work. Building the inventory and joining exports is largely mechanical. Reading and judging each page is where the hours go.
A practical way to plan is to time a sample. Score the first 25 pages, note how long it took, and multiply by the total. Most teams are surprised by the result and narrow the scope to one section or content type for the first round.
Splitting the work helps. One person can own the data joining while subject experts score the pages in their area. Agree on the scoring scale first, with two or three example pages scored together, so the results stay comparable.
A content audit template
A spreadsheet with these columns covers most audits.
| Column | Example |
|---|---|
| URL | /blog/pricing-guide |
| Title | Pricing Guide for Small Teams |
| Content type | Guide |
| Last updated | 2025-03-14 |
| Clicks (12 months) | 1,240 |
| Impressions (12 months) | 48,300 |
| Average position | 11.2 |
| Quality score | 2 of 3 |
| Action | Update |
| Priority | High |
| Owner | Content team |
| Notes | Refresh examples and title |
Keep the raw exports on separate tabs and pull values into the main sheet with lookups. That way, you can refresh the data for the next audit without rebuilding the template.
For a social media content audit, the same structure works with different columns. Replace search metrics with reach, engagement rate, and link clicks per post. Our guide to a social media report covers where those numbers come from.
Using AI to speed up the audit
The slowest parts of a content audit are joining exports and reading hundreds of pages. Both are good jobs for AI.
Upload the inventory, the Search Console export, and the analytics export to Powerdrill Bloom. Ask it to join the files on URL and flag pages with high impressions and low CTR. Then ask it to group pages that appear to cover the same topic. Its plans list uploads of Excel, CSV, PDF, and docs, so standard exports work as they are.
Then ask for a first-pass action on every row, with a one-line reason. Review those suggestions yourself, especially every "remove." AI can spot patterns in the numbers quickly. Which pages your sales team sends to customers is context that only your team holds.
The same approach works for the recurring version. The CSV AI tools page covers working with exports like these, and a saved request can rerun each quarter on fresh data.
Common mistakes
- Auditing without a goal. Without one, every page looks equally important and nothing gets prioritized.
- Relying on traffic alone. Low traffic does not always mean low value. Some pages serve a small, important audience.
- Deleting without redirects. Removing a page that has links loses that value. Redirect it to the closest relevant page.
- Scoring too finely. A 1 to 10 scale slows the audit and rarely changes the decision.
- Treating the audit as a one-off. Content goes out of date continuously. A schedule keeps the site from drifting back.
When the spreadsheet work is the bottleneck, you can try Powerdrill Bloom with your own exports and review its first-pass actions against your judgment.
Frequently asked questions
What is a content audit?
A content audit is a structured review of every page on a website. It combines an inventory of URLs with performance data and quality scores, and ends with a decision for each page: keep, update, merge, or remove.
How do you do a content audit?
Build an inventory of URLs, add search and analytics data, and score each page against a few quality questions. Then assign an action to every page, prioritize the work, and track results after the changes.
What is the difference between a content audit and a content inventory?
A content inventory lists what exists on a site, such as URLs, titles, and dates. A content audit adds performance data and quality judgments to that list, and ends with a recommended action for each page.
How often should you run a content audit?
Large, frequently updated sites often review quarterly, and smaller sites once or twice a year. Many teams run rolling audits, reviewing one section at a time, instead of auditing the whole site at once.
What tools do you need for a content audit?
A spreadsheet, a site crawler or sitemap export, and exports from Google Search Console and your analytics platform cover most audits. AI tools can speed up joining the exports and making first-pass recommendations.
Sources: Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content · Search Console Help, Performance report. The template example row is illustrative.