How to perform an SEO content audit (step by step, with a template)
An SEO content audit lists every indexable URL on your site, attaches twelve months of performance data to each one, scores each page against a fixed set of decision rules and produces a prioritised action list. It takes a day or two for a site under 100 pages and several weeks for a site over 2,000. The six steps below are the ones PWD uses, with the spreadsheet columns, the decision rules and how to read what comes out.
How to perform an SEO content audit: the short version
Run these six steps in order, and do not start rewriting anything until step six is done.
- Set the goal and scope. Decide what the audit is for and which sections of the site are in.
- Build the inventory. Crawl the site and cross-check against the sitemap and Search Console so every indexable URL is listed.
- Pull the performance data. Twelve months of Search Console, GA4, link and internal link data, joined to each URL.
- Score each page. Quality and intent match on a 1 to 5 scale, plus a flag for pages competing with each other.
- Apply the decision rules. Keep, update, merge, redirect or delete, applied in order.
- Build the action plan. Sort by expected impact, assign owners and dates.
Everything below expands one of those six.
What an SEO content audit is (and how it differs from a technical audit and a content marketing audit)
An SEO content audit is a review of what each page on your site says, whether it ranks and converts, and what should happen to it next. It is a decision about content: which pages earn their place, which need work and which should go.
A technical SEO audit looks at the machinery under the content: crawlability, indexing, page speed, redirects, canonical tags and structured data. It tells you whether Google can reach and read the pages. Our technical SEO audit guide covers that side. The two audits share the same crawl, and most sites need both, but they answer different questions.
A content marketing audit uses the same inventory and scores it against campaign goals and channels rather than search performance: which pieces fed the email program, which were shared, which the sales team used. The process on this page covers it with two extra columns in the spreadsheet, funnel stage and channel results, noted in the template below.
Why do it at all? Two reasons hold up. First, rankings move as Google reweights freshness, depth and first-hand experience, and a page that ranked three years ago on volume alone is often the page losing traffic now. Second, sites accumulate content faster than they retire it, and the old, thin and duplicate pages pull down the average quality Google sees across the domain. An audit is how you find both before they show up as a traffic drop.
How long does a content audit take?
Allow one to two days for a site under 100 pages, one to two weeks for 100 to 500 pages, three to four weeks for 500 to 2,000 pages, and six to eight weeks, or an audit by section, for anything larger.
| Site size | Data pull | Review and decisions |
|---|---|---|
| Under 100 pages | Half a day | Half a day to one day |
| 100 to 500 pages | One to two days | One to two weeks |
| 500 to 2,000 pages | Two to three days | Three to four weeks |
| Over 2,000 pages | Up to a week | Six to eight weeks, or one section at a time |
The driver is the review. Once the data is joined to the URL list, deciding what to do with a page takes five to ten minutes if the reviewer knows the business, and the data pull is mostly waiting on exports and fixing URL mismatches. Sites over 2,000 pages are better audited by section (blog, then services, then products) so that each section’s action list can start before the next section’s review begins.
The content audit spreadsheet template
The audit lives in one sheet with one row per URL and the columns below. The source column tells you where each value comes from, and most of it is a free export.
| Column | Source |
|---|---|
| URL | Crawl (Screaming Frog) |
| Title | Crawl |
| Page type (blog, service, product, landing, other) | Manual, or by URL pattern |
| Primary keyword | Your keyword map, or the top query if no map exists |
| Publish date | CMS export or crawl |
| Last updated | CMS export |
| Word count | Crawl |
| Organic clicks, 12 months | Search Console Performance report, by page |
| Impressions, 12 months | Search Console |
| Average position | Search Console |
| Top query | Search Console, page filter |
| Referring domains | Search Console Links report, or a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account |
| Internal inlinks | Crawl |
| Sessions | GA4 landing page report |
| Engagement rate | GA4 |
| Conversions or leads | GA4 key events, by landing page |
| Indexed (yes or no) | Search Console Pages report |
| Canonical | Crawl |
| Overlaps with | Manual: the URL of any other page targeting the same query |
| Quality score (1 to 5) | Reviewer |
| Decision | Reviewer, from the rules below |
| Action owner | Assigned in step six |
| Due date | Assigned in step six |
| Notes | Reviewer |
For a content marketing audit add two columns: funnel stage (awareness, consideration, decision) and channel results (email clicks, social engagement, downloads or sales use), each filled from the platform that ran the campaign.
We have not published a downloadable version of this sheet. Build it in Google Sheets with the columns above in that order and it will take the exports from every tool named here without reformatting.
How to do a website content audit step by step
Step 1: set the goal and scope
Start by writing down what the audit is for, because the goal decides which columns matter. A traffic recovery audit weights the Search Console columns and the publish dates. A migration audit weights indexing, canonicals and inlinks, because the point is to decide what carries over. A rebrand weights accuracy and tone. A routine annual review weights all of them evenly.
Then set the scope. Decide whether blog posts, service pages, product pages and landing pages are all in, and whether subdomains and PDFs count. A partial scope is fine as long as it is written down, so nobody later assumes the product pages were reviewed when they were not.
Step 2: build the inventory
Crawl the site to list every URL, then cross-check the list against the XML sitemap and the Search Console Pages report so nothing Google has indexed is missing. Screaming Frog’s free tier crawls 500 URLs, which covers most small business sites, and the paid licence handles larger ones.
The cross-check matters because the crawler only finds what is linked. Orphan pages, old landing pages and pages from a previous site design often sit in the index with no internal link pointing at them. Pull the Pages report export from Search Console, compare it with the crawl, and add the URLs the crawl missed. Those orphans are usually the first candidates for redirect or removal.
Step 3: pull the performance data
Export twelve months of Search Console data by page (clicks, impressions, average position and top query), GA4 sessions, engagement rate and conversions by landing page, referring domains from the Links report, and internal inlinks from the crawl. Join each export to the inventory on the URL column.
The join is where audits stall. Use VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP in Sheets, or a join on URL if you are working in a database, and expect mismatches. The usual causes are trailing slashes present in one export and not another, http against https, uppercase characters and query strings. Normalise every URL to the same form (protocol, host, path, trailing slash) before joining, or a quarter of your rows will show zero traffic for pages that are doing fine.
Step 4: score each page on quality and intent
Give each page one score from 1 to 5 for content quality, judged on accuracy, freshness, depth, evidence of first-hand experience and expertise, and whether the page matches the intent of its top query. One score in one column keeps the review moving. A page that is accurate but shallow is a 3. A page that is out of date is a 2 whatever its length. A page that ranks for a query it does not actually answer is a 2, because the traffic will not convert.
While scoring, watch for pairs. Two pages ranking for the same query, or two posts covering the same topic under different titles, are competing with each other, and neither will rank as well as one would. Note the other URL in the “overlaps with” column. This is the check that keyword mapping is built to prevent, and the audit is where you find the pairs the map missed.
Step 5: apply the decision rules
Work down the decision rules in the next section for each row, in order, and stop at the first rule that fits. Write the decision in the column. Do not skip ahead to fix anything yet, and do not argue with the rules page by page. Consistency is what makes the results readable as patterns in step six.
Step 6: build and sequence the action plan
Sort the sheet by decision, then by expected impact. Updates to pages sitting at positions 11 to 20 go first, because those are closest to page one and an update alone often moves them. Consolidations go second, because merging two pages and redirecting one is more work but usually produces a page that outranks both. Redirects and deletions go last: they tidy the site and lift average quality, but they rarely produce traffic on their own.
Assign an owner and a due date to every row that is not “keep”. An audit that ends as a spreadsheet with no dates is the most common audit outcome, and it is worth nothing.
Decision rules: keep, update, merge, redirect or delete
Apply the rules in this order and stop at the first that fits.
| Decision | Trigger |
|---|---|
| Keep | Ranks in the top ten for its target query, or converts, and the content is accurate and current. |
| Update | Has impressions but sits at position 11 to 30, or is older than 18 months, or its top query has drifted from what the page is about, or it is accurate but thin. |
| Merge | Two or more URLs rank for the same query or cover the same topic. Keep the URL with more referring domains and traffic, fold the best of the others into it, and 301 the rest. |
| Redirect | No meaningful traffic or links, but a close equivalent page exists. 301 to the equivalent. |
| Delete | No traffic, no links, no equivalent page, and the content is outdated, thin or off-topic. Return 410, or noindex if the URL must stay live. |
Two exceptions sit above the rules. Pages you are legally required to publish (privacy, terms, disclosures) stay regardless of traffic. Pages that support conversion (pricing explanations, guarantees, process pages the sales team sends to prospects) stay too, even when Search Console shows nothing, because their job is not search.
How to interpret the results of a content audit
Read the audit as patterns, not pages. The row-by-row decisions matter, but the value of the audit is what the whole sheet says about how the site has been run. Five reads tell you most of it.
The share of pages in each bucket. Count the keeps, updates, merges, redirects and deletes as a percentage of the total. A site with more than a third of its pages in merge or delete has a publishing problem, not an SEO problem: content has been produced without a map, and the fix is upstream of the audit.
Traffic decay by publish year. Group organic clicks by the year each page was published. If pages from three or more years ago hold most of the traffic and recent pages hold little, the newer content is not being planned against demand. If the old pages are decaying fast, refresh is overdue.
Cannibalisation clusters. Sort by the “overlaps with” column. Clusters of three or more pages on one topic show where the site has been writing the same thing repeatedly, and they usually mark the topics the business cares most about, which makes them the highest-value merges.
Sections with traffic and no conversions. A blog category with strong sessions and zero leads is either attracting the wrong intent or missing the links and calls to action that would move a reader to a service page. Check the top queries: if they are informational, add the links. If they are commercial, the content is failing the reader.
Thin content share. The proportion of pages under a few hundred words that are not deliberately short (contact, category, landing). A large share drags down the average quality signal across the domain.
Turn the patterns into three lists: quick wins (updates to pages at positions 11 to 20), consolidations (the cannibalisation clusters) and prunes (redirects and deletes). Those three lists are the plan. Set the SEO KPIs you will track afterwards before the work starts, so the before and after is measured the same way.
What good looks like after 90 days
Ninety days after the action plan starts, the updated pages should show rising impressions and improving average position in Search Console, the site should have fewer indexed pages carrying the same or more organic traffic, and the cannibalisation pairs should be gone, with one URL per query. Conversions from content lag rankings by a few weeks, so judge those at six months.
What good does not look like is a sudden jump. Updated pages are recrawled over days to weeks, and merged pages take time to consolidate their signals under one URL. Steady movement on the pages you touched, and no drop on the pages you did not, is the result to expect.
What to include in a technical SEO audit checklist for long-tail targeting
A technical checklist for long-tail pages covers six things: every long-tail page is indexable, each sits at a crawl depth of three clicks or fewer from the home page, canonical tags point at the page itself, related pages link to it with descriptive anchor text, it loads fast on mobile, and it carries structured data where the content type supports it (FAQ, how-to, product or article).
Long-tail pages fail on crawl depth and internal links more than anything else. They are often published deep in a blog archive with a single link from a category page, and Google treats them as unimportant because the site does. Fixing the links is usually a larger gain than any on-page change. For the full technical list, use the audit guide linked above.
How often should you audit content?
Review the top 20 percent of pages by traffic every quarter, and run a full audit once a year or after any migration, redesign or unexplained traffic drop. The quarterly review is short: check that the pages carrying most of the traffic are still accurate, still ranking and still converting, and update the ones that have slipped.
The annual audit is the full process on this page. After the first one, the sheet already exists, so the second audit is a refresh of the data columns and a re-run of the rules rather than a rebuild. Most of the time goes into the pages published since the last audit.
When to hand the audit to an agency
Hand it over when the site has more than 500 URLs, a migration or redesign is planned in the next six months, traffic has dropped with no obvious cause, or an audit was done last year and never acted on. Each of those is a sign the audit needs people whose week is not already full.
PWD runs the crawl, the data joins, the scoring and the decision list, and the same in-house Perth team then does the updates, consolidations and redirects. Our technical SEO team handles the crawl and indexing side alongside the content review, so the two audits happen once, from one data set.
Frequently asked questions
What tools do you need for a content audit?
The free set is Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4, Screaming Frog’s free tier for up to 500 URLs, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for referring domains, and Google Sheets. That set covers every column in the template. Paid tools (a Screaming Frog licence, Ahrefs or Semrush subscriptions) add speed, larger crawls and competitor data, and they matter on sites over 500 pages, but they are not required for a sound audit.
How do you do a content marketing audit?
Run the same inventory and data pull, then add two columns: the funnel stage each piece was built for, and its results in the channel it was distributed through, such as email clicks, social engagement or downloads. Score against the campaign goal rather than search position, and apply the same keep, update, merge or remove decisions.
Should you delete old blog posts?
Delete an old post only when it has no traffic, no links, no equivalent page to redirect to and content that is out of date or off-topic. Most old posts are better updated or merged, because the URL has age and sometimes links that a new page would lose. Try an update first, and if it produces nothing in 90 days, apply the merge or delete rule.
Should I remove underperforming content immediately?
No. Underperforming is not the same as worthless. Apply the rules in order: a page with impressions at position 11 to 30 needs an update, a page duplicating another needs a merge, and only a page with nothing going for it needs removal. Removing first and asking later loses rankings you could have recovered.
What is the minimum amount of content before an audit is worth doing?
Around 20 to 30 published pages. Below that you can review every page by eye in an afternoon without a spreadsheet. Above it, the patterns start to matter more than the individual pages, and the sheet is what makes the patterns visible.
What is the biggest mistake in content audits?
Judging pages on traffic alone. A page with strong sessions and no engagement or conversions is not a keep, and a page with modest traffic that produces enquiries every month is not a delete. Score every page against the business goal set in step one, and read traffic, engagement and conversions together.
How long does a complete content audit take?
One to two days for under 100 pages, one to two weeks for 100 to 500, three to four weeks for 500 to 2,000, and six to eight weeks for larger sites audited in sections. The review time per page is the constant. The data pull is the variable, and URL mismatches in the join are where the time goes.
Request a free SEO audit from PWD
PWD will run the crawl and the content inventory on your site and send back the decision list: which pages to keep, update, merge, redirect or delete, and in what order. It is free, and there is no lock-in contract if you decide you want the work done.
Request a free SEO audit from PWD or call 08 6146 0195. Our technical SEO page explains how the technical and content audits run together.
