How to Do a Content Audit — A Simple Checklist

A content audit is a systematic review of all the pages on your website to assess what’s working, what’s outdated, and what’s dragging your SEO performance down. Most businesses accumulate pages over the years without ever stopping to review whether those pages are still relevant or useful.

Done properly, a content audit can improve your search rankings, increase organic traffic, and make your site easier to navigate. It doesn’t need to be complicated — this checklist will walk you through the process step by step.

Step 1 — Crawl Your Site and Build an Inventory

Before you can audit your content, you need to know what exists. Use a free tool like Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) or Google Search Console’s coverage report to get a list of all indexed pages on your site. Export this to a spreadsheet.

For each URL, record the page title, the date it was last updated (if visible), and the content type — blog post, service page, product page, landing page, etc. This inventory becomes the foundation of your audit. Don’t skip pages that feel unimportant; thin or outdated pages can harm your overall site quality in the eyes of Google.

Step 2 — Pull Performance Data

Connect your spreadsheet to data from two sources: Google Analytics 4 (for traffic, engagement time, and conversions) and Google Search Console (for impressions, clicks, and keyword rankings). Most tools let you export this data as a CSV that you can paste alongside your URL list.

For each page, note: How many clicks does it get from search? What position does it rank for its main keyword? How much time do visitors spend on it? Does it drive any conversions? Pages with zero search clicks, low engagement, and no conversions are candidates for consolidation or removal.

Step 3 — Decide: Keep, Update, Consolidate, or Remove

‘Keep’ pages that are performing well — good rankings, healthy traffic, solid engagement. These just need regular maintenance. ‘Update’ pages that have potential but contain stale information, thin content, or missing sections. Adding depth to an underperforming page is often the quickest SEO win available.

‘Consolidate’ pages that cover very similar topics. If you have three blog posts about the same subject, merge the best elements into one authoritative page and redirect the others to it. ‘Remove’ — or redirect — pages that have no traffic, no rankings, no backlinks, and no strategic purpose. Removing low-quality pages can actually lift the overall quality signal for your domain.