How to Perform a Website Content Audit (+ Free Template)

10/24/25
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TL;DR Summary of How to Perform a Content Audit to Improve SEO Rankings

Performing a content audit is essential for maintaining and improving your website’s SEO rankings by ensuring your content is fresh, accurate, and optimized. Key steps include creating a complete inventory of your site’s pages, analyzing performance metrics like organic traffic, keyword rankings, backlinks, and technical SEO issues. Using tools like Semrush and Google Search Console can streamline this process and help identify content that needs updating, consolidation, or removal. An effective content audit ultimately leads to a targeted action plan that boosts relevance, visibility, and trustworthiness.

Optimixed’s Overview: Maximizing SEO Impact Through a Strategic Content Audit Process

Why Regular Content Audits Are Crucial for SEO Success

Content “freshness” plays a pivotal role in search engine rankings, especially for topics related to news, products, and events. Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines emphasize awarding top ratings to content that is current or recently updated. Conducting regular content audits enables businesses to identify outdated or underperforming pages and optimize them to regain or improve rankings, traffic, and conversions.

Key Steps to Conducting an Effective Content Audit

  • Create a Comprehensive Content Inventory: Collect URLs of all blog posts, landing pages, and static pages using tools like Semrush Site Audit or sitemaps, then organize them in a spreadsheet for analysis.
  • Analyze Content Performance: Use Google Search Console for organic traffic data and Semrush Position Tracking for keyword rankings. Assess backlinks with Semrush Backlink Analytics, and evaluate on-page SEO factors and technical SEO issues via Semrush tools.
  • Evaluate Content Freshness and Quality: Check last updated dates and use tools like the Freshness Distance Calculator to determine how frequently content should be refreshed to remain competitive in search results.

Developing and Executing an Action Plan

Based on the audit data, assign actions to each page such as:

  • Keep as is: For well-performing, up-to-date content
  • Update: For pages with outdated info or SEO issues
  • Consolidate and Redirect: To resolve keyword cannibalization
  • Delete: For irrelevant or poor-performing content

Prioritize updates for pages with the highest impact and ensure you monitor backlinks before deleting pages. Follow SEO best practices during optimization to avoid keyword stuffing and maintain content quality.

Benefits of Integrating Content Audits into SEO Maintenance

Regular content audits help maintain site health, improve user experience, and enhance search visibility by continuously aligning your content with evolving SEO standards. Utilizing a free audit template and leveraging comprehensive SEO tools can simplify this process, making it a vital component of ongoing SEO strategies for small and large websites alike.