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Ella Pybus
- 2 Min Read
- Blog, Content Creation, Digital Marketing, SEO
What Is a Content Audit and How Does It Work?
Not all content is good content, some of it might actually be negatively affecting your site. Which is why you need to audit your content to assess the impact it is having.
If you’ve ever felt like your blog is too messy, your traffic is non-existent, or you’re not sure what’s worth keeping, a content audit gives you clarity.
A content audit is a structured review of all the content on your website, articles, pages, videos, guides, to evaluate their performance, accuracy, and value. It helps you see what’s working, what’s outdated, and what needs improving.
A well-done content audit can boost your SEO, increase engagement, and allow opportunities to drive results without creating more content from scratch.
In this blog, we’ll discuss what a content audit is, why it matters in digital marketing, and how you can use it to succeed further from what you’ve already got.
Why Do a Content Audit in the First Place?
If you’re producing content regularly but never stop to review it, you’re likely missing out on opportunities that can have a positive impact for your site.
A content audit helps you:
- Identify high-performing content you can succeed further with
- Spot underperforming pages that are negatively affecting you
- Find duplicate, outdated, or irrelevant content
- Understand what topics and formats resonate most with your audience
- Improve your SEO by aligning content with user intent and search engine guidelines
Think of it as spring cleaning for your website.
What Does a Content Audit Actually Look At?
It’s more than just scrolling through your blog to see if they’re still relevant.
A proper audit involves reviewing things like:
- Page titles, meta descriptions, and keyword usage
- Word count and readability
- Backlinks and internal linking
- Traffic, bounce rate, and time on page
- Conversions – are people doing anything from the blog?
Want to learn how to evaluate your own content like a pro? Read our blog: how to perform an seo content audit
How To Run a Simple Content Audit
You don’t need expensive tools to do simple audits.
Here’s a simple step-by-step process:
- Create a content spreadsheet
- Export all your blog post titles, and URLs and paste them into your spreadsheet
- Gather performance data – Pull metrics from Google Analytics and Search Console.
- Review and categorise – Decide whether to keep, update, merge, or delete each piece of content.
- Take action – Update outdated articles, improve thin content, remove what no longer serves a purpose or is not relevant anymore.
This can take time, but the clarity you gain is worth it and can only have a positive impact.
Tools That Can Help
While you can do it manually, a few tools make life easier:
- Google Search Console – See which content gets clicks and impressions.
- Screaming Frog – Crawl your site and export a full list of content URLs.
- SEMrush – Evaluate backlinks and organic keyword performance.
Even a basic spreadsheet with your URLs and data can be useful when reviewed.
Final Thoughts
A content audit isn’t just for big websites or advanced marketers, it’s one of the smartest things you can do for your content.
- It helps you stop guessing and start optimising correctly.
- It turns clutter into clarity.
- And best of all, it allows your website to grow.
If you’ve been publishing content without ever looking back, now’s the time to go and review it.
Ready to get more from your content?
Start your first audit today—or reach out if you need a second set of eyes.