Michael Epps Utley {kind=image/jpg}
Despite the nearly 35 million businesses operating in America today, with an infinite number of selling propositions, efficiencies, goals, strategies, tactics, and KPIs, there is still one aspect in digital marketing that unifies everyone: the need to show up online when someone searches for what you offer.
If your website isn’t ranking like it used to (or isn’t ranking at all), it’s time for an SEO content audit.
How to Perform a Content Audit
A content audit is critical for improving SEO and the user experience. The idea is to evaluate all the material on your site to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s missing, so you can make necessary improvements and better align your content strategy with your digital marketing goals. Regular audits keep your content sharp, relevant, up-to-date, consistent, and optimized, ensuring every page is geared toward visibility, engagement, and your company’s growth.
While this process is highly effective, it’s also data-heavy and time-consuming. You can give it a whirl on your own, but you wouldn’t be faulted for partnering with experienced SEO professionals on this one.
Step 1: Gather All Existing Content
A successful web content audit starts with a thorough site inventory, as you can’t improve what you haven’t measured.
Start by pulling together all your published assets, from blog articles and landing pages to guides, FAQs, and resource content. Then, look for the right sitemap or SEO tools designed to meet your goals. These can be individual XML sitemap extractors and website crawlers, or integrated crawlers and extractors. An XML sitemap extractor is a tool that pulls out all the URLs in an XML sitemap file, helping you begin your analysis and check that all pages are included. A website crawler scans your site by following internal links to discover your pages, assess technical SEO, and collect on-page data.
These tools come in all sorts of formats, from free and simple to paid and comprehensive, and they form the foundation of an effective content audit template.
Step 2: Audit Performance Metrics
Once you have a list of URLs meant for indexing, it’s time to see how each piece of content is performing. This phase gives you a clear performance snapshot that separates high-value pages from those dragging down your site’s performance.
Here’s what to look at:
Traffic Metrics: Review total visits, bounce rates, and average time on page to see whether your content is keeping users engaged or causing them to leave early.
Engagement Metrics: Examine how readers interact with your content by looking at shares, comments, and click-through rates. These signals reveal which topics resonate most with your audience.
SEO Data: Google Search Console is a free tool that monitors keyword rankings, backlink quality, and search visibility. This data highlights which pages are performing well and whether technical issues are affecting visibility.
Conversion Metrics: Track form fills, downloads, or purchases to measure how effectively your content drives action. If conversions are low, look into refining your messaging, strengthening CTAs, or improving the user experience.
Advanced SEO tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush can take your audit even deeper by analyzing backlink quality and uncovering optimization opportunities. If your top-performing posts are slipping or your conversion rates are stagnant, these tools can reveal the culprits, helping you diagnose problems, identify new linking and keyword opportunities, and adjust your strategy based on competitive and historical information.
Step 3: Evaluate Content Quality
Performance data only tells part of the story. The next step is evaluating the quality and relevance of your content. Assess whether each page still reflects your brand, delivers accurate information, and meets target audience search intent. Content that was perfectly optimized a year ago might now be missing updated statistics, keywords, or formats that current search algorithms favor.
Also, look at how well your content reads and displays across devices. A post that’s hard to skim can quickly lose credibility and engagement. The same applies to tone and structure. Content should be authoritative, useful, and aligned with your audience’s expectations.
Step 4: Categorize and Take Decisive Action
Once you’ve evaluated performance and quality, the next step is categorization. Each page should be assigned a clear next action: keep, update, merge, or retire.
High-performing, evergreen content that continues to rank well should generally be kept and lightly refreshed as needed. Pages with solid potential but outdated data or weaker optimization should be updated with new information, stronger keywords, or enhanced calls-to-action. Overlapping articles can often be merged into one comprehensive resource, improving authority while reducing competition between your own URLs. Finally, content that’s no longer relevant, low in quality, misaligned with your current brand, or offers no SEO or user value should be removed to declutter your site. We recommend a conservative approach to retiring content, as even lower-performing pages and blogs can provide value if updated, and not all pages will be top performers.
This phase requires strategic decision-making because every change you make will impact your website’s structure and performance.
Step 5: Create a Forward-Thinking Plan
With your analysis complete, turn insights into action. Record which pages were assigned to which category using a tracking spreadsheet. Adding a column labeled “Action” near the front makes it easy to monitor progress and maintain accountability.
Next, prioritize your updates based on potential impact. High-traffic pages with declining performance or strong SEO potential should move to the top of your list, followed by secondary updates that support broader goals.
Assign responsibilities, set realistic timelines, and develop a content calendar that integrates both updates and new opportunities. By mapping your improvements alongside seasonal campaigns and product launches, you ensure that every page works in harmony with your overall business goals.
Finally, treat this plan as a living document. Revisit it regularly to track improvements and ensure your next content audit reflects measurable growth driven by the decisions you make now.
Tools To Use
Content audits depend on accurate, reliable data. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Search Console remain indispensable for tracking user behavior, keyword rankings, and technical issues. Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs provide competitive insights and keyword gap analysis, while Screaming Frog offers an in-depth crawl of your entire site.
The arrival of AI-powered platforms is transforming the content audit process. Tools like MarketMuse and Frase specialize in SEO and content gap evaluation, while more flexible AI tools like ChatGPT and MaxAI allow for customized content audits based on prompts. Together, these technologies streamline time-consuming tasks like identifying keyword opportunities, assessing content quality, detecting technical SEO issues, and analyzing user behavior, resulting in faster, more accurate, and actionable audit outcomes.
From Insights to Rankings
By analyzing every piece of content for performance, accuracy, and value, you can uncover hidden opportunities that directly influence search rankings, traffic, conversions, and ROI. At GoEpps, we recommend conducting a content audit every 6 to 12 months.
For most businesses, running these audits internally can be labor-intensive and technically complex. Partnering with a specialized digital marketing agency ensures your audit is data-driven, properly interpreted, strategically executed, and focused on measurable results rather than guesswork.
These are the principles we follow at GoEpps. If your website traffic is slipping or your content isn’t driving results like it used to, our specialized teams are here to handle the heavy lifting.
Improve visibility, engagement, and ROI when you partner with GoEpps. Contact us today. We’d love to hear from you!
