Content audit: making your existing content perform better

Running a content audit means you inventory, assess and purposefully improve all the content on your website. The idea behind it is simple: the content you already have is just as valuable as everything you still want to create, and even small optimisations can deliver more revenue and progress towards your goals. In this article you’ll read what a content audit is exactly, when it pays off, which metrics actually matter and how to tackle one step by step. The core: use data to strengthen what already works, instead of producing blindly.

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What is a content audit exactly?

A content audit is the process of cataloguing all the content on your website and assessing the performance of each piece. By content we don’t just mean blog articles and landing pages, but also cases, testimonials, whitepapers, videos, webinars, infographics and FAQs. Everything you use to promote your brand and help people discover more about your offer belongs in there.

Once you have all your content listed, you assess the quality and performance of each piece. Then you decide what to do with it. According to Ahrefs’ standard audit practice, every piece ends up in one of five categories:

• Keep as it is.
• Merge with another piece.
• Update with new information, data and keywords.
• Redirect to something else.
• Delete if it no longer adds anything.

An example makes it concrete: say your audit uncovers an article from 2017 that is badly outdated and pulls little traffic. The data shows the page still has potential, so instead of deleting it you go for a refresh and optimise it for new keywords.

The big advantage of an audit is that it’s a strategic process. Instead of judging on gut feel (“yes, good page” or “no, bin it”) you use the available data to determine which content you improve and how. You make decisions based on how your customers interact with your site, and that increases the odds of success.

When does a content audit pay off (and when doesn’t it)?

A good content marketing strategy isn’t only about producing. It’s about getting the maximum out of every piece of content you already own. An audit pays off in several ways. It helps you to:

• Find SEO opportunities. Is a competitor overtaking you, or is a piece performing below expectations? An audit uncovers new keywords and finds issues such as missing meta descriptions.
• Improve accessibility. Small, overlooked things like missing alt text or insufficient colour contrast come to light.
• Strengthen the user experience. Content that loads slowly or isn’t mobile-friendly drives visitors away and hurts your SEO. An audit pinpoints those bottlenecks.
• Stay current. Search algorithms change several times a year, and what Google says about helpful content weighs ever more heavily. A regular audit gives you the moment to update content and keep it fresh.
• Build an asset library. An overview of all your content saves time: out of ideas for social, and you immediately see what you can reuse.

And now the honest side. An audit doesn’t pay off if you barely have a handful of pages; in that case you simply go through them manually and a formal process is overkill. It also doesn’t pay off if you have no clear goal, because then you’re optimising at random. We’d rather tell you in time that something isn’t worth it than push a heavy process on you that never touches your pipeline. For a small B2B team that wants to move fast, a focused audit of your most important pages is often more valuable than an exhaustive inventory of everything.

How do you define the goal of your audit?

Before you start, determine what the audit has to deliver. This is the step that gets skipped most often, and that’s exactly why audits stall. Without a goal you pick the wrong metrics and the work bogs down in numbers that move nothing.

The goal steers what you look at. If you want to improve your SEO, focus on content gaps, matching search intent and optimising pages, plus technical matters like missing headings and meta descriptions. If your goal is to strengthen your credibility and expertise, look for weak content, add sources and work in quotes from people with demonstrable expertise.

One B2B goal we often put front and centre in practice: which pages touch the pipeline? An audit that aims purely at traffic feels good but says little about revenue. More on that in the next section.

Which metrics really matter?

It’s tempting to measure everything, but the gain sits in actionable metrics, not in a pile of numbers that change nothing. This is where our approach deviates from the standard: steer on customers and revenue, not on vanity numbers like pageviews and shares.

A few metrics that do hold up:

• Conversion and engagement. Lots of traffic doesn’t mean content lands. Look at conversion rate, time on page and how people really engage with the piece.
• Return on investment. Understanding how much a piece delivers helps you decide what you keep and what needs optimisation. How to go about it, you’ll read in measuring content marketing ROI.
• Qualitative data. Numbers like visits and bounce rates are valuable, but feedback and reviews tell you what customers really think of your content.
• Technical health. Load speed and mobile usability co-determine your rankings and your user experience.

What you check per piece concretely depends on your goal. Think: does the piece target a relevant keyword, is there duplicate or thin content, is the information outdated, are topics missing (content gaps), are the metadata and alt text correct? Stick to metrics that lead to an action. A metric that leads nowhere is ballast.

How do you run a content audit step by step?

An audit looks heavy, certainly with a lot of content or if you’ve never done it before. Broken into steps it’s manageable, as Semrush’s content audit process also shows. The process in three phases:

1. Make an inventory of all your content. Not just pages, but also visuals, videos and interactive elements. Seeing everything in one place makes it easier to analyse performance and update pieces methodically. On a large site you automate this with a crawl tool or start from your sitemap; export everything to a spreadsheet.
2. Decide which issues you want to detect and assess each piece. Add the metrics that fit your goal to each asset and go through every piece. Some data you pull from tools, other things you assess manually. Note for each piece why it needs improvement.
3. Tackle the issues in order of priority. You’ll almost certainly find more problems than you can solve in one go. Rank them by difficulty and impact. Start with the combination of high impact and low difficulty: those are your quick wins. Set a deadline per task and split the work across several people, because an audit goes faster and better with a team.

Schematically, an audit moves upward in three phases, from a bare inventory to targeted impact on your most important pages:

For improving what comes out of your audit, a content refresh approach is your most important lever: make performing articles stronger and prune dead content away. Want to embed the approach in your broader planning? Link it to your content plan.

Which mistakes should you avoid in a content audit?

An audit can also go wrong, and then you make the wrong changes or damage your rankings. The most common pitfalls:

• Having no goal. Without an objective you lack direction and pick the wrong metrics.
• Not documenting findings. Put everything in a spreadsheet, otherwise you can’t track progress and success.
• Not prioritising issues. Without priorities the most critical problems stay untouched.
• Leaning too much on tools. Tools save time, but excessive trust leads to misinterpreted data. Always validate automated insights with a manual look.
• Auditing only once. An audit isn’t a one-off job. Schedule it recurringly, annually for instance, or more often if you publish a lot of content.

That last one is the most important to us. The first audit is the most work; after that, managing your content becomes a routine that pays for itself.

Ready to make your existing content pay off?

A content audit isn’t a polish job, it’s a revenue lever. For B2B companies (not webshops), the biggest gain rarely sits in producing even more, but in getting clarity on what you already have and purposefully strengthening what touches the pipeline. We’re a small team that moves fast and gives honest advice, also when something isn’t worth optimising.

Want to know which of your existing pages have the most potential and where you’d better not spend your time? Book your free intake.

Frequently asked questions about a content audit

What is a content audit? A content audit is the process of making an inventory of all the content on your website, analysing that content and optimising it so it lands better with visitors and performs better in the search engines.

Why do I need a content audit? An audit helps you detect problems with your content and determine how to make it better. The result: quality, fast-loading content that offers value, ranks better and delivers more clicks and conversions.

How often should I run a content audit? An audit isn’t a one-off job. For most B2B companies annually is enough, but if you publish a lot of content, a higher cadence pays off to keep your content relevant and credible.

Which metrics are most important? Metrics that lead to action and touch your goal: conversion, engagement, ROI and technical health. Avoid vanity numbers like standalone pageviews that don’t influence revenue or pipeline.