Content "freshness" is an increasingly important factor in achieving good rankings.Google's Quality Rater Guidelines say that the best ratings should only be given to information that is "current, recent, or updated".A content audit will help you to figure out what needs to be updated to improve (or maintain) your ranking positions.<h3>Want to Make Google Love Your Site? 🔎</h3>Get My Free Site Audit 👉You can use our free content audit template as you work through this guide.<h3>Why Do a Regular Content Audit?</h3>Whenever I work with a small business on a budget, content updates are the first thing I recommend. If your site has been publishing blog posts and landing pages for a year or more, updating that content can be more impactful than producing something new.A content audit involves reviewing all the content on your website for accuracy, and that includes outdated information. You also need to look at performance and technical issues during the audit.Once you know how it’s performing, you can potentially improve rankings to increase traffic.For large sites, content audits are ongoing as part of&nbsp;SEO maintenance: regular tasks that need to be completed to keep your site ranking well.<h3>Setting Goals For a Content Audit</h3>A content audit can be a large undertaking, depending on the size of your site.You’ll want to audit all landing pages, blogs, and product or service pages as part of the projectAccording to the Quality Rater's Guidelines, freshness matters most for queries related to events, news, information, and products, so it's a good idea to focus on those pages first.When setting goals for a content audit, here are some of the other issues I think about:<ul><li>Declining rankings, traffic, or conversions. Your goal is to re-optimize and update the content to regain what you lost.</li><li>Technical changes that had unintended consequences. For example, switching a plugin or changing the theme on your site affected the layout or page speed.</li><li>Content that is no longer bringing in traffic or revenue. These pages can be removed and redirected.</li><li>EEAT. Google is looking for content that oozes expertise and creates trust between the reader and the author. Often, older pages don't do this well, so it's a good idea to look for ways to improve your EEAT. The Quality Rater's Guidelines cover this in detail.Each of these goals has a process and a set of metrics. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll use a free template to cover the most important tasks.</li></ul><h3>How to Perform a Content Audit in 3 Steps</h3>Before you start, you'll want to gather a list of the keywords you want to rank for. If you don't have a list, check out our guide on how to choose keywords for SEO, then come back to this article.Let’s walk through the three high-level tasks you’ll need to plan for.<h4>1. Create an Inventory of Your Existing Content</h4>Before you start editing content, take a step back. List everything you have in a spreadsheet.You’ll need a complete list of:<ul><li>Blog posts</li><li>Landing pages</li><li>Reports</li><li>Ebooks</li><li>Core static pages</li></ul>Remember to include pages that you don’t look at every day, like your ‘About Us’ page.I recommend using a Google Sheet to gather all the URLs.You can use our&nbsp;free content audit template.Open the template and click “Use Template” in the top right-hand corner. This will save a copy to your Google Drive.We’ll use this sheet to record the URL to every page that you need to analyze.Getting the URLs to every page on your site sounds daunting. But there’s no need to worry about doing it yourself, or digging into your CMS.I always use the Semrush Site Audit tool to get the full list. And Site Audit contains a ton of useful metrics that we can use later in the content audit.If this is your first time using Semrush, type in your URL and click “Start Audit.”<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/M3AfIh6CSkOxY4suC8bD" alt="Starting a site audit in Semrush">Semrush will guide you through the process of starting your first audit.I recommend setting the page limit high enough so that it audits the entire site. But if you want to include or exclude specific sections, you can do that using the “Allow/disallow URLs” tab in the Site Audit settings.When you’re ready, click “Start Site Audit.”<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/IX3iq6lGT3GzYptkuglF" alt="Semrush Site Audit settings">Depending on how many pages need to be crawled, a site audit can take a few minutes or up to 24 hours.When it’s ready, open the audit report and navigate to the “Crawled Pages” tab. If you set the limit high enough, all of your URLs will be listed here.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/VeACGiaER3er1D0F2QcA" alt="Crawled Pages in Site Audit">To add the entire list of pages to your audit spreadsheet, click “Export” &gt; “Export to CSV.” You can choose to download in Excel or CSV format.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/id6ZoBMpRoSpUrj5KKZX" alt="Exporting URLs for content audit">From there, copy (or import) the list into the&nbsp;free content audit template.You can also copy URLs from your sitemap, but I prefer this method because I can export an overview of issues at the same time.Now that you have a list of all your URLs, you can start filling out the other columns.<h2>Are You Ranking #1?</h2>Instantly check your keyword performance with one click.CheckPowered by data from<img src="https://explodingtopics.com/static/images/semrush-logo.svg" alt="Semrush Logo"><h4>2. Analyze Content Performance</h4>This part of the audit is about reviewing the SEO for your entire site.We’ll combine data from Semrush with some insights from a couple of other tools.Organic TrafficOrganic traffic refers to website visits that come from organic search results from search engines like Google.You’ll want to ensure you’re getting the best possible traffic to high-converting pages, like landing pages and top-performing blog posts.I find that I get the most accurate data from Google Search Console.Select your site from the dropdown at the top-left. Then click “Performance” from the navigation menu.The number we’re interested in is “Total clicks”, which tells you how many people clicked on a page in Google search results.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/qOMyU5jwR2uMurRWNqpX" alt="Click data in Google Search Console">Scrolling down, you’ll find a table with information on:<ul><li>Queries (keywords)</li><li>Pages</li><li>Countries</li><li>Devices</li><li>Search appearance</li></ul>Click the “Pages” tab to display the data by page.For a small site, you can then click the filter icon to search for individual URLs and see the number of clicks they got.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/5tECpBKhQuqCbrdDb77h" alt="Click data by page in Google Search Console">Record the clicks in the “Organic Traffic” column in your content audit Google Sheet.On large sites, extracting this data page-by-page is likely to take a long time. Instead of manually searching for URLs, you can export the data.Upload it into a blank tab in your sheet. You can then use a VLOOKUP statement to bring the click data into your main sheet, which will save time compared to manually copying it over.Keyword RankingsKeyword rankings are important because they tell you where your page appears in the search engine results page (SERP).(For this step, you'll need a list of keywords that you already know you want to rank for.)We can use Semrush to export the ranking data for each page. This will allow you to see which pages likely need optimization.Create a new column in your content audit spreadsheet titled “Keywords” and make a note of each primary keyword next to the page URL.You can easily search your website for keywords if you’re not sure which keywords you targeted on each page.Next, open up the Semrush Position Tracking tool.If you’ve used the tool before, select your site from the list. If you haven’t, create a new campaign.&nbsp;Paste in your list of important keywords in the second step.If you don’t have a keyword list, you can click the “Import From…” button to pull queries directly from Google Analytics or Google Search Console. This will give you a baseline measurement of what you already rank for.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/XPVhhjpaSSOVYLysaX6R" alt="Adding keywords to a Position Tracking campaign">When you click Start Tracking, Semrush will gather ranking data for the keywords you provided.Once it’s done, click the “Pages” tab to find keyword positions for individual pages.Again, you can “Filter by URL” to find each page’s average position and any recent movement up or down. Use the date filter above the table to compare over a longer period.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/8EIb0JIQwOdPVMnMMCmD" alt="Average keyword position in Semrush">Enter the ranking position next to each page in the&nbsp;content audit template.For large sites, export the data and merge it into your&nbsp;“Current Ranking” column using a VLOOKUP equation.Once you’ve recorded the current position, you should also review the changes over time. The Semrush Position Tracking tool will do this for you.For example, if your search engine position is trending down, it’s a sign that the content has decayed, lacks freshness, or may no longer be delivering value to your target audience.&nbsp;In that case, you know that the content needs to be optimized or updated.Content optimization is a complex topic that deserves a deeper dive. We produced a separate guide on improving search engine positioning to help you understand how to adjust content to improve rankings.<h2>Fix SEO Errors Before They Cost You 🚨</h2>Run a full-site audit and optimize your rankings.AuditPowered by data from<img src="https://explodingtopics.com/static/images/semrush-logo.svg" alt="Semrush Logo">Reviewing CannibalizationCannibalization means you have more than one page ranking for the same keywords.This can be a problem because your visibility for that keyword is split between multiple pages on your site.So it can harm your rankings, and reduce organic traffic to the page you really want people to visit.Cannibalization is often accidental. It can be difficult to avoid if the content is closely related. However, if it’s impacting your revenue, you need to track down and fix the problem as part of reviewing keyword rankings.You can find cannibal pages in the Semrush Position Tracking report. Click your project, then click the “Cannibalization” tab to review the affected pages.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/nXjnkGwvTty4N86C7qce" alt="Cannibalized pages in Semrush">If any of your pages are losing keyword positions and appear to be cannibalizing each other, it’s a sign that you need to clarify the purpose of each page by optimizing the content.You can make a note of this in your sheet next to the URLs that are cannibalizing each other.BacklinksBacklinks are links from other websites that point to pages on your site.These links signal to search engines (and users) that your content has value.In general, links from sites with high domain authority are most valuable. Having these kinds of links can help your content to rank well.So it’s important to know how many backlinks each of your pages has.To get this data, use the Semrush Backlink Analytics tool.Enter your domain name, and click “Analyze.”<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/8wL7Lo0LRS6EmIpFl2Il" alt="Analyzing backlinks in Semrush">Click the “Indexed pages” tab to see how many backlinks and domains link to each page.

Content "freshness" is an increasingly important factor in achieving good rankings.

Google's Quality Rater Guidelines say that the best ratings should only be given to information that is "current, recent, or updated".

A content audit will help you to figure out what needs to be updated to improve (or maintain) your ranking positions.

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