Review all content every quarter. Identify declining pages for refresh, thin content for removal, and cannibalization.
The 80/20 rule applies: 20% of your content drives 80% of your traffic. Focus your quarterly audit energy on that top 20%. Keeping those pages fresh and competitive protects the majority of your organic revenue.
Create a master spreadsheet combining: GA4 landing page data (organic sessions, conversions), Search Console data (impressions, average position, CTR), and CMS data (publish date, last modified). Use Screaming Frog to crawl and export page metadata.
Compare this quarter's traffic to last quarter for every page. Pages with 20%+ decline need investigation. Check: has the content become outdated? Did a competitor publish something better? Did the search intent shift? Is there a technical issue?
In Search Console > Performance > Queries: for each keyword, check the Pages tab. If multiple pages appear for the same query, they're cannibalizing each other. Solution: merge into one stronger page and redirect the weaker one.
For each declining page: update outdated statistics, add new sections covering recent developments, improve the heading structure, add missing semantic keywords, refresh the publish date. A well-executed refresh can recover 50-100% of lost traffic.
When two pages compete for the same keyword: keep the one with more backlinks and traffic. Merge the best content from both into the surviving page. 301 redirect the removed URL. Update all internal links. This often results in the surviving page ranking higher than either did alone.
Pages with zero traffic, zero backlinks, and no business purpose for 6+ months should be pruned. Options: noindex (keeps the page for users, removes from Google), 301 redirect (sends equity to a better page), or 410 Gone (permanently removed).
Help me conduct a quarterly content audit. I'll provide my content inventory with performance data: [PASTE: URL | Title | Monthly Traffic (current vs. 3mo ago) | Primary Keyword | Position | Last Updated] For each page, analyze: 1. Traffic trend (growing, stable, declining) 2. Ranking trend 3. Freshness (when was it last updated?) 4. Cannibalization risk (other pages targeting similar keywords?) Provide a prioritized action list: - Pages to refresh immediately (declining high-value) - Pages to consolidate (cannibalizing each other) - Pages to prune (zero traffic, thin content) - Pages to leave alone (performing well)
Track your progress and get guided through every step.
Open Interactive Tool