A content audit is a systematic review of all the pages and posts on a website to assess current performance, content quality, and strategic alignment — and to decide which content should be kept as-is, updated, consolidated with a related piece, redirected, or removed. A thorough content audit pulls data from Google Search Console (impressions, clicks, average position, CTR) and Google Analytics (sessions, bounce rate, average engagement time) for every URL, then grades each piece against traffic thresholds and quality standards. Typical disposition categories are: Keep (high-performing, on-strategy), Improve (useful but underperforming — update the copy, add depth, improve schema), Consolidate (merge with a closely related page and 301-redirect the weaker URL to the stronger), or Remove (thin, off-topic, duplicate, or otherwise harmful content). Regular content audits — annually for most sites, quarterly for high-volume publishers — prevent content decay: the gradual erosion of ranking authority as pages age without updates.
Glossary entry
