The short answer

Review important or fast-changing pages quarterly, stable evergreen content every six to twelve months, and the whole content library at least annually. Audit sooner after a major site change, traffic drop, product change, or new legal or industry requirement.

Triage before reading every word

Export each URL with title, purpose, owner, publication date, last review, traffic, search queries, useful actions, revenue or assisted conversions, links, and current status.

Mark urgent pages first:

• Money, health, legal, safety, tax, or regulated advice.
• Top traffic and conversion pages.
• Product, price, policy, and contact information.
• Pages with falling traffic or broken links.
• Old posts tied to discontinued offers.
• Groups with suspiciously similar titles or answers.

Google's SEO Starter Guide recommends checking published content and updating or deleting material that is no longer relevant.

Make one decision per page

Use five outcomes:

1. Keep: Accurate, useful, distinct, and performing its job.
2. Update: Still needed but facts, examples, screenshots, or offer details changed.
3. Improve: Intent is sound, but the answer, proof, or next step is weak.
4. Consolidate: Two or more pages serve substantially the same reader decision.
5. Remove or redirect: No longer useful, accurate, supported, or strategically needed.

Do not keep a weak page solely because it once received visits. Do not delete a page without checking backlinks, conversions, campaign destinations, and whether a redirect has a genuinely relevant home.

Audit quality, not only traffic

Read as the customer. Is the answer direct? Does it contain first-hand specifics? Are sources attached to claims? Does the page make the next decision easier? Could the advice be pasted onto an unrelated business page?

Google's people-first content guidance offers useful self-assessment questions about originality, experience, completeness, and reader satisfaction.

Keep a change log with the reason, editor, date, redirect, and next review. Audit in manageable groups and finish the repairs before producing another long spreadsheet of problems.

Sources and further reading

• Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide
• Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content

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Helpful WAHMN article

For a worked example and more help with this topic, read How to Write Blog Posts That Rank on Google.

Helpful WAHMN tool

The Editorial Calendar is designed to help you give content audits a regular place beside new publishing work.

Related Questions

• How should SEO, social media, and content work together to attract the right audience and move people toward a sale?
• How do content pillars and topic clusters work together, and how many does a small business need?
• When should I update, consolidate, or delete old content instead of publishing something new?
• Is blogging still worth the time for a small business, and when is it not?

Related WAHMN resource

If blogging is part of your business model or customer-acquisition plan, this system helps you build the larger publishing workflow. See Blogging Business System.