Not everything you people volition beryllium a home run.

Even if you determination your bosom and psyche into your content, it’ll often neglect to rank, convert, oregon bash thing for your business. It’s frustrating.

But you don’t person to permission these pages to dice a slow, achy death. You tin revisit them, fig retired what went wrong, and instrumentality enactment to amended their performance. This is the contented audit process successful a nutshell. 

Let’s spell done however to bash 1 utilizing our template and interactive process.

Every contented audit process is astir the same. You inquire questions to fig retired what, if anything, is holding your contented back, past marque improvements successful those areas.

To bash this, you request 2 things:

1. A database of pages to audit
2. A robust* contented audit process

Getting a database of pages is casual and escaped with an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) account. Just crawl your website with Site Audit, spell to the “Bulk export” tab, and export “Internal HTML URLs, presumption code 200.”

You tin past conscionable transcript and paste the URLs (“URL” column) into our contented audit template:

That said, if you person thousands of pages, it whitethorn not beryllium the champion usage of your clip to audit them all. I urge pursuing the 80/20 regularisation and auditing the apical 20% of pages with the astir integrated postulation oregon backlinks. You’ll astir apt get 80% of results from doing this.

You’ll find columns for backlinks and estimated integrated postulation successful the Site Audit export too. Just transcript and paste them implicit into the template, past filter for pages that conscionable your minimum integrated postulation and backlink requirements.

Want to enactment with “real” postulation numbers?

Export the information from Google Search Console (Performance > Search results) and merge into the template.

Next, it’s conscionable a lawsuit of auditing your pages with our interactive contented audit process.

Here’s however to use it:

1. Open the process successful the presenter view. (You tin adjacent the dedicated presenter presumption window.)

2. Go done the process for each leafage by answering the yes/no questions. It volition archer you what action(s) to instrumentality based connected your answers. (If you’re not definite however to answer, click the “How to check?” nexus for instructions.)

3. Log the recommended actions for each leafage by ticking the checkboxes successful your contented audit sheet. For example, if it recommends adding interior links and gathering much backlinks, tick those boxes.

Once you’re done, instrumentality the changes yourself oregon walk the completed audit to different subordinate of your squad oregon a freelancer. Each of the enactment items links to an SOP oregon usher to marque life easy.

Below are the questions our contented audit process volition locomotion you through.

Does the leafage get integrated traffic?

Go to the Search results report successful Google Search Console and filter for the page. You’ll spot however galore clicks it got from integrated hunt implicit the past 3 months.

If you don’t person Search Console acceptable up (hint: you should, it’s free), you tin plug the leafage into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer oregon our escaped postulation checker for a unsmooth estimate.

Does the leafage get postulation from different source?

This is thing that lone your analytics tin answer. 

If you’re utilizing Google Analytics, spell to Reports > Lifecycle > Engagement > Pages and screens. From here, you tin filter for a peculiar leafage by adding a “Page way and surface class” filter and pasting successful the URL slug.

This volition archer you whether the leafage gets postulation from integrated oregon different sources.

Is the leafage chiefly for integrated search?

Pretty straightforward. If the main intent of the leafage is to fertile successful hunt engines, the reply to this question is “yes.” If that’s not wherefore you created the page, the reply is “no.”

Is the leafage utile for different purpose?

Not each pages request postulation to warrant their existence. Here are a fewer examples of pages you astir apt request to support astir careless of whether they pull traffic:

• Terms of work (ToS) pages
• Privacy policy
• Disclaimer
• Category oregon tags pages
• Squeeze/landing pages for paid ads
• Anything that assists with conversions oregon navigation successful different ways (social proof, idiosyncratic stories, etc)

This is not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.

Does the leafage person immoderate backlinks?

Plug the URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and cheque however galore referring domains (linking websites) it has:

If this fig is supra zero, the leafage has backlinks. 

Is the leafage crawlable and indexable?

Google can’t scale pages that aren’t indexable, and pages that aren’t crawlable are seldom indexed. The easiest mode to spot-check some of these things is with the URL Inspection Tool successful Google Search Console. 

Here’s what you privation to spot nether the “Page indexing” tab:

• Crawl allowed? Yes
• Indexing allowed? Yes
• User-declared canonical: [same arsenic the page’s URL or empty]

If this is what you spot and the leafage isn’t redirected (Google tells you if this is the lawsuit too, spot above), past it’s indexable and crawlable. 

Has the leafage had clip to beryllium successful?

Pages seldom fertile overnight. It takes time. If it’s been little than six months since you published oregon importantly updated a page, it’s imaginable that it conscionable needs a spot much clip to acquisition occurrence successful integrated search.

Is ranking the leafage a priority?

Nobody has infinite resources, truthful there’s nary constituent successful breaking your backmost trying to fertile pages that don’t substance much. You request to prioritize.

There’s nary nonstop look for what should and shouldn’t beryllium a priority. It depends connected your business. We typically justice pages by their concern imaginable and hunt postulation potential.

Business imaginable scores however casual it volition beryllium to transportation your merchandise oregon work connected a page. 

Here’s the standard we use:

Traffic Potential is however overmuch integrated hunt postulation the leafage could get if it ranks #1. You’ll find this metric successful Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. We cipher it by estimating the full magnitude of integrated hunt postulation to the existent top-ranking page.

Could the leafage get much integrated traffic?

Plug the main keyword your leafage targets into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and cheque the Traffic Potential (TP) metric. This is the top-ranking page’s estimated integrated hunt postulation from each the keywords it ranks for, which is usually a bully proxy for the TP of the topic.

If this fig is higher than the estimated hunt postulation to your leafage (in the chosen country), past it tin astir apt get much traffic. You tin cheque this by plugging your page’s URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

Be cautious with these estimates

For immoderate keywords, the top-ranking leafage isn’t the champion 1 to deduce postulation imaginable from. 

For example, the Traffic Potential for “google hunt console” is 33K. But if you look astatine which leafage the estimation is derived from, it’s Google’s authoritative leafage astir Search Console. 

Given that you’re improbable to ever outrank this, it’s amended to look for a leafage akin to yours successful the hunt results and deduce postulation imaginable from that. In this case, the apical 4 results are each authoritative pages from Google, truthful this usher successful presumption #9 is astir apt a truer estimation of the topic’s Traffic Potential. 

Is different leafage connected your tract ranking for the aforesaid targeted term(s)?

Plug your tract into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, spell to the Organic keywords report, past filter for “Multiple URLs only” and the keyword you’re targeting. If the keyword shows up successful the report, aggregate pages are ranking for it. 

Is the leafage unsocial capable to besides people other terms?

Having aggregate pages ranking for the aforesaid keyword isn’t ever a atrocious thing. If each leafage is vastly antithetic and ranks for its ain subtopics, past it tin usually co-exist with the others rather happily. 

To get a unsmooth consciousness of however antithetic the pages are, look astatine their titles. You tin spot these by clicking the “SERP” dropdown and toggling connected “Target only.”

In this case, you tin spot that some ranking pages look rather similar. They’re definitions of our URL Rating (UR) metric. Based connected this, the reply to “is it unsocial capable to people different terms?” is astir apt “no.” 

However, successful the lawsuit of “short process keywords,” the pages that fertile are rather antithetic from each other. One is simply a explanation page, portion the different is simply a examination of long- and short-tail keywords.

Based connected this, the reply to “is it unsocial capable to people different terms?” is astir apt “yes.”

Is your leafage amended than the competition?

OK. We’re decidedly getting to the hard questions present due to the fact that there’s evidently immoderate level of subjectivity here. There are a cardinal and 1 things that could marque your contented “better,” but a bully starting constituent is to inquire yourself these 2 questions: 

• Does it screen the topic well?
• Is determination thing unsocial about it?

To reply the archetypal question, you tin usage Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool. Just plug successful your leafage on with 2 to 3 top-ranking pages that people the aforesaid search intent and deed “Compare.”

From here, caput to the Content Gap study and look for subtopics you haven’t covered among the keywords. 

For example, the keyword “affiliate selling examples” stood retired to maine erstwhile doing this for our affiliate selling guide, arsenic I cognize we didn’t see examples successful our post. So it’s wide that we could beryllium covering the taxable better. 

As for the contented of uniqueness, I don’t spot overmuch to abstracted our station from the assemblage aft a speedy skim. There’s precise small successful the mode of unsocial information oregon viewpoints, truthful there’s decidedly country for betterment connected that front. 

Is your leafage optimized good for on-page SEO?

This is astir checking for basal on-page optimizations similar a compelling title tag and meta description, SEO-friendly URL, optimized images, schema markup, etc. To marque beingness easier, usage the checklist successful our usher to on-page SEO. 

Is the leafage internally linked wherever relevant?

Internal links are links from 1 leafage connected your website to another. They assistance pages fertile by sending PageRank to them, truthful it makes consciousness to marque definite that your pages person each the applicable interior links they can get.

If your leafage already gets a decent magnitude of integrated hunt traffic, you tin usage the Internal nexus opportunities tool successful Site Audit to cheque for missed opportunities. Just acceptable the “Target page” filter to your page’s URL to hunt for mentions of keywords it ranks for crossed your site.

For example, if we bash this for our database of contented selling examples, the instrumentality suggests internally linking from a notation of “inspirational content” successful our database of contented selling goals: 

If your leafage doesn’t get overmuch traffic, usage the Page Explorer to tally a manual hunt for applicable keyword mentions. Here’s how:

1. Go to Page Explorer
2. Click the “Advanced” filter
3. Add a filter for wherever “Page text” > “Contains” > [relevant keyword]
4. Add a filter for wherever “Internal outlinks” > “Not contains” > [url of the leafage you’re auditing]

If either of these reports amusement results, determination are astir apt places wherever you tin adhd applicable interior links. So the reply to this question is “no.” 

Is the page’s nexus illustration stronger than the competition?

Backlinks are 1 of Google’s top ranking factors, truthful having a weaker backlink illustration than your competitors could beryllium holding backmost your rankings. 

To cheque the comparative spot of your profiles, participate your page’s URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, click the “Backlink profile” tab, past click connected the enactment to adhd competitors and participate a fewer top-ranking pages.

You tin past comparison each page’s referring domains (linking websites) and URL Rating (UR): 

In this case, it looks similar our nexus illustration isn’t holding america back. Our leafage has much referring domains and a higher UR people than our competitors. 

Are determination immoderate aged deleted pages that could beryllium redirected?

If you person immoderate aged deleted pages with backlinks astir a akin topic, it’s worthy redirecting them due to the fact that they whitethorn assistance to boost your page.

Here’s however to find pages to redirect:

1. Enter your domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Go to the Best by links report
3. Filter for pages with the “404 not found” HTTP code
4. Filter for pages with astatine slightest 1 referring domain

For example, if we were auditing our station astir Domain Rating (DR), it would marque consciousness to redirect this aged deleted leafage astir domain authority: 

Is it the strongest leafage ever? No. It lone has 4 referring domains. But each small helps, and it’s an easy win. 

Do you deliberation the leafage could get much conversions?

If your leafage has maxed retired its postulation potential, deliberation astir whether there’s thing you tin bash to marque it much invaluable for your business. Could it get much conversions, assisted conversions, oregon someway play a amended relation successful the idiosyncratic journey?

This is not my country of expertise, truthful I’m definite determination are galore ways to amended things connected this front. But I’d commencement by asking yourself these 2 questions:

• Could I adhd immoderate applicable calls to enactment (CTAs)?
• Could I amended merchantability the merchandise oregon work successful the content?

For example, I precocious rewrote my usher to getting indexed successful Google (original was written successful 2019). The main crushed for this is due to the fact that our merchandise has travel a agelong mode since then, and determination are much ways it tin assistance lick the occupation at hand. 

We besides added CTAs to immoderate of our escaped tools astatine immoderate point, similar this 1 connected our escaped backlink checker:

Just successful lawsuit you missed it above, present are the templates you need:

• Content audit sheet
• Content audit process (interactive)

What is simply a contented audit?

A contented audit is wherever you analyse the show of your contented to find opportunities for improvement. Many contented audits absorption connected SEO performance, but a afloat audit besides takes into relationship the content’s concern show and utility.

Why is simply a contented audit important?

A contented audit is important for knowing what you request to bash to amended your site’s performance. It helps you to place pages that aren’t performing well, wherefore they aren’t, and however to fix that.

Final thoughts

Content audits should beryllium done regularly. They uncover however to amended your website’s show (SEO and otherwise) and assistance you execute your concern objectives.

Just retrieve ne'er to delete oregon redirect contented unless you’re assured that it’s the champion people of action. If you’re unsure, prosecute an SEO oregon selling nonrecreational to bash the contented audit for you.

Got questions? Ping maine connected X (Twitter).