# How to do a content audit in 2026, using the one we ran on our own blog > A content audit step by step, shown on our own blog: the inventory, the Search Console data, the four problems we found, and how to decide keep, update, merge, or remove. Source: https://contengi.com/blog/content-audit Author: Stefan Maritz Published: 2026-10-16 **TL;DR** - A content audit is a page-by-page review of what you've published, ending in one decision per page: keep, update, merge, or remove. - Start with an inventory of every URL, add 90 days of Search Console data per page, then judge each page against what it's meant to do. - Look for four problems: pages ranking for queries they weren't written for, several pages competing for one query, pages stuck just off page one, and topics you never covered. - An agent can build the inventory and join the data in one conversation. The keep, merge, or remove calls stay with a person. The guides on content audits explain the method well. We'll skip straight to an example, because we ran an audit on our own blog this week and found every problem the guides warn about. ## What is a content audit? [Nielsen Norman Group](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-audits/) draws a clean line between two jobs. A content inventory lists every piece of content you have, with details like URL, author, and date. A content audit judges the quality of what's in that inventory and decides whether each piece needs updating or removing, and where new content would fill a gap. You need both. An inventory on its own is a spreadsheet of URLs. The audit is where the decisions happen. ## Why audit content at all? Because published posts drift. Search results change, products change, and your own new posts start competing with your old ones. [Google's guide to generative AI search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide) lists reducing duplicate content among its technical recommendations, noting it can be a bad experience for users and can waste crawling on URLs you don't care about. There's a simpler reason too. You've already paid for those posts. Updating one that sits on page two usually costs less than writing a new one from scratch. ## What did our own content audit find? We asked Claude, connected to our Contengi workspace, to compare our blog library against 90 days of Search Console data and Keyword Planner volumes. Each of these findings point to a different fix. **A page ranking for a query it wasn't written for.** Our [best content engineering tools](https://contengi.com/blog/best-content-engineering-tools) post sat at an average position of 1.9 for "content optimisation tools", with 36 impressions and no clicks. That post covers tools in general, so we wrote a dedicated page on [content optimisation tools](https://contengi.com/blog/content-optimisation-tools). **Several pages competing for one query.** For "content engineering platform", four of our URLs showed up in Search Console. Our dedicated [content engineering platform](https://contengi.com/content-engineering-platform) page averaged position 7.7 on 34 impressions. A blog post covering the same ground averaged position 40.4 on 69 impressions, and the blog index itself showed up too. That spreads one query across several pages when one strong page would serve it better. **Near-duplicate topics.** Our library holds three separate posts on content engineer pay, written for "how much do content engineers earn", "how much do content engineers make", and "content engineer salaries in 2026". Those are the same question asked three ways, and they're merge candidates once we've checked which one performs. **Duplicate records.** Several posts appear twice in our library under the same URL. Checking showed at least some are duplicate records in the library with no extra page on the site behind them, which makes them housekeeping. You only learn that by checking. **Pages just off page one.** "content marketing report" earned 334 impressions at an average position of 13.2 and two clicks. A draft for that exact keyword was sitting in our review queue, unpublished. Part of the fix was already written. **Topics we'd never covered.** "what is mcp" averages around 49,500 searches a month and we had [nothing on it](https://contengi.com/blog/what-is-mcp). We also found that [llms.txt](https://contengi.com/blog/llms-txt), which we'd flagged as missing, already had a section in our robots.txt guide, so the new post linked to the old one instead of contradicting it. ## How do you do a content audit, step by step? Five steps cover a small site. **Build the inventory.** Export every URL from your CMS or sitemap into one sheet. Add title, publish date, target keyword, and content type. Nielsen Norman Group recommends a spreadsheet for this, and it's right. **Add performance data.** Pull 90 days of Search Console data by page: clicks, impressions, and average position. Then pull the same data by query and page together, because that's the view that shows two of your pages competing for one search. **Judge each page against its job.** Ask what the page is meant to do, whether it still does it, and whether its facts are current. A page can be well written and still be the wrong answer for the query it ranks for. **Decide one action per page.** Keep it if it works. Update it if it ranks but underperforms or has dated facts. Merge it if another page answers the same question, and redirect the weaker URL to the stronger one. Remove it if it serves no reader and no query. **Turn decisions into a plan.** Put every update and merge into your [content plan](https://contengi.com/blog/content-planning-tools) with an owner and a date, the same way you'd plan a new post. An audit that ends in a spreadsheet nobody opens changes nothing. ## Which of the four actions should come first? Start with updates to pages sitting in positions 11 to 20. They already have Google's attention, and a sharper title, a current statistic, or a missing section can move them onto page one. Our piece on [automating refresh workflows](https://contengi.com/blog/what-s-the-role-of-a-content-engineer-in-automating-refresh-workflows) covers the loop. Merges come next, because they take more care. Pick the page with the best performance and links as the survivor, fold the best material from the others into it, then redirect. Check internal links afterwards so you're not pointing at a redirect. Leave removals for last and be conservative. A page with no traffic can still answer a sales question or support another page through internal links. ## How can AI help with a content audit? It's good at the slow parts. Building the inventory, joining Search Console data to each URL, grouping queries by page, and spotting pages that share a query are all jobs an agent connected to your data does in minutes. Our [agentic SEO](https://contengi.com/blog/agentic-seo) post walks through the exact run. It's weaker at the judgement calls. An agent can tell you two pages compete. It can't tell you which one your sales team sends to prospects, or which one a partner links to. Nielsen Norman Group makes the same point about automation in general: tools can gather the details, but people should do the assessing. So split the work. Let the agent build the evidence, and make the keep, update, merge, or remove calls yourself. ## How often should you audit content? A full audit once a year suits a small blog. In between, run a lighter monthly check on Search Console for pages that dropped, queries landing on the wrong page, and anything new sitting in positions 11 to 20. That monthly check is what keeps the yearly audit short. If AI assistants matter to your market, add one more check. Our guide to [auditing content for AI answer gaps](https://contengi.com/blog/how-do-i-audit-content-to-fix-ai-answer-gaps-where-my-brand-is-omitted) covers how to find the questions where assistants mention competitors and not you. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the difference between a content audit and a content inventory? An inventory lists everything you've published with its details. An audit judges each item and decides what to do with it. ### How long does a content audit take? For a blog with 100 to 200 posts, building the inventory and data takes an afternoon by hand, or one conversation with an agent connected to Search Console. The decisions take longer, so timebox them. ### What tools do you need for a content audit? A spreadsheet and Google Search Console cover a small site. A content optimisation tool helps when you're updating pages, and a crawler helps on very large sites. ### Should you delete old blog posts? Only when a post serves no reader and no query, and nothing important links to it. Updating or merging usually keeps more value. ### What is content cannibalisation? It's when several of your pages target the same search query, so search engines split attention between them. Search Console's query and page view shows it, and merging the pages usually fixes it.