Lessons  ·  Lesson 02

Content audit

You have three pages half answering the same question. Google picks one, usually not the one you would have chosen, and the other two quietly drag. Nobody wants to run the audit because its output is a list of things to delete, and deleting feels like admitting waste.

Part 1

Start with the pages that compete with each other

Search your own site for your main terms, one at a time. If more than one of your pages comes back for the same search, that is cannibalisation and it is self inflicted. Your traffic does not split evenly between them, it collapses towards the weakest.

Do this: Take your ten most important terms and search your own domain for each. Write down every case where two of your pages appear. That list is your audit, and it took twenty minutes.
Part 2

Merge is usually better than delete

Two thin pages on the same question make one good page. Move the useful parts into the stronger URL, redirect the weaker one to it, and you keep whatever the old page had earned instead of throwing it away.

Do this: Pick the page with more links pointing at it as the survivor, not the one you like better. Redirect the other to it rather than deleting it outright.
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Part 3

Refresh means new information, not a new date

Changing the date at the top and reordering two paragraphs is not a refresh, and readers can tell within a screen. A refresh adds a number that was not there before, removes advice that has stopped being true, and says what changed.

Do this: When you refresh, add a short line saying what was updated and when. It is honest, it helps the reader, and it stops you from faking it.
Part 4

Delete what nothing points at and nobody reads

A page with no traffic, no links and no purpose is not neutral. It spends crawl attention, it dilutes what your site is about, and it makes every audit after this one longer.

Do this: Before deleting, check what links to it, inside and out. If something does, redirect instead. If nothing does, delete it and stop maintaining it.

This is teaching material and our own reading of standard editorial practice, not advice for your specific business. Check anything important with your own specialist before you act on it.

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