Sample layout. Not a real client.
Trade, city: the problem in one line
- Starting point
- Rank grid before any change
- What changed
- The one or two changes that moved it
- Result
- Rank grid after, and the change in calls
An SEO content audit decides what every page is for.
Years of blog posts and city pages add up to a site nobody has read from end to end. A content audit goes through it page by page and says which ones are doing a job.
No long contracts. You talk to Simon.
Map pack: tankless water heater installation La Mesa
A
B
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- 17 years in SEO
- Engineering degrees
- 85% of clients in San Diego County
- No long contracts
What years of publishing leave behind
- Hundreds of blog posts and no idea which ones work
- City pages identical except for the city name
- Several pages chasing the same search, none ranking well
How a content audit runs
Scientific SEO
- 1 Measure I list every page with its searches and position, and you get a decision beside each.
- 2 Change one thing You merge one group of overlapping pages into a single stronger page.
- 3 Measure again I check rankings for that topic again about two weeks later.
- 4 Keep what works If the merged page holds or rises, you handle the next group the same way.
What a content audit reviews
- Every indexed page, by URL
- Pages competing for one search
- City and service area pages
- Searches with no page
- Titles and headings
- Internal links between pages
How an SEO content audit sorts the pages you already have
An SEO content audit uses search data to decide, for each page of an existing website, whether to keep it, improve it, merge it with another or remove it, and it names the pages that are missing. As part of a Scientific SEO Audit, it suits a site that has grown for years.
The five decisions
Every page gets a verdict, and so does every gap where a page should exist.
| Decision | When it applies |
|---|---|
| Keep | The page ranks for the search it was written for and nothing is holding it back |
| Improve | It appears in searches that matter and sits too low, or answers the question late or vaguely |
| Merge | Two or more pages compete for the same search, and one stronger page would serve better |
| Remove | It appears in no searches, serves no customer and supports no other page |
| Write | A service or a place you want work from has no page at all |
The evidence for each page
I start from what Google already does with the page. With view access to your Google search data I can see, for each URL, the searches that showed it, with how often and in what position. A crawl adds whether the page is indexed and how many other pages on the site link to it. Without that access I work from rankings and the crawl alone, and the audit says the evidence is thinner.
Word count isn’t part of the evidence.
Pages that compete with each other
Two pages aimed at the same search often do worse than one. Google has to choose which to show, and it may switch between them or settle on the weaker one. This happens easily on a home-service site: a service page for tankless water heater installation, then several blog posts over the years on almost the same subject. For each group the audit names the page that should carry the topic and sets out what to fold into it and which URLs to redirect. How the remaining pages should link together is a question of site architecture.
City pages that differ by one word
If the La Mesa page and the Santee page share every sentence except the city, neither gives Google or a customer a reason to prefer it. Sets like this are a frequent result of building a site to a page quota. The audit checks which of them appear in search at all, and recommends rewriting the ones for places you really want work from as proper service area pages, with detail that is true of that place.
Why removal is tested too
Deleting forty posts in one afternoon tells you nothing if rankings then move. Removing or merging pages is a change like any other, so I plan it in stages and measure each one. I recommend starting with one group of overlapping pages: redirect the old URLs to the surviving page, then check again about two weeks later. If the surviving page holds or improves, the next group follows.
Where the audit hands over to writing
Where a page should be improved or created, the audit says what question it must answer and for whom. The writing itself is content for SEO, which is separate work. Choosing which missing topics deserve a page relies on keyword research. I don’t believe more content always wins, so the list of pages to merge or remove can be longer than the list to write.
Also in Scientific SEO Audits
What a result looks like
Every engagement starts and ends with the same measurement.
Content audits across San Diego County
Will deleting pages hurt my rankings?
It can if it's done carelessly, which is why I don't recommend deleting in bulk. A page that appears in no searches and has no links pointing to it can usually go without effect. A page with some history should be redirected to the closest surviving page so its value isn't thrown away. The audit marks which is which, and I stage and measure the removals.
Do I need more blog posts?
Write more only if the posts you have bring in searches from likely customers. If they bring nothing, or out-of-state readers after do-it-yourself advice, more posts add cost without calls. Service pages and answers to job-related questions usually come first.
My last agency wrote the content with AI. Is that a problem?
It depends on the pages themselves, and less on how they were produced. Google's stated position is that it judges content on whether it helps people, whatever was used to write it. The audit applies the same test: does the page answer a real question accurately, with details specific to your company and area. Pages that fail are improved, merged or removed, whoever or whatever wrote them.
Does the audit include rewriting the pages?
No. The audit gives the decision for each page and, where a page should be improved, a statement of what is missing, which search the page should serve and what question it must answer for whom. You can do the rewriting yourself or give it to a writer you already use, and I can do it as separate work. Either way I suggest one page at a time, so you can measure the effect of each rewrite.
Find out which of your pages are doing a job.
Send me your website address and roughly how long the site has been publishing, and I'll tell you what a content audit would look at.
- A rank grid showing where you appear, and where you don't
- The technical and Google Business Profile issues that matter most
- What I'd change first, in plain English
Prefer to talk? Call (619) 675-7678, 9am to 6pm.