Website Content Audit Template: Inventory, Score and Decide What Every Page Becomes | How-to Guide

By the We.Inc editorial team · Editorial policy

A website content audit template you can copy: inventory columns, a five-part scoring rubric, a keep / improve / merge / retire decision table, a worked example, the redirect rules for pages you merge, and a cadence for running audits across several sites.

A content audit sounds like a spreadsheet exercise and usually becomes one: thousands of rows, dutifully filled, never acted on. The point of an audit is the last column, the decision about what each page becomes. This template is built backwards from that decision. It asks only for the data you need to decide, scores pages on what actually matters to visitors, and gives you rules for the awkward cases, such as two pages saying the same thing or a page with traffic but wrong information.

Decide the scope before you open a spreadsheet

Write one sentence for each of these before you start:

Why now? A redesign, a rebrand, falling enquiries, a merger, a platform move. The reason sets which columns matter.
Which sites and sections? The whole domain, or only the service pages and blog? Subdomains and microsites count if visitors reach them.
Who decides? Each section needs an owner who can say "this is wrong" or "we no longer offer this". Without one, pages sit in "review" forever.
What is the deadline for decisions? Audits without a decision date never finish.

Step 1: the inventory

Collect every URL. Sources, in order of usefulness: your sitemap, a crawl of the site, your analytics landing-page report and Search Console's pages report. Each finds pages the others miss; orphan pages that nothing links to usually show up only in analytics or Search Console.

Keep the columns lean. Every column you add is a column someone has to fill.

Column	What to put in it	Where it comes from
URL	Full address	Crawl / sitemap
Title	The page title	Crawl
Type	Service, location, article, landing, legal, utility	You
Owner	Person who can approve changes	You
Last updated	Date the content last changed meaningfully	CMS or page
Visits (12 months)	Sessions landing on or viewing the page	Analytics
Search clicks (12 months)	Clicks from search	Search Console
Conversions	Enquiries, calls, bookings, sales started from the page	Analytics
Inbound links	Internal links pointing to it, plus notable external ones	Crawl / Search Console
Score	From the rubric below, 0-15	Reviewer
Decision	Keep, improve, merge, retire	Owner
Target URL	Where it goes if merged or retired	Owner
Due	Date the decision will be done	Owner

Twelve months of data smooths out seasonal pages. For a business with a busy season, check that the page was not simply out of season.

Step 2: score each page on five things

Numbers tell you what is visited; they do not tell you whether it is good. Score each page 0 to 3 on five questions. Google's own self-assessment questions for helpful content ask, among other things, whether content provides original information, a substantial and complete description of the topic, and whether a reader would leave feeling they learned enough. The rubric below turns that spirit into something a team can apply quickly.

Criterion	0	1	2	3
Accurate	Wrong: old prices, services you stopped, dead people's names	Some outdated details	Correct but dated	Correct and current
Complete for its purpose	Stub	Answers part of the question	Answers the question	Answers it plus the next question the visitor will have
Original	Copied or near-duplicate of another page	Generic text that could be on any site	Specific to you	Contains things only you know: prices, process, examples, photos
Usable	Broken layout, missing images, no clear next step	Hard to scan	Clear	Clear, accessible, fast, obvious next step
On strategy	For a service or audience you no longer serve	Tangential	Relevant	Central to what you sell now

Have two people score a sample of twenty pages independently, compare, and agree what a 2 looks like before scoring the rest. It takes an hour and makes the scores mean something.

Step 3: decide with a table, not a debate

Score	Traffic or conversions	Decision	What happens
12-15	Any	Keep	Check links and metadata, set a review date.
7-11	Some	Improve	Rewrite the weak criteria. These are usually your best returns: the page already has visitors.
7-11	None	Improve or merge	If another page covers the same topic better, merge into it. Otherwise improve and add internal links.
0-6	Some	Rewrite urgently	Visitors are landing on a bad page. Fix accuracy first, the same week.
0-6	None	Merge or retire	Merge any useful part into a stronger page; retire the rest.
Any	Any, but legally required	Keep	Privacy, terms, accessibility statement: keep and update regardless of traffic.

Overrides are allowed, but write the reason in the row. "The owner likes it" is a reason; at least now it is visible.

Merging and retiring without losing what you had

When two pages cover the same topic, they compete with each other and split their links. Merging is usually right. Do it properly:

Pick the stronger URL as the survivor: more search clicks, more links, the clearer address.
Move every useful fact, example and image from the weaker page into the survivor. A merge that drops content is a deletion.
Redirect the old URL permanently (a 301) to the survivor. Google's guidance on consolidating duplicate URLs describes redirects as a strong signal that the target should be the one shown.
Update internal links to point straight to the survivor, rather than through the redirect.
Note it in the spreadsheet so nobody re-creates the old page next year.

Retiring is different. If a page has no useful content, no visitors and no links, and nothing else is a sensible replacement, it can be removed. If it has links or visitors, redirect it to the most relevant page, not the home page. Removing pages, or hiding them from search, is a decision with consequences for traffic; take it page by page with the owner, never as a bulk clean-up.

A worked example

A ten-person physiotherapy clinic with 64 pages runs the audit before a redesign:

URL	Visits	Score	Decision	Why
/sports-injury-physio	2,140	13	Keep	Accurate, detailed, converts.
/sports-physiotherapy	180	8	Merge into /sports-injury-physio	Same service, thinner page.
/blog/back-pain-tips-2019	1,320	5	Rewrite urgently	Real traffic, outdated advice and a closed location.
/hydrotherapy	40	7	Retire, redirect to /services	Service discontinued in 2024.
/fees	890	9	Improve	Prices correct, insurance section missing.

Result: 64 pages became 51 stronger ones, every removed URL redirected somewhere useful, and the redesign team had an exact page list to build.

Copyable audit checklist

Scope, owners and decision deadline written down.
Inventory from sitemap, crawl, analytics and Search Console merged; duplicates removed.
Rubric calibrated on 20 pages by two reviewers.
Every page scored and given a decision, owner and due date.
Merges: content moved, 301 redirect in place, internal links updated.
Retirements: redirect to the most relevant page where there were visitors or links.
Legal pages checked and kept.
Sitemap regenerated; a crawl run to find broken links and redirect chains.
Next audit date set.

How often, and for many sites

A full audit once a year suits most small business sites; a quick quarterly pass on the top twenty pages by traffic catches accuracy problems sooner. Agencies running dozens of client sites should stagger audits through the year and offer them as part of a maintenance plan; our guide to website maintenance packages shows how to scope that work.

On We.Inc's white-label platform, each client site's editor includes an SEO panel that checks titles, descriptions and a focus keyword against both the source and the live site, and an analytics panel for visits. Agencies also get brand-level insights across their clients. These give you the per-page facts an audit needs without a separate tool for every site.

The editor's panels menu listing Code, Cloud, Blog, SEO, Store, Domain, Analytics, Speed and Security — Each site's editor has SEO, Analytics and Speed panels, the three sources an audit draws on most.

An analytics view showing visits and a monthly report option for clients — Brand-level analytics with a monthly report to clients. On this demo brand there is little data yet.

The visual editor with a button selected, showing fill, corners, states and breakpoints — Improvements decided in the audit can be made directly in the visual editor.

To see these panels on a demo brand, book a demo. If you run many sites, the multi-site management page explains how they sit under one brand.

Sources

Last checked 2026-10-25.

Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (self-assessment questions).
Google Search Central, How to specify a canonical URL with rel="canonical" and other methods (redirects as a canonicalisation signal).

Frequently asked questions

What should a website content audit template include?

URL, title, page type, owner, last updated, 12 months of visits, search clicks and conversions, inbound links, a quality score, a decision (keep, improve, merge or retire), a target URL and a due date.

How do you score pages in a content audit?

Score each page 0 to 3 on accuracy, completeness, originality, usability and fit with current strategy, giving a total out of 15. Calibrate by having two people score the same 20 pages first.

Should I delete pages with no traffic?

Not automatically. Merge any useful content into a stronger page and redirect. Retire a page only if it has no useful content, visitors or links, and keep legally required pages regardless of traffic.

How often should you do a content audit?

A full audit yearly suits most small business sites, with a quarterly check of the top 20 pages by traffic for accuracy.

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