7 Signs Your Website Needs an SEO Content Audit (And How to Identify Them)

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PrioNow

Here are seven signs that it’s time to refresh your website’s content, along with simple ways to identify each one using free tools. But first, remember: always base your decisions on solid data, not just gut feelings.

1. Decreasing Traffic and Content Decay

What It Means: If your overall traffic or top pages show a decline month over month or year over year, it could indicate that your content no longer matches user intent or that competitors have surpassed you with better, more up-to-date content.

How to Identify It: Use Google Search Console or a similar analytics tool to identify which pages are losing traffic. At PrioNow, we typically compare the last 3 or 6 months with the previous period and the same time last year to spot declines.

Decreasing Traffic - 3 months comparison

2. Sudden Traffic Drops After Updates

What It Means: Several times a year, Google updates its search algorithm to improve rankings, favoring high-quality content. While most core updates don’t drastically impact rankings, some can cause significant changes. A sharp drop after an update could indicate that your site has been negatively impacted.

How to Identify It: Review the “Performance” report in Google Search Console immediately after a known Google update. If you see a significant drop, it could be due to a core update. You can check the Google Search Status Dashboard to see if there was a recent update.

Sudden traffic drop identification

3. Drop in Search Rankings

What It Means: If your search rankings are dropping for target keywords, it’s a sign that something is off, whether it’s outdated content, poor keyword targeting, or increased competition.

How to Identify It: Track keyword performance using the “Performance” report in Google Search Console. Filter by specific keywords and compare current rankings to previous periods. You can also check the SERPs in incognito mode to analyze competitor content that’s outranking yours and identify what they’re doing better—whether it’s content depth, keyword usage, or structure.

Keywords - Drop in search rankings

4. Keyword Cannibalization

What It Means: Keyword overlap between pages is normal, but if multiple pages on your site compete for the same keyword and it hurts your overall organic traffic or rankings, it’s time to take a closer look and ensure the right pages are ranking for the right keywords.

How to Identify It: Use the “Queries” section in Google Search Console’s “Performance” report to find keywords where multiple pages from your site are ranking. If more than one page ranks for the same keyword and all get a significant amount of clicks, you might be facing cannibalization.

Keyword cannibalization example

Manually search your primary keywords in Google and see if more than one of your pages appears in the results. If so, consider consolidating the content.

5. Outdated Content

What It Means: SEO content managers can’t manually check every page on a website, so it’s essential to identify outdated content, especially if traffic is declining.

How to Identify It: Review content dates by checking the last modified date for your pages in your site’s sitemaps or CMS (like WordPress). Then, identify pages that haven’t been updated in a long time.

Last modified dates in sitemap
Last modified dates in WordPress

Check organic traffic in Google Search Console by filtering pages with low or declining clicks to find content that might be outdated.

6. Low-Value Pages

What It Means: Pages with little traffic or minimal relevance can drag down your site’s overall performance. We’ve especially noticed this after the Helpful Content update last year. Google uses sitewide signals, and having relatively high amounts of unhelpful content might cause other content on the site to perform less well in search. Removing unhelpful content might improve your other pages’ performance.

How to Identify It: Identify low-traffic pages using Google Analytics or Google Search Console by looking for high bounce rates, low time on page, or minimal traffic.

Potential low value pages

Evaluate content quality: If a page doesn’t provide significant value, consider whether it should be updated, merged with another page, or removed entirely.

7. Low Engagement/CTR

What It Means: If your pages rank well in the top 3 positions but don’t get enough clicks, it may indicate that your meta titles and descriptions aren’t compelling enough.

How to Identify It: Analyze click-through rates (CTR) in Google Search Console by focusing on search terms with high impressions but low CTR. Pages for these search terms are prime candidates for meta title and description optimization. Use free tools like SEO plugins to preview how your titles and descriptions will appear in search results, and make adjustments to increase engagement.

Keywords with low CTR - Engagement

How PrioNow Can Help

Identifying and addressing these issues manually can be complex and time-consuming. PrioNow simplifies the process by automating content audits, tracking keyword performance, and identifying low-value pages. Using PrioNow helps you stay ahead of search engine updates and ensures that your content remains relevant, high-quality, and well-optimized.

Conclusion

Regular content audits are key to maintaining your website’s health and staying competitive in search rankings. By recognizing the signs that your content needs a refresh and using tools like Google Search Console or PrioNow if you want to automate and simplify your work, you can keep your content relevant and high-performing.