How to Perform a Content Audit in the AI Era

Published on 17.01.2026 by Chizoba T

In a competitive digital world, you want to ensure you create fresh, relevant content. One of the secret weapons for gaining insights into your content's performance is a content audit. This will show you the content that is performing well, that which needs freshening up, and that which requires removal.

It is a good strategy for creating a lead generation content marketing strategy. In this article, we will take you through the steps in conducting a content audit in the AI era.

What is a Content Audit?

A content audit involves reviewing your website's content to assess its relevance and effectiveness. This can help you identify the opportunities, strengths, and weaknesses of your content strategies.

It can also show you which content resonates with your target audience and which doesn't. You can then use the information to identify areas for improvement and enhance your content strategy. If you want to create high-quality content that engages your audience and ranks well in search engines, you should regularly conduct a content audit.

Why a Content Audit is Important

There are several reasons why a content audit is essential. These include:

Improving your SEO performance. Performing regular content audits will provide insights into your underperforming or outdated content, allowing you to update or remove it. This can improve your SEO ranking, as relevant, fresh content. Also, image SEO helps improve your ranking.
Better user experience. When you identify and fix content gaps, you may also address outdated information and broken links, thereby improving the user experience. Once visitors find the content helpful, they are likely to stay longer and engage with other sections of your site.
Better content optimization. When you understand which content works and which doesn't, you can improve your content plan. You can double down on content that aligns with your audience's needs and interests to drive higher conversions and traffic.
Higher brand authority. When you regularly update and maintain your content, your brand will be seen as the industry thought leader. High-quality, relevant, and accurate content will help increase your audience’s trust as they will see your website as a trusted and reliable source.
Inform your future content creation. You can use a content audit to understand your audience's behaviors and preferences. Analyzing your best-performing content helps you better understand the formats and topics that resonate with your audience. This can guide your future content creation strategy.
Increase engagement. Regularly refreshing your content can improve engagement metrics on your site. This is because users are more likely to engage with content that they find relevant and relatable, increasing the number of comments, shares, and return visits.
Find any duplicate content. When you conduct a thorough content audit, you can spot any form of duplicate content on your site. When you remove such redundancy, you can improve the user experience and SEO, as search engines can index valuable, unique content.

How to Prepare for a Content Audit

For your content audit to be successful, you need to prepare well. You should:

Set goals. Start by figuring out what you are trying to achieve with the content audit. Is it to improve your user experience, SEO, or content optimization? Having some clear goals can help you improve the audit process.
Get the necessary tools. There are specific tools you will need for a well-streamlined content audit. These include tools such as Ahrefs, Google Analytics, and Semrush, which will provide essential insights into your content's performance.
Conduct a content inventory. Determine all the content on your site, including blog posts, product descriptions, landing pages, and more. You can use a content audit template to organize the information.

Steps in Conducting a Content Audit

For an effective content audit, follow these steps:

Analyze Your Content Performance

In the last steps, we gathered your sites’ content inventory. Now it's time to analyze each piece’s performance to determine what is working, what isn't, and why it isn't. Several metrics will provide insights into your content's performance. These include:

Traffic. Pay attention to the number of visitors each content piece is getting. If a piece of content gets high traffic, it indicates that it is valuable and relevant to the audience. On the other hand, low traffic can indicate that the content needs updating.
Engagement rates. Consider various metrics such as the bounce rate, social shares, and average time on page. A high engagement rate indicates that your audience finds your content compelling. A high bounce rate indicates that the content may not meet the user’s expectations.
Conversion rate. This metric tracks the number of visitors who take an action, such as buying a product or downloading an ebook, after interacting with a content piece.
SEO performance. You need to review the keyword rankings and organic search traffic. Determine the well-ranking pieces and those that drive traffic from search engines. You can then use the data to determine how effective your SEO strategy is and the content that needs optimization for the relevant keywords.
Audience feedback. Check the reviews, feedback, and audience comments. To determine the content that resonates, check the one that receives positive feedback. On the other hand, negative feedback will indicate which content needs revision or removal.
Traffic source. Find out the source of your traffic, such as social media, organic search, direct, or referrals. This will help you choose a strong promotion strategy and focus on the channel that delivers the best results.
History of content updates. Check the previous updates and any content changes. Make sure you understand how content performance can guide your future decisions to revise, retire, or repurpose your current content.

Evaluate the Quality of Content

After analyzing your content's performance, you will need to evaluate its quality. When evaluating the content, you can consider several factors, such as:

Relevance. Determine whether the content aligns with your target audience's needs and interests. If you create irrelevant or outdated content, it can reduce its value and drive visitors away.
Engagement. Pay attention to the style and tone of your writing. Consider if it's properly engaging your audience. Are people interacting with the content, commenting on it, or sharing it socially? If your content is engaging enough, visitors will stay on your site longer, fostering a community.
Originality. Find a valuable insight or unique perspective on a topic. Check for overly similar content and revise it to improve utility and originality.
Accuracy. If you are providing misinformation, make sure the content is accurate and up-to-date, which will impact your credibility. Therefore, verify the source of your data and statistics.

Check for Content Gaps

When you evaluate the above aspects of your content quality, you can identify areas that need improvement, such as rewrites, updates, or removal, leaving you with a practical and robust content strategy.

Determine the Content Gaps

Content gaps on your site are areas that lack meaningful information or a topic, creating missed opportunities to engage your audience. You can spot the gaps in different ways, such as:

Assessing your audience’s needs and conducting interviews, surveys, and social media polls to gain insights into the topics that interest your audience. Once you understand their interests and pain points, you can identify where your content is falling short and where there are potential areas for improvement.
Competitor analysis. Consider what strategies your competitors are using, the topics they are covering, and the quality and depth of their content compared to yours. This will show you areas to cover again in your content.
Keyword research. You can use tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner to find the keywords that are in high demand in your niche but are yet to be converted on your site. When you target these keywords with high-quality content, you can gain more organic traffic.
Evaluation of content category. Check your current content inventory and categorize it by format, theme, or topic. Pay attention to underrepresented categories or those without detailed coverage. Once you expand these areas, you can significantly improve your content strategy.
Exploration of long-tail keywords. If there are long-tail keywords that reveal niche questions or topics, they indicate the questions and issues your target audience is searching for. By creating content around these queries, you can increase your chances of ranking higher in the search results.
Structure and clarity. Pay attention to how your content is organized to determine if it's easy to navigate and read. Pay attention to the bullet points and headings, and use concise paragraphs to improve the readability of the content. When you have some well-structured content, you can keep your visitors engaged and enhance the user experience.

In Conclusion

If you want to remain competitive in an ever-changing digital landscape, it is essential to master the art of content audit. When you regularly evaluate and optimize your content, you can enhance your SEO performance, improve your user experience, and have a more refined content strategy. By following the steps above, you can take your content to the next level through a content audit. You can read our guide on creating a competitive analysis report.