If you’re creating content month after month without reviewing what you already have, you could be missing significant opportunities to improve results. Worse, you might be wasting precious budget on content that simply doesn’t work.

The biggest marketing challenges for small businesses are limited budget, time constraints, and finding the right marketing channels. Yet many businesses keep producing more content without stopping to ask whether their existing content is actually delivering results.

A content audit isn’t just good housekeeping. It’s a strategic process that can save you money, boost your search rankings, and help you work smarter, not harder.

What is a B2B Content Audit?

A content audit is the systematic review and analysis of all the content on your website, social channels, and email funnels. Think of it as an MOT for your marketing content. You’re cataloguing what you have, assessing what’s working (and what isn’t), and identifying opportunities to improve your engagement and results.

52% of B2B buyers say they are definitely more likely to buy from a business once they have read their content. But that only works if your content is findable, relevant, and aligned with what your buyers actually need.

When you understand which content topics, formats, and channels deliver the best results, you can focus your efforts where they’ll make the biggest impact.

Why Bother? The Business Case for Content Audits

First, we need to tackle the most common objection: “I don’t have time for this.”

We understand. You’re already juggling multiple roles, and most SME owners spend less than an hour daily on marketing. Yet a content audit is worth the investment because you can:

Save Money by Stopping What Doesn’t Work

Every piece of underperforming content represents wasted time and budget. A content audit reveals exactly where your efforts aren’t paying off, so you can redirect resources to what actually drives results.

Save Time with Smarter Content Strategies

Updating and re-purposing existing content can be one of the most efficient content marketing tactics. Instead of constantly creating from scratch, you can refresh and optimise content that’s already got some traction.

Boost Your Search Rankings

Companies that audit and improve their blog content see organic traffic reach all-time highs. Regular content audits ensure you’re aligned with current SEO best practices and Google’s evolving algorithms.

Discover Hidden Opportunities

Many businesses discover they’re already ranking for valuable search terms they didn’t even know about. A content audit reveals these opportunities and helps you capitalise on them.

Prevent Costly Traffic Loss

Low-quality content on some pages can harm your whole website with Google algorithm updates. An audit helps you identify and fix problem areas before they drag down your entire site’s performance.

Find Quick Wins

Small changes to old posts can generate thousands of pounds in additional revenue. Sometimes a simple refresh of an existing article delivers better ROI than creating something entirely new.

“But I Really Don’t Have Time for This”

We hear you. You don’t need to audit everything at once. Make it manageable:

Start Small: Begin with your top 20 performing pages. Focus on the content that’s already getting traffic but could perform even better.

Choose Your Frequency Wisely: At minimum, conduct an annual content audit of your website’s most valuable pages. If you’re in a fast-moving industry or publish frequently, quarterly audits help you respond to shifts in user behaviour.

Different Content, Different Schedules:

• Blog posts and awareness content: Every 6 months
• Product pages and consideration content: Quarterly
• Conversion pages: Quarterly (or monthly if you have high traffic)
• All content: Annually at minimum

Trigger-Based Audits: Beyond regular schedules, conduct an audit when you:

• Launch new products or services
• Notice a significant traffic drop
• Undergo a re-brand or website migration
• See major Google algorithm updates

The 5 Steps for Your Content Audit

1. Define Your Goals

Start with your business objective. Are you trying to increase revenue from specific products? Drive more qualified leads? Improve brand awareness?

Then translate this into specific, measurable marketing metrics. For example:

• Increase organic traffic by 30% in 6 months
• Improve conversion rate on service pages by 15%
• Generate 50 additional qualified leads per month

Be specific. Vague goals lead to vague results.

2. Perform Your Content Audit

Catalogue Your Content: Identify all your content across:

• Website and landing pages (including copy, images, meta data)
• Blog posts and articles
• Videos and animations
• Graphics and carousels
• Product descriptions
• Case studies
• Downloads (e-books, guides, templates)
• FAQs
• Email sequences
• Social media content (particularly pillar content on LinkedIn)
• Podcasts and audio content
• Webinars and demos

Gather Your Data: Use tools to collect performance metrics:

• Google Analytics: Traffic, engagement, bounce rates, conversion data
• Google Search Console: Search rankings, click-through rates, impressions
• SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz: Keyword rankings, backlinks, domain authority
• Social media analytics: Engagement rates, shares, reach

Your Competitors: Most people miss this intelligence. Audit your key competitors to understand:

• What content formats are they using?
• Which topics drive their engagement?
• How are they achieving growth?
• What keywords are they ranking for that you’re missing?

Use tools like Ubersuggest and Similarweb to compare your performance and find gaps you can capitalise on. Consider signing up for their newsletters and downloads to experience their conversion funnels firsthand.

Remember: new entrants to your market have probably already done this competitive research. If they’re growing fast, find out what you can learn.

3. Compile Your Content Audit

Set up a spreadsheet with columns for:

• URL
• Page title
• Content type (blog, product page, landing page, etc.)
• Publication date
• Last updated date
• Word count
• Target keyword
• Current search ranking
• Monthly traffic
• Bounce rate
• Time on page
• Conversions/leads generated
• Backlinks
• Social shares
• Quality score (your assessment)
• Competitor comparison

Group similar content together to spot patterns. For instance, do all your product comparison posts perform well? Are how-to guides getting more engagement than news articles?

4. Sort Your Content

The decision point: what to do with each piece of content.

Content to Keep

If it’s performing well and it’s current, keep it active. Don’t let it gather dust, though. Great content can be:

• Re-purposed into different formats (turn a blog into a video, an infographic, or social posts)
• Re-promoted through email and social channels
• Updated with fresh statistics or examples
• Expanded to target additional related keywords

This includes evergreen content like case studies and FAQs that remain relevant over time.

Content to Update

Update content when:

It’s Underperforming: The topic is relevant and aligns with your audience needs, but the content isn’t ranking or converting well. Often a re-write with better keyword optimisation, improved structure, or updated information can transform results.

It’s Outdated: Content with old statistics, superseded product information, or references to past events needs refreshing. If it once performed well, updating it can restore (and often improve) its original rankings.

Quick wins to prioritise: Your audit might reveal old content that’s suddenly getting new traffic. Prioritise these pieces for updates. Similarly, new pages that got lots of views in their first month deserve attention to make them even stronger.

Optimisation Opportunities: Content that ranks on page 2 of Google (positions 11-20) is often easiest to improve. Small changes can push it onto page 1, dramatically increasing traffic.

Content to Bin

Some content has simply run its course:

• Outdated promotional campaigns
• Content that’s never gained traction despite being live for 12+ months
• Duplicate content that harms your SEO
• Pages that haven’t been viewed in over 24 months
• Content requiring more work to fix than it’s worth

Delete it. Keeping poor-quality content on your site can actually harm your overall search performance.

5. Write Your Content Marketing Plan

Break your plan down by quarter. Prioritise based on:

• Potential impact (high-traffic pages or high-converting topics)
• Ease of implementation (quick wins vs. major rewrites)
• Alignment with business priorities

Group Similar Work: When it comes to video and audio content, batch creation saves time and money. Think through what additional versions you need for each piece of content (e.g., blog post + social media graphics + short video summary).

Set Clear Deadlines: Assign responsibility for each action and set realistic completion dates.

Measure Progress: Schedule a follow-up review to measure whether your changes delivered the results you expected.

Using AI to Speed Up Your Content Audit (With Important Caveats)

AI’s role in content audits: AI tools can dramatically speed up data collection and analysis, but they’re not a replacement for human judgement and strategic thinking.

Where AI Can Help

AI tools can automate data collection from multiple databases and spreadsheets, organising key metrics and revealing patterns that humans might miss.

Data Collection and Organisation: Tools like Screaming Frog (free for sites under 500 URLs) can automatically crawl your website and extract:

• All URLs
• Page titles and meta descriptions
• Header tags
• Word counts
• Internal links
• Broken links

Pattern Recognition: AI can analyse large datasets to identify trends such as:

• Which topics consistently drive engagement
• Content length correlations with performance
• Common characteristics of your top-performing pages
• Seasonal content patterns

Keyword and Topic Analysis: Natural language processing (NLP) can suggest:

• Related keywords based on semantic understanding
• Content gaps compared to competitors
• Topics that resonate with your target audience

Time Savings: Using AI for content inventory can save hours or even days of manual work.

Critical Limitations: Where Human Judgement is Essential

AI Cannot:

• Assess whether your content is actually accurate or whether advice is still valid in 2025
• Understand your specific business context, brand voice, or customer relationships
• Determine strategic priorities based on your unique business goals
• Evaluate the qualitative aspects that make content engaging and trustworthy
• Understand the nuance of your competitive positioning

Use AI to gather and organise data, then apply human expertise to interpret findings and make strategic decisions.

Recommended Tools for AI-Assisted Audits

For Website Crawling and Technical Data:

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free under 500 URLs)
• Sitebulb (visual site audit tool)

For Analytics and Insights:

• Google Analytics 4 (with AI-powered insights)
• SEMrush (AI-driven content analysis features)
• Ahrefs (competitor analysis with AI suggestions)

For Content Performance Analysis:

• MarketMuse (semantic content analysis and topic gaps)
• Clearscope (content optimisation recommendations)
• Surfer SEO (content optimisation based on top-ranking pages)

A More Sustainable Choice: GreenGPT

If you’re using AI chatbots to help brainstorm content ideas or analyse audit findings, consider the environmental impact. Standard AI tools consume substantial energy.

GreenPT runs entirely on renewable energy and uses heat recovery systems to re-use server heat for community heating, while their infrastructure is hosted in Europe for data protection. Their platform provides the same AI capabilities for content analysis and planning whilst reducing computing power by 20-30% without quality loss.

It’s worth noting that all AI tools have environmental considerations, but choosing providers that prioritise renewable energy and efficiency makes a difference.

Tools for Content Audits

Essential Tools:

• Google Analytics: Free, comprehensive traffic and behaviour data
• Google Search Console: Free, shows how you appear in search results
• Spreadsheet software: Excel or Google Sheets for organising your audit

Professional Tools (worth the investment for serious content strategies):

• SEMrush: Comprehensive SEO toolkit including keyword research, competitor analysis, and content audit features
• Ahrefs: Excellent for backlink analysis and keyword research
• Screaming Frog: Technical SEO auditing and site crawling
• Ubersuggest: Affordable keyword and competitor research
• Similarweb: Competitive intelligence and traffic analysis

Social Media Analytics: Built-in tools on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube provide engagement metrics for social content.

What Most People Miss: The Competitor Audit

The purpose of your content audit isn’t just to understand your own content. It’s to find out what drives results in your market.

By auditing your key competitors’ activity and performance, you can:

• Learn from their successful content strategies
• Identify topics and formats you’re missing
• Spot opportunities they’ve overlooked
• Benchmark your performance against industry standards

You can compare performance on social channels, and using tools like Ubersuggest and Similarweb, you can analyse their content strategies, SEO approach, and keyword priorities. These tools will also spark ideas for your own content marketing strategy.

Don’t underestimate new entrants to your market. They’ve likely done this competitive research already and are actively targeting your audience. If they’re growing fast, it’s worth understanding why.

When to Bring in Expert Help

A content audit can be a significant undertaking, particularly if you have:

• More than 100 pages of content
• Limited in-house analytics expertise
• Multiple content creators with inconsistent approaches
• Complex technical SEO issues
• A need for objective, outside perspective

Professional help can provide:

• Competitor intelligence you don’t have time to gather
• Advanced analytics interpretation
• Strategic recommendations based on industry expertise
• A comprehensive action plan prioritised by impact
• Implementation support to ensure changes actually happen

Sometimes the most efficient approach is to get expert guidance to set the right direction, then manage ongoing optimisation in-house.

How Often Should You Audit Your Content?

Evidence-based guidelines:

Minimum: An annual content audit for most businesses helps content remain relevant, accurate, and aligned with strategic goals.

Recommended for Most B2B Businesses: Every three to six months. This frequency allows you to:

• Respond to market changes and competitor activity
• Keep content aligned with evolving customer needs
• Maintain momentum on SEO improvements

Quarterly: Ideal if you:

• Publish content frequently (weekly or more)
• Operate in a fast-changing industry
• Have significant traffic volume for meaningful data
• Are actively competing for competitive search terms

Statistics to Consider: 61% of marketers conduct content audits two or more times per year, with many choosing to audit high-priority content more frequently while reviewing the full content inventory annually.

Trigger Events: Always audit when:

• You notice a significant drop in organic traffic
• Google announces a major algorithm update
• You launch new products or services
• You undergo a rebrand or major website change
• Your business strategy or target audience shifts

What a Content Audit Actually Delivers

Efficiency: Stop creating content that doesn’t work. Focus your limited time and budget on approaches proven to deliver results.

Better ROI: Content audits drive business through improved user experience, better SEO rankings, and consistent brand presence that builds trust.

Strategic Clarity: Understand what your audience actually responds to (not what you think they want).

Competitive Advantage: Learn from what’s working in your market and identify gaps your competitors haven’t filled.

Long-term Performance: Content that ranks keeps delivering traffic and leads months and years after publication. An audit helps you create more of this enduring value.

Ready to Uncover What’s Working (and What’s Not)?

You’ve been creating content for months or years. It’s time to find out whether it’s actually delivering results.

A content audit isn’t just about cleaning up your website. It’s about understanding what drives real business outcomes for your company, so you can do more of what works and stop wasting resources on what doesn’t.

Not Sure Where to Start with Your Content Audit?

Book a free 30-minute content brainstorm where we’ll:

• Review your current content challenges and goals
• Discuss whether a full audit makes sense for your business
• Give you actionable next steps (whether you work with us or not)

No pressure, no sales pitch. Just practical guidance to help you make better content decisions.

Book Your Free Content Brainstorm

The content you’ve already created represents a significant investment. Make sure it’s working as hard as you are.

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Alison Prangnell runs The Marketing Maven, using over 25 year’s experience to help UK SMEs with optimising their marketing to grow their business.