A content audit with AI is a Workflow job: you export every page with its search numbers, the AI reads each page and gives it one verdict, and you approve the cuts. Plan an afternoon for a site with up to about sixty posts or pages. The four verdicts are keep, update, merge and delete. The AI does the reading and the scoring, page by page, against the same rules every time. You decide what actually gets cut, because a deleted page takes its links and its visitors with it.
- Shape
- Workflow
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Workflow
It is a Workflow because the order matters and each step is checked before the next one starts. Export the pages, export the numbers, paste the brief, feed the pages in batches, judge the verdicts, then make the changes. An AI asked to "audit my content" with nothing attached will hand back advice that fits every blog on earth. An AI handed your real page list, your real search numbers and your real page text hands back a verdict on each of your pages.
The honest limit is reach. Chat tools do not reliably open every page of a site, and they do not see who visits unless you hand them the numbers. So the gathering comes from two places that already hold it: your sitemap for the page list and Google Search Console for the numbers. The AI does the part people put off for years: reading forty old posts in a row and deciding, without attachment, which ones still earn their place.
What that means for you: most of the afternoon is judging and acting, not chatting. The second run, a year later, takes far less time, because you keep the scored sheet and only judge what changed.
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat. Each one is a file or a paste.
- Your full page list. Every URL on the site. Your sitemap, usually at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (on WordPress, often /wp-sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml; if it lists other sitemaps, open each one), gives you this in a few pastes.
- Your search numbers per page. In Google Search Console, open Performance, set the date range to the last 12 months, open the Pages tab and export it. You get clicks, impressions and position for every page Google has shown. A page missing from that export got no impressions at all, which is itself a finding.
- The text of each page you are auditing. Copy and paste the visible words of each post or page, with its title and the date it was published or last changed. Paste the words, not the link, so the AI reads exactly what a visitor reads. Do this in batches of about twenty pages per message, so nothing gets skimmed.
- What you sell today. Every service or product by the name you use with customers, one per line, plus anything you have stopped offering. This is how the AI spots a post that sells a service you no longer do.
- The facts that change. Your current prices if you publish them, your hours, your service area, staff names that appear on the site. Old facts in old posts are the most common reason a page needs an update.
- The pages you will never cut. Your home page, your contact page, legal pages, and any page you send customers to by hand. Name them so the AI leaves them out of the scoring.
- The ten questions customers ask most. From your phone calls and emails, in the customer's words. A page that answers one of these is rarely a delete, whatever its numbers say.
What comes back
You get back one scored table, one row per page, and a short list of merge groups. Each row names the page, the verdict, the reason in one sentence, and the single change that would make it worth keeping. Merge groups name which page survives and which pages fold into it.
Paste this brief first, then the page list, the search export and the lists above. Then send the page text in batches, and ask for the table after each batch.
You are auditing the published content of a small business website.
Attached: our full page list, a Google Search Console export of clicks, impressions and position per page for the last 12 months, what we sell today and what we no longer sell, the facts that change on our site, the pages to leave out, and the ten questions customers ask most.
We will now paste page text in batches, each with its title and date.
For each page, give one verdict.
Keep: current, correct, and the only page on its topic.
Update: worth keeping, but holds an old fact, a dead offer, a weak opening or a broken promise.
Merge: answers the same question as another page of ours.
Name the page it should fold into.
Delete: wrong, about something we no longer do, or so thin that nothing in it is worth moving.
A page about something we no longer do that still earns search clicks is Update, pointing to what we offer now, not Delete.
Score each page on four things, 1 to 3 each: still accurate, useful to a customer, unique on our site, earns search clicks.
Use the search export only for the last score.
A page with no row in the export gets a 1 there, not a guess.
Return a table: page URL, title, the four scores, verdict, the reason in one sentence, and the one change it needs.
Below the table, list every merge group: the page that survives and the pages that fold into it.
Then list every page you marked delete that answers one of the ten customer questions, and mark each one for our review.
Rules:
Use only what we gave you.
Do not invent traffic, ranking or conversion numbers.
Quote the exact sentence when you say a fact is out of date.
If you cannot judge a page from its text, say so instead of guessing.Expect the first pass to be strongest on old facts and duplicate topics, which are plain to see in the text. Expect it to be weakest on usefulness, which depends on customers it has never met. Copy each batch's table into one spreadsheet as you go, so the full audit sits in one place.
How to judge it
You can reject a bad audit in about a minute once you know what bad looks like.
A bad audit:
- Gives most pages the same verdict. Forty "update" rows with the reason "could be more engaging" is the AI avoiding the decision.
- Marks a page delete only because it has few clicks. Low clicks is a reason to look closer, not a verdict.
- Names an out-of-date fact without quoting it. If it cannot point to the sentence, it guessed.
- Contains a number you did not give it, such as a bounce rate, a time on page or a traffic estimate. Delete these on sight.
- Builds a merge group from pages that only share a word. A post about spring lawn care and a post about lawn care prices answer different questions, so they stay apart.
- Tells you to rewrite everything for keywords. An audit sorts what you have; a new search plan is a separate job.
A good audit gives each verdict a reason you could repeat to someone else, and every update row names one change you could make in ten minutes. The test that catches most problems: pick the five delete rows with the most impressions and read each page yourself. If you agree, they go. If you hesitate, the page is an update.
What stays with you
Some of this job no AI can do for you.
The cut. Deleting a page is the one step here that is hard to reverse, so the approval is yours, row by row. Before you delete any page, check whether it gets clicks, whether other sites link to it, and whether you send it to customers.
The redirects. Every deleted or merged page needs its old address pointed at the closest live page, so links and bookmarks still land somewhere useful. The AI can list each old URL and its new home, but you or your web person set them up in your site builder or host.
The facts. The AI can see that a post quotes two different service areas, but only you know which is true. Every update that changes a claim is a claim you are making in public, so check it before it goes live.
The judgment on why a page exists. Some pages were never meant for search. The post you send every new customer, the page a partner links to, the story behind the business: these can score low and still be keepers.
The writing. The AI can draft a merged page from the parts of three old ones, but you supply what makes it yours: the real process, the real local detail, the photos of real work. Our note on content banks that are useful instead of a pile of drafts covers what a page worth keeping holds.
The date. Keep the scored sheet with the date you ran it. The next audit starts from that sheet, not from scratch.
An example, made up for this page
Say you run a small landscaping company with a blog of forty-five posts written over six years. You export the sitemap and the Search Console report, paste the brief, and send the posts in three batches. The AI marks twenty-two posts keep, eleven update, eight merge into three groups, and four delete. The update rows include three posts that quote last year's prices and one that names an employee who has left. One merge group folds four short posts about fall cleanup into the strongest of them. The four deletes are a post about a holiday sale that ended years ago, two near-empty posts with a photo and one sentence, and a post about a service you no longer offer. You agree with three deletes, move the fourth to update because it still gets clicks from people asking about that service, and add a line that points them to what you offer now. You set up the redirects that afternoon and leave the eleven updates for the next two weeks.
None of that is a real business or a real result. It shows the size and shape of the afternoon, not what it will produce.
Update, merge or delete
When the AI and your gut disagree, this table settles most rows.
| What you see on the page | What to do |
|---|---|
| Correct, useful, the only page on its topic | Keep it |
| Useful, but holds an old price, date, name or offer | Update it |
| Two or more pages answer the same customer question | Merge into the strongest, redirect the rest |
| Wrong or about a service you dropped, but still gets clicks | Update it to point to what you offer now |
| Wrong, thin, and gets no clicks or links | Delete it and redirect the address |
Once the old pages are sorted, the website audit checks the site around them, and SEO with AI covers which new pages are worth writing next.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
