Content Audit Template: Cut, Keep, or Merge in 7 Steps

ByTyler Ziton

A content audit template is a spreadsheet with one row per post, seven columns of search data, and one verdict per row: cut, keep, or merge. Most templates were built for big marketing teams. This one is built for a Shopify blog, where merging pays off faster than new posts. For best results, pull 12 months of data.

Short answer: list every post with its clicks, top query, intent, and inlinks, mark each one cut, keep, or merge, and do the merges first.

What You Need

  • Google Search Console access for the store’s domain
  • Your Shopify admin, for the blog post list and the URL redirects tool
  • GA4 or Shopify analytics, for sessions and revenue by landing page
  • A blank Google Sheet

Step 1: Build the Content Audit Template

Build the content audit template first, since the columns decide what you go looking for. Every row is one URL, and the sheet needs seven columns plus the verdict.

Column Where It Comes From What It Tells You
URL Shopify blog post list The row itself
Clicks and impressions, 12 months Search Console Whether anyone finds the post
Average position Search Console How close it is to page one
Primary keyword Top query for that page in Search Console What Google thinks the post is about
Intent Your read: buy, compare, learn, or none Whether the reader could become a customer
Inlinks Count of your own pages linking to it Whether Google has a reason to crawl it
Sessions and revenue GA4 landing page report Whether it earns anything
Verdict You Cut, keep, or merge, plus one line on why

Most templates you can download carry 20 or more columns, with word counts, social shares, and meta description lengths. I leave those out on purpose. A column that never changes a verdict is a column you fill in for nothing.

Also, copy the post list straight from Shopify so no URL gets missed. Every post lives at /blogs/ followed by the blog handle and the post handle, so sorting the sheet by URL groups each blog together.

For the inlinks column you don’t need a paid crawler. Open the Links report in Search Console, find Internal links, and click through to Top linked pages. It lists each URL with the number of your own pages that link to it, and a blog post that’s missing from the list has close to zero.

Step 2: Pull 12 Months of Search Console Data

Pull 12 months of Search Console data next, so a seasonal post gets judged on a full year. The default view of the Performance report only covers the past three months, and a gift guide looks dead in April on that range.

To get the blog alone, add a page filter for URLs containing /blogs/ and open the Pages tab. Then export it and paste clicks, impressions, and position into the sheet.

Just know the export has a ceiling. Google says the most you can export through the Search Console interface is 1,000 rows, which covers most store blogs. A blog past that size needs the filter split by subfolder or by year.

After that, add the money columns. In GA4, open Reports, then Engagement, then Landing page, and copy sessions and total revenue for each blog URL. Shopify’s own Sessions by landing page report gives you the visits, but it stops short of revenue.

Step 3: Give Every Post One Keyword and One Intent

Give every post one keyword and one intent before you judge anything, since the verdicts depend on both. Click a page in Search Console, open the Queries tab, and write the top query into the primary keyword column.

Then sort the sheet by that column and look for repeats. Two posts with one keyword is keyword cannibalization, and it’s the most common problem I find on store blogs. It usually comes from working off a keyword list in place of topic clusters built for ecommerce.

For the intent column, use four labels and don’t overthink them:

  1. Buy. The searcher is choosing a product, as in “best linen sheets for hot sleepers.”
  2. Compare. They’re weighing two options you sell or could sell.
  3. Learn. They have a question your product helps with, like “how to wash linen sheets.”
  4. None. No version of this reader becomes a customer.

A post about “how to wholesale candles” that pulls in people who want to sell candles is a none, however much traffic it gets. Most of the keepers turn out to be longer, more specific queries, which is why I favor long-tail keywords over short-tail keywords on a store blog.

Step 4: Mark Each Post Cut, Keep, or Merge

Mark each post cut, keep, or merge using three rules, and write one line on why. One keyword gets one URL, and every row gets exactly one verdict.

Verdict Rule What You Do
Cut Under 10 clicks in 12 months, no keyword of its own, and no page that needs it Delete it and redirect to the closest related page
Keep Ranks for its own keyword or earns sales Leave it, or refresh it if it has slipped
Merge Shares a keyword or a question with a stronger post Fold it into the stronger post and redirect the old URL

Age is not one of the rules. When CNET deleted thousands of old articles in 2023, Google’s Danny Sullivan answered, “Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn’t like ‘old’ content? That’s not a thing!” I go deeper on that call in should you delete old blog posts.

Five rows come up on almost every store, and each one has a verdict people get wrong.

The Post Your Own Collection Outranks

Search the keyword and see which of your URLs Google shows. If a post targets “linen bedding” and your linen bedding collection ranks above it, the post is competing with the page that sells the product.

That row is a merge into the collection. Move any useful buying advice into the collection description and redirect the post, per the split I lay out in collection pages vs blog posts.

The Thin Post From a Bulk Batch

Posts under 500 words that answer a question in two paragraphs rarely rank, since a competitor has a fuller answer. Many came from a batch of quick AI posts, and the tool isn’t the problem, as I explain in is AI content bad for SEO.

Merge those when a fuller post on the topic exists, and cut them when it doesn’t and the clicks are near zero. A short post that fully answers “does this ship to Canada” stays.

The Post With Traffic but No Sales

A post with real sessions and no revenue is usually a keep with a fix. It answers the question and then ends, with no product named and no next step.

So add a short recommendation with a link, placed where the reader has just learned they need the product. If the query has no buying intent at all, it was never one of the keywords that drive sales, and the row moves to cut.

The Post With Impressions and No Clicks

Sort by impressions and you’ll find a post Google shows thousands of times while almost nobody clicks. That row is a keep, and the fix is the cheapest one in the audit.

So rewrite the title tag and the H1 to match the top query in the words shoppers type, and leave the URL alone. Check the click-through rate again in 30 days. A post with impressions already has the ranking, and the title is what’s losing the click.

The Dated “Best of 2023” Post

Every store has one: “Best Gifts for Runners 2023.” The year made it feel timely when it went out, and now the year makes it look abandoned.

If it still gets clicks, it’s a keep with a refresh. Update the products, the prices, and the title, and move it to a slug with no year in it. When you change a post’s URL handle in Shopify, the editor offers a pre-selected option to create the redirect for you, so leave that box checked.

And when you have a 2023 version and a 2024 version of one list, that’s a merge. Fold both into the dateless URL.

Step 5: Merge and Redirect in Shopify

Merge and redirect in Shopify before any other fix, since two posts splitting one keyword hold each other down. Keep the URL with more clicks and more inlinks, move the useful paragraphs from the weaker post into it, and then redirect the weaker URL.

The redirect is where Shopify trips people up. Its help page says “You can redirect only from broken URLs”, so a redirect added while the old post is still published does nothing. Delete or hide the old post first, then add the redirect under Content, Menus, URL redirects.

Once the redirect is live, Google does the consolidating. Its documentation says that for a permanent redirect, “the indexing pipeline uses the redirect as a signal that the redirect target should be canonical.”

Merging five thin posts into one complete guide usually beats all five within a few months, so don’t be shy about big merges. If you have more than a handful of redirects, use the Import button on that same screen and upload them as a CSV. Shopify allows up to 100,000 redirects on standard plans, so the limit won’t be your problem.

Step 6: Refresh the Keepers, Winners First

Refresh the keepers next, starting with the posts that already bring the most clicks. When HubSpot audited its own blog, 76% of monthly views came from old posts, and updating them raised their organic views by an average of 106%.

A refresh is a short job. Update any product, price, or stat that changed, answer the two or three new questions showing in the Queries tab, tighten the intro so the answer comes first, and add a link to the collection the post supports.

On a store, the same work stacks up fast. Building out one sunscreen cluster for Exclusive Beauty Club took it from 207 clicks to more than 6,000 in a year, and the steps are in the Exclusive Beauty Club case study.

But leave the date alone unless the post changed. Google’s helpful content guidance lists “changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed” as a warning sign. Refresh the content, and let the date follow.

Which posts to refresh first, and when a new post is the better use of the hour, is covered in updating old content vs writing new.

Step 7: Link the Orphans and Schedule the Next Audit

Link the orphans last, since the sheet now shows only posts worth linking to. Any keeper with fewer than three inlinks gets links from two related posts and one from the collection it supports.

Shopify blogs create orphans by default, since themes rarely link posts to each other. A post that’s only reachable from the blog feed drops out of sight once it leaves the first page of that feed, which is one of the quieter reasons a Shopify store is not ranking.

Then put the next audit on the calendar for six months out and save a copy of the sheet. The second pass is faster, and the old copy shows you which verdicts paid off. That repeat is a standing part of my Shopify SEO services, since a blog drifts back toward clutter without it.

What to Do If the Audit Stalls

Does Deleting Posts Hurt SEO?

Deleting posts doesn’t hurt SEO when the post had no clicks, no links, and no keyword of its own. It does hurt when you delete by age or in bulk. Google’s guidance asks whether you’re removing older content to make the site seem fresh, and answers its own question: “No, it won’t.”

What If Almost Every Row Says Cut?

When almost every row says cut, the blog was usually written off a keyword list with no buying questions in it. Cut the dead rows, keep anything with intent, and plan the next ten posts around questions shoppers ask before they buy. Your support inbox and the Queries tab are the two best places to find them.

How Long Until the Audit Pays Off?

A content audit pays off within about 90 days on most Shopify blogs I work on. They come out with roughly a third fewer posts and more traffic, and the merges show up first since Google only has to follow a redirect.

Content Audit Checklist

  • Sheet built with the seven columns and a verdict
  • 12 months of Search Console data pasted in for every blog URL
  • One primary keyword and one intent label per row
  • Every row marked cut, keep, or merge with a reason
  • Old posts deleted or hidden before their redirects go in
  • Winners refreshed, dates changed only where the content changed
  • Three inlinks on every keeper
  • Next audit on the calendar

Run the Audit Before You Write Another Post

A content audit template turns a blog you’re guessing about into a list of decisions. Build the sheet, give every post one verdict, merge the pairs, refresh the winners, and link the orphans.

Book a call and I’ll pull your blog into this sheet with you and mark the first five merges. If you’d rather hand over the whole audit, redirects included, that is what my SEO services are for.

Sources

SEO Consultant

Tyler Ziton is an SEO consultant and founder of Ziton Digital. He has driven $21M in annual organic revenue for 30+ brands including Park Seed, Flexfire, and Fieldsheer, and builds organic revenue systems for Shopify stores using SEO, AI search, and CRO.

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