You join a company with 300 old blog posts and flat traffic. How would you run a content audit?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Export all URLs with traffic, conversions, rankings and backlinks
- Map each post to topic and intent
- Decide keep, update, merge or remove for each
- Prioritise by potential impact and effort
- Redirect properly and track results
Model answer
I would start with data: export every URL with organic traffic and clicks from Search Console, conversions from GA4, and backlinks from Ahrefs or Semrush, plus publish date and word count. Then I would tag each post by topic and search intent, which quickly shows overlaps and gaps. For each post I decide keep, update, merge or remove. High-potential posts ranking on page two are usually the quickest wins to update. Duplicates get merged into the strongest version with 301 redirects, and truly useless posts with no links or traffic can be removed. I would prioritise by expected impact versus effort, work through the list in batches, and track rankings, traffic and conversions per batch so we know which actions actually work.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed medium round and get scored on every answer.
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