How to run a content audit: the six-gate method (with a free template)

A content inventory lists what you have; a content audit “examines, assesses, and evaluates the quality” of it, as Nielsen Norman Group puts it. Most audits stop at the first half: a giant spreadsheet and very few decisions. The usual cause is that the audit collects data about pages without asking the questions that lead to action. The six-gate method fixes that: every page answers six yes-or-no questions, and every “no” maps to a specific fix.

Before you start: scope it

Don’t audit everything at once. Pick one of these scopes:

• Your top 50 pages by traffic, conversions or business importance (the best first audit).
• One topic cluster, when you’re about to invest in that topic.
• Every page with a time-sensitive claim: pricing, legal, product features, statistics.

Pull a URL list from your CMS or a crawler, then add analytics data for the last 90 days. The template has a column for each.

The six gates

Gate	Question	A “no” usually means
1. True	Is every claim still accurate, with a source?	Outdated facts, broken statistics, retired products
2. Wanted	Do people still ask the question this page answers?	Demand has moved; the page answers yesterday’s question
3. Ours	Do we have real standing or expertise on this topic?	Thin page written to fill a keyword gap
4. Findable	Is it indexed, linked internally and reachable?	Orphan page, blocked, buried or cannibalised
5. Citable	Could a person or an AI system quote it with confidence?	No direct answer, no sources, no clear structure
6. Useful	Does it lead somewhere that matters to the business?	Dead end: no next step, no product connection

Gate 1: Still true?

This is the gate most audits skip and most readers care about. Check every number, price, product capability and legal statement against a current source. One wrong claim can undermine a page that is otherwise excellent, and it’s the easiest kind of fix.

Gate 2: Still wanted?

Compare the page’s question with what people search and ask today. Search console queries, sales call notes and support tickets are the best evidence. Demand often shifts sideways, for example from “what is X” to “X vs Y”, rather than disappearing.

Gate 3: Still ours?

Ask honestly whether your company has standing to answer this. Pages written only to capture a keyword, with no first-hand experience, are increasingly hard to rank and rarely get cited. Either add genuine expertise (data, examples, a named expert’s view) or let the page go.

Gate 4: Still findable?

Check that the page is indexed, appears in your sitemap, has internal links from relevant pages and isn’t competing with another page of yours for the same question.

Gate 5: Still citable?

This gate matters more every year. Ahrefs found that an AI Overview correlates with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page, and Pew found people clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without. If readers increasingly get answers on the results page, being the cited source is how your page still earns attention. Google’s own requirement for appearing as a supporting link is simply that a page is “indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet”, so gates 4 and 5 work together.

AI answer engines and human readers both reward pages that answer clearly and show their working. A citable page states the answer early, uses clear headings, cites primary sources and keeps facts in plain text rather than images. Our AI citations playbook goes deeper.

Gate 6: Still useful to the business?

A page can be true, popular and citable and still lead nowhere. Check that it connects to the next step a reader would reasonably take: a product page, a related guide, a demo or a template.

Five decisions, mapped to the gates

Decision	When	What to do
Keep	Passes all six gates	Set the next review date
Refresh	Fails gates 1, 5 or 6, but the topic is still wanted and ours	Fix claims, add sources, restructure, add the next step
Merge	Fails gate 4 because another page covers the same question	Combine into the stronger page, then redirect
Redirect	Fails gate 2 or 3, but has links or traffic worth keeping	Point it to the closest useful page
Retire	Fails several gates, with no links or traffic worth keeping	Remove it, then fix internal links

Give every refresh a priority from 1 to 3, using business value and traffic, and a named owner. An audit without owners is just a list.

Running the audit: a working rhythm

1. Pull the data (URL list, last-updated dates, 90-day traffic and conversions, top queries).
2. Score the gates page by page. Two to five minutes each is normal once you’re in rhythm.
3. Record every unsupported claim in its own column. These become your quickest wins.
4. Decide and prioritise. Every page gets one decision and, if it’s not “keep”, an owner.
5. Set review dates. Pages with time-sensitive claims get shorter intervals.

Turning the audit into a habit

The real value of an audit comes from not needing a big one again. Three habits help:

• Review dates on every page, so freshness is scheduled rather than discovered.
• Sources stored with the content, so gate 1 takes seconds next time.
• A recheck after every refresh, to see whether the change did what you expected.

That’s the difference between an annual clean-up and a content operation that stays current on its own.