Content Audit

The Content Audit tool analyzes your website’s existing content against your Topical Map to identify which pages are performing well and which need attention. It helps you understand your content’s alignment with your topical strategy.

• How to run a content audit scan
• Understanding your audit results
• Using the Cannibalization Review
• Tracking progress with Trends
• Exporting your audit data

Before running a Content Audit, ensure you have:

• A completed Topical Map for your brand in the Strategy Flow
• Your website URL (the domain associated with your brand)

1. Navigate to Topical Authority and select the Scanner tab.
2. Your brand’s domain will be pre-filled in the URL field. You can modify this if needed.
3. Configure your scan settings:

4. Review the estimated credits required for your scan.
5. Click Start Content Audit to begin.

[!TIP] Start with a smaller page limit (50-100 pages) for your first scan to get familiar with the results before running a full site audit.

If your website doesn’t have a sitemap or returns a “Sitemap not found” error, enable Force Crawl:

• Check the Force Crawl option
• The scanner will discover pages by following links from your homepage
• Force Crawl uses 1.5x credits compared to sitemap-based scanning

Once your scan completes, you’ll see a comprehensive dashboard with key metrics and actionable insights.

Every scanned page receives a classification based on how well it matches your topical map:

The visualization shows how your content covers each pillar in your Topical Map:

• Bar Chart View: Compare coverage across pillars at a glance
• Radar Chart View: See your topical footprint as a radar visualization of your Main Topic Pillars (Spider Chart)

Toggle between views using the Bars and Radar buttons.

The Detailed Page Analysis table shows every scanned page with:

• Page URL and title
• Topic Match — The topical map node it best aligns with
• Similarity Score — How closely the content matches (higher is better)
• Status — The classification (Keep, Optimize, Weak, Prune)

Use the filter tabs to focus on specific page types:

• All — View all scanned pages
• Keep — Pages with strong topical alignment
• Optimize — Pages needing improvement
• Weak — Pages with low similarity scores
• Prune — Off-topic pages to consider removing

Click on any classification in the Action Items sidebar to jump directly to those pages.

Multiple pages targeting the same topic can cannibalize each other’s rankings. The Cannibalization Review helps you identify and resolve these conflicts.

1. From the results page, click the Cannibalization tab
2. View topics that have multiple competing pages

Each cannibalization group shows:

• Topic name — The target topic being competed for
• Page count — Number of pages targeting this topic
• Competing pages — List of URLs with their similarity scores

For each competing page, you can set a status to track your resolution decisions:

Primary Mark one page in each group as the Primary page. This indicates which page should own the topic and receive link equity.

Redirect Use this for lower-performing pages that should be 301 redirected to the Primary page. After marking as Redirect, implement the actual redirect in your CMS or server configuration.

Reassign When a page fits better under a different topic:

1. Select Reassign from the dropdown
2. A second dropdown appears — search and select the target topic
3. The page’s new topic assignment and updated similarity score will display

Keep Separate Use when multiple pages deliberately target the same topic (e.g., comparison guides, regional variations). The page is removed from the cannibalization group.

[!TIP] Pages you mark as “Keep Separate” are removed from the cannibalization view since they no longer represent a conflict to resolve.

Track your progress with the review counter showing X/Y reviewed for each topic group. A group is “complete” when all pages have a status other than “No Action.”

Use the Refresh button to update the cannibalization view after making external changes to your site.

Track your content audit progress over time with the Trends section.

The Trends panel shows historical data across your audits:

• Coverage Score — How your topic coverage has changed
• Pages on Map — Growth in matched content
• Matched Topics — Expansion of topic coverage

Choose your preferred time range:

• 1m — Last month / recent performance
• 3m — Quarterly view (default)
• 6m — Six-month trends
• 12m — One-year historical view
• 18m — Eighteen-month historical view

Expand the audit history table to see details of each past scan:

• Scan date
• Coverage percentage
• Pages on map count
• Topics matched

Export your content audit results for further analysis or team sharing.

Click the Export button and choose your format:

Your export includes:

• Page URL
• Page title
• Matched topic
• Similarity score
• Classification status
• Word count

To start a fresh audit:

1. Click New Scan from the results page
2. Adjust your scan settings if needed
3. Click Start Content Audit

• Regular audits: Run monthly or quarterly audits to track content health
• After major changes: Audit after publishing significant new content
• Competitor comparison: Use Topical Audit to analyze competitor sites and identify gaps

Most scans complete 100 pages within 5-10 minutes. Larger sites will take longer. You can navigate away anytime. You’ll receive an email when your scan completes.

Pages receive a Prune classification when they don’t align with any topic in your Topical Map. This could mean:

• The content is genuinely off-topic
• Your Topical Map needs expansion to cover this topic area
• The page serves a utility purpose (contact, about, legal pages)

[!TIP] After running a Content Audit, use the Topical Authority Planner to prioritize which pages to optimize or create next.

Yes! Running multiple scans helps you track progress over time. Each scan is saved in your Trends history.

Force Crawl requires the scanner to discover pages by following links, which is more resource-intensive than reading a sitemap. The 1.5x credit multiplier reflects this additional processing.

The similarity score measures how closely your page’s content aligns with the topic’s semantic meaning. Higher scores indicate stronger topical relevance. Scores below 50% suggest the content may be drifting from the intended topic.