Also known as: Content Inventory, SEO Content Review
A content audit is the systematic review of every published asset on a website to measure its performance, accuracy, and relevance, then decide whether to keep, update, consolidate, or remove it. For a trading affiliate or Introducing Broker (IB), it means grading every broker review, tutorial, and market-analysis post against current SEO and compliance standards.
An audit typically pairs a full crawl of every URL with performance data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics. You tag each page with an action verdict: "keep as-is", "refresh", "merge", "redirect", or "prune". The output is a spreadsheet where every URL has a decision and an owner, not a vague feeling that the site "needs work".
The stakes are higher in retail brokerage than in most niches because the underlying facts decay fast. Spreads change, a broker's leverage caps shift when it re-domiciles, and a firm can lose its CySEC or FCA authorisation overnight. A concrete example: an affiliate audits 180 posts, finds 34 with dead or unregulated broker links, refreshes 12 high-traffic reviews, 301-redirects 9 thin pages into stronger guides, and recovers a page that was cannibalising its own money keyword.
Done well, an audit is not a one-off spring clean but a repeatable process you schedule, because both search algorithms and broker offers move continuously.
You start by crawling the whole site with a tool like Screaming Frog to build a complete URL inventory, then join that list to organic-traffic, impressions, and conversion data from Search Console, Analytics, and your affiliate dashboard. Each URL gets scored on traffic trend, keyword rankings, backlink profile, conversion rate, and factual/compliance accuracy.
With the data in one sheet, you assign an action per page. High-value pages with decaying facts get refreshed; overlapping pages competing for the same keyword get merged into one authoritative guide with 301 redirects; thin, trafficless, backlink-free pages get pruned. You then re-check the pages that carry affiliate links to confirm each broker is still licensed and the tracking link still fires.
Run a full-site crawl to list every indexable URL, its title, word count, status code, and internal links.
Join the crawl to Search Console clicks/impressions, Analytics engagement, and affiliate-dashboard conversions per URL.
Grade pages on traffic trend, rankings, backlinks, conversion rate, and factual/compliance accuracy.
Tag every URL: keep, refresh, merge, 301-redirect, or prune. No page leaves without a verdict.
Update spreads, leverage caps, and licences; re-point affiliate links to live, regulated offers.
Ship the changes, submit updated URLs, and track recovery over the next 60-90 days.
Why it matters for partnership: Audits protect your commissions: they catch reviews pointing at delisted or unregulated brokers, surface pages that lost rankings, and let you re-point affiliate links to active, converting offers before revenue quietly leaks.
An affiliate ranking for "best ECN broker" sees organic traffic on the page fall 40% over two quarters. An audit reveals the recommended broker, a CySEC-regulated firm, tightened its EU leverage to 30:1 and the affiliate link was dead. They refresh the spreads table, swap in a live tracking link to an alternative regulated broker, and merge two thin "ECN vs STP" posts into the page. Rankings recover to position 3 within 90 days.
| Verdict | Trigger | SEO action |
|---|---|---|
| Keep | Ranking well, facts current | No change; recheck next cycle |
| Refresh | Good page, stale facts or slipping | Update content, re-publish date |
| Merge | Two pages target one keyword | Combine, 301 the weaker URL |
| Prune | Thin, no traffic, no links | Remove and 301 or 410 |
Hunt for keyword cannibalisation, where several pages compete for the same term, and merge them into one authoritative guide with 301 redirects from the losers.
Deleting old posts just because they are old; if a post has backlinks, a 301 redirect to a newer relevant page preserves the SEO equity that an outright deletion throws away.
Run a comprehensive site-wide audit annually, but audit high-value broker-review and comparison pages quarterly because spreads, leverage caps, and licences change frequently.
Only prune thin pages with no traffic and no backlinks. If a page has earned links, 301-redirect it to a relevant page to keep the authority.
It is when multiple pages compete for the same keyword, splitting your ranking signals. Merging them into one guide usually lifts the surviving page.
Traffic trend, keyword rankings, backlinks, conversion rate, and factual or compliance accuracy together drive whether you keep, refresh, merge, or prune.
Yes. It surfaces reviews pointing at delisted or unregulated brokers and outdated risk-warning wording, letting you correct them before a regulator or partner flags them.
Refreshed and merged pages typically show ranking movement over 30-90 days as search engines recrawl; treat recovery as a trend, not a guarantee.