Auditing a 2,244-URL Content Archive

The challenge

A large content archive that had grown faster than anyone could assess it. The content team was choosing which posts to update on instinct, which meant the loudest internal opinion won rather than the strongest commercial case.

2,244 blog URLs with no per-URL view of what each one earned.
No basis for the keep-or-kill decision. "Update the old posts" is not a strategy when there are two thousand of them.
Cannibalisation invisible at that scale, with new briefs routinely targeting terms the archive already ranked for.

Approach

Classify every URL, not a sample. All 2,244 posts scored and sorted into keep, merge, prune or rewrite. A sample tells you the shape of the problem; only a full pass tells the content team what to do on Monday.

Attach evidence to each decision. Traffic and conversion data per URL, so each classification carries its own justification and can be challenged on the numbers rather than argued about on taste.

Map the keyword estate against existing coverage. A 3,008-keyword programme mapped to funnel stage and to the pages already ranking, so every new brief targets a genuine gap instead of competing with the client's own archive.

Prioritise by effort as well as impact. A rewrite and a merge cost very different amounts of the content team's time, and a plan that ignores that gets abandoned in week three.

Results

2,244 URLs classified — the complete archive rather than a representative sample.
4 decision buckets — keep, merge, prune, rewrite — so every post has an owner and an action.
3,008 keywords mapped to funnel stage and existing coverage, so briefs target gaps rather than cannibalise.
Traffic and conversion evidence attached per URL, making the plan auditable rather than assertive.

Key insight

At archive scale the hard part is not knowing what good content looks like, it is making two thousand individual decisions defensible. Attaching traffic and conversion evidence to every single URL is what moves the conversation from "I think this post is still useful" to a plan the content team can execute without relitigating each item.