Content Decay Audit and Outdated Content Update Plan
Identifies traffic-declining content and creates an update plan to recover and surpass lost positions.
Diagnose content losing organic traffic over time (content decay) and develop a systematic update plan to recover and expand performance.
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Prompt objective
Diagnose content losing organic traffic over time (content decay) and develop a systematic update plan to recover and expand performance.
Real use case
TechReview Brasil, a technology review portal, noticed that 45% of its 600 articles lost more than 50% of their organic traffic from peak levels. Articles generating 5,000 visits/month now bring in under 500. Outdated content is damaging the overall domain authority.
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Prompt
Perform a content decay audit and create an update plan for the site [SITE URL], which publishes content about [NICHE] and has [NUMBER] articles/pages. **Phase 1 — Content decay identification (Google Search Console + Ahrefs):** - Export organic traffic data from the last 16 months - Identify articles with traffic decline ≥30% vs. historical peak - Classify by severity: - 🔴 Critical: decline >70% (completely lost relevance) - 🟡 Moderate: decline 30-70% (needs updating) - 🟢 Minor: decline <30% (monitor) - For each decaying article, identify the likely cause: - Outdated content (data, tools, processes have changed) - New competitors with superior content - Search intent shift for the keyword - Internal cannibalization - Backlink loss **Phase 2 — Prioritization with impact matrix:** Classify each article by: Recovery Potential × Update Effort - Quadrant 1 (High potential, Low effort): MAXIMUM PRIORITY → update this week - Quadrant 2 (High potential, High effort): PLAN → rewrite in 30 days - Quadrant 3 (Low potential, Low effort): QUICK FIX → surface-level update - Quadrant 4 (Low potential, High effort): EVALUATE → consider content pruning **Phase 3 — Per-article update plan:** For the [NUMBER] priority articles, provide: - URL and primary keyword - Peak vs. current traffic - Specific diagnosis of decay cause - Update actions: - [ ] Updated data and statistics ([YEAR] figures) - [ ] New sections to cover subtopics that emerged since original publication - [ ] Updated screenshots and images - [ ] New internal links (to and from recent content) - [ ] Title tag and meta description re-optimization - [ ] FAQ addition with Schema FAQ markup - [ ] Update publication date to 'Updated [DATE]' - Estimated traffic after update **Phase 4 — Content decay prevention system:** - Review calendar by category (frequency: monthly, quarterly, biannually) - Automated alerts: set up in Google Search Console for declines >20% - Update process: standard checklist for periodic reviews - Content health metric: % of articles with growing vs. declining traffic Deliver the prioritization spreadsheet and update schedule for the next 90 days.
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