Content pruning
Systematically removing, merging or noindexing low-value pages so a site's indexed footprint reflects only content worth ranking.
ContentContent inventory
Content audit
A systematic review of every page on a site against performance, quality and business value criteria, producing a keep/improve/merge/remove decision per URL.
In full
The audit joins a full crawl with Search Console, analytics, conversion and backlink data so decisions rest on evidence rather than opinion. Beyond pruning, it surfaces cannibalisation, orphans, outdated claims and gaps against the topic map. On sites over a few thousand URLs it is normally run at template level first, since most quality problems are template-wide rather than page-specific.
Example
An audit of 4,200 URLs finds 61% have received no clicks in twelve months, of which half are near-duplicate tag archives.
Related terms
Content decay
The gradual decline in a page's search traffic as it ages, competitors update, intent shifts or the underlying information goes out of date.
Keyword cannibalisation
Multiple pages on a site competing for the same query, so search engines alternate between them and none establishes a strong position.
Index bloat
A condition where a site has far more URLs indexed or crawlable than it has genuinely useful pages, diluting crawl attention and…
Orphan page
A page with no internal links pointing to it, reachable only via sitemap, external link or direct URL.