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Monthly Content Cannibalization & Draft Review

Cadence: Monthly, 3rd week Duration: ~45 minutes Trigger: "Run the content cannibalization review" Deploys changes: No (produces recommendations)

Purpose

Identify content that's competing with itself (cannibalization), thin pages that drag down site quality, and draft content sitting unpublished. Feed findings into the daily content pipeline priorities.

Audit Steps

1. Cannibalization Detection

  • Pull all pages from GSC that rank for the same keyword
  • Identify keyword overlap clusters (multiple pages targeting the same intent)
  • For each cluster, determine:
  • Which page should be the canonical target?
  • Should overlapping pages be merged, redirected, or differentiated?

2. Thin Page Identification

  • Scan all published pages for word count <300
  • Flag pages with high bounce rate + low time on page
  • Flag pages with 0 organic traffic in 60 days
  • Determine: improve, merge, noindex, or delete?

3. Draft Content Audit

  • Pull all WordPress drafts (posts and pages in draft status)
  • How old is each draft?
  • Is the topic still relevant?
  • Should it be published, reworked, or deleted?

4. Content Gap vs. Competitors

  • What practice area topics do competitors rank for that we don't?
  • Cross-reference with daily content pipeline to prioritize topics

5. Internal Linking Audit

  • Which high-value pages have the fewest internal links pointing to them?
  • Identify orphan pages (published but not linked from any other page)
  • Propose internal link additions

Expected Output

A prioritized content action plan: - Pages to merge (with redirect plan) - Pages to improve (with specific recommendations) - Drafts to publish, rework, or delete - New topics to add to the daily content pipeline - Internal links to add