How should websites review and improve their content, technical issues, and links?

Website improvement should begin with an assessment of content, technical issues, and links, followed by prioritizing the problems found—not automatically rewriting articles or adding backlinks first. Start with a technical audit to identify major errors, then review each page to check whether its content meets users’ needs and whether its information is outdated. Examine internal links and external backlinks separately. Run another audit after making fixes. If no obvious technical issues emerge, take a closer look at the value the content provides, but do not treat a single check as proof that all problems have been ruled out.

Check technical obstacles first and prioritize fixes by impact

A 2024 Semrush article recommends first checking affected pages for major technical issues, such as whether search engines can crawl them properly. If a tool identifies obstacles to crawling, address them; a drop in traffic alone does not establish that article quality is the problem.

Its 2021 tutorial categorizes audit findings as errors, warnings, and notices, recommending that the most consequential errors be fixed before other items. These were the tool’s categories and usage recommendations at the time, not Google’s current official rules for prioritizing fixes. When organizing the work, you can record:

• The type of issue and the affected URLs.
• The explanations and recommended fixes provided by the tool.
• Whether the same issue still appears in a new audit after the fixes are complete.

Identify content gaps page by page—updating does not simply mean making content longer

A 2024 Semrush article on content cleanup notes that pages with mismatched intent, outdated information, thin content, or technical issues may be candidates for updates. Label each page’s problems before deciding whether to update, consolidate, or remove it. Poor performance does not necessarily mean a page must be deleted, nor does it mean that adding words will improve it.

When comparing competing pages, examine those ranking highly for the target keywords and those whose rankings rose during a particular period. Note what additional original information, research, analysis, or comprehensive explanations they provide, and use those observations to plan revisions. These differences are clues to investigate, not direct proof of why rankings increased.

Content should also address situations in which the advice does not work. For example, beyond listing steps, a tutorial can explain what to check next if following those steps does not resolve the problem. This is a content pattern observed by an interviewee in the article, not a ranking guarantee. Revisions should still include fact-checking and correcting language errors.

Review links separately: internal usability and external sources

Start by checking for broken internal links. Possible causes listed in Semrush’s 2021 tutorial include moved or deleted pages and mistyped URLs; these issues may hinder both user navigation and search engine crawling. Links should also be easy to recognize, not merely functional. In a 2015 FAQ case study, NN/g recommended bolding questions and increasing link contrast to make the page easier to scan. This was usability advice for that particular case.

For external backlinks, first investigate their sources and relevance. The 2024 Semrush article recommends reviewing potentially spammy links and mentions considering disavowing links only in the context of having created spammy links yourself—not disavowing everything flagged by a tool. You can then compare which websites link to competitors to find relevant, high-quality outreach opportunities. The article says only that this may help with recovery after a link spam update; it does not promise a rebound in rankings.