Site content inventory

Build and maintain a durable map of a site's SEO surface: URLs, page purpose, keywords, performance, history, content gaps, and recommended next actions. This inventory is the shared memory for opportunity research, performance audits, content briefs, writing, QA, publishing, and task de-duplication. It hands back the inventory records (one per URL) plus a summary of what changed, what is wrong, and what needs a human.

Romeo's rule: Every duplicate article starts with someone who didn't check what the site already had.

Use this when

• You are starting SEO work on a site and need one list of every page with its purpose, keyword, intent and status.
• Before research or briefs, so new ideas get checked against what already exists.
• After a crawl, sitemap change, CMS export or migration, to catch new, removed and redirected URLs and refresh the records.
• Search Console or analytics data needs attaching to pages so movement can be explained later.
• You need the full record for one specific page before refreshing or auditing it.

Don't use this for

• Diagnosing crawl, indexing, canonical or redirect problems → technical-seo-audit.
• Deciding what to create next → seo-opportunity-research.
• Explaining why performance moved → seo-performance-audit.
• Checking the XML sitemap itself against what should be indexed → xml-sitemap-check.

What you need

Required

At least one page source:

• Sitemap.
• Crawl.
• CMS export/API.
• Static-site repo index.
• Manually uploaded URL list.

And site context:

• Primary domain and canonical rules.
• Target countries/languages/locales.
• Important site sections.
• Conversion pages.
• Business/product profile.
• Known topics to prioritize, avoid, or suppress.

Helpful

• Google Search Console or equivalent search data.
• Analytics by URL.
• Keyword provider data.
• CMS metadata: title, meta, author, publish date, updated date, status, category, tags, locale.
• Crawl details: canonical, H1, schema, word count, status code, indexability, internal links, images.
• Task/project management records.
• Prior SEO reports and recommendation history.

No tools?

Open /sitemap.xml (or /sitemap_index.xml, or the Sitemap: line in /robots.txt) in a browser and copy the URLs; for a small site, the CMS page list or the site's navigation is enough. Search Console's Page indexing report shows which URLs are indexed or excluded, and a Performance export (Pages and Queries) gives clicks, impressions, CTR and position to attach. For per-page metadata, use view-source on each important page: <title>, <meta name="description">, <h1>, <link rel="canonical">, <meta name="robots">, and any JSON-LD. Keep the inventory as a CSV or spreadsheet with the record model fields as columns, and leave unknown fields blank rather than guessing.

Ground rules

• Inventory is not truth when fresh crawl/search/CMS data contradicts it.
• Preserve human-entered strategy fields unless evidence clearly supersedes them.
• Normalize by intent, not just URL.
• Store enough history to explain movement, not every raw API row forever.
• Keep site-specific integration quirks (CMS field names, API oddities) in the import step, not in the records.
• Make duplicate suppression easy: every recommendation should map to a URL, cluster, intent, and active task state.

Record model

Each URL record should support:

• canonical_url
• normalized_url
• locale / language / country target
• section: blog, landing, comparison, docs, help, pricing, product, template, glossary, other
• content_type
• status: live, draft, archived, redirected, noindex, unknown
• title
• meta_description
• h1
• schema_types
• publish_date
• updated_date
• owner / author
• primary_keyword_cluster
• secondary_keywords
• search_intent
• funnel_stage
• conversion_page
• internal_link_targets
• linked_from_count / key source pages when available
• screenshots/assets present
• current search metrics
• current analytics metrics
• historical performance snapshots
• recommended_action
• priority
• active_task_id / status
• last_checked
• source_freshness
• notes/risks

Steps

1. Ingest pages.
   • Read sitemap/crawl/CMS/export/upload.
   • Normalize URLs: protocol, trailing slash, lowercase rules, query stripping, canonical mapping.
   • Exclude irrelevant URLs: admin, search, parameters, staging, assets, configured locales, noindex if not useful.
   • Group by section and locale.
2. Enrich technical/content metadata.
   • Attach title, meta, H1, schema, word count, publish/update dates, author, status.
   • Detect missing title/meta/H1/schema when available.
   • Detect stale dates and thin content.
   • Detect page type from URL patterns, CMS collection, schema, and headings.
3. Attach search performance.
   • Map queries to pages.
   • Store clicks, impressions, CTR, average position, country, device, and date window.
   • Preserve snapshots for movement detection.
   • Attach primary and secondary keyword clusters based on actual query data when available.
   • Mark page-2 queries, low-CTR queries, high-CTR/low-impression signals, and new queries.
4. Attach analytics performance.
   • Map pageviews, sessions, users, organic traffic, conversions, engagement, and events to URLs.
   • Record timezone and source freshness.
   • Mark conversion-supporting pages and traffic mismatches.
5. Attach strategy fields.
   • Primary keyword cluster.
   • Search intent.
   • Funnel stage.
   • Business priority.
   • Conversion page.
   • Topics/claims relevant to the page.
   • Known owner, task, or editorial status.
6. Detect inventory issues.
   • Missing target keyword.
   • Duplicate intent/cannibalization.
   • Blog page exists where landing page is needed.
   • Landing page exists but lacks supporting blog/internal links.
   • Stale facts or old year/date.
   • No answer-first section or weak TL;DR if content structure is known.
   • No conversion path.
   • Weak internal linking.
   • Missing schema.
   • Missing screenshots/product images for listicles/comparisons.
   • Title/meta risk on ranking pages.
7. Update recommended action.
   • create supporting page
   • refresh
   • consolidate
   • internal-link update
   • snippet review
   • add schema
   • add assets
   • watch
   • ignore/suppress
   • needs human/CMS/design action
8. Serve downstream skills.
   • Research (seo-opportunity-research) uses inventory to avoid duplicate ideas and find gaps.
   • Audit (seo-performance-audit) uses inventory to explain movement and avoid repeated alerts.
   • Briefs (seo-content-brief) use inventory to choose create vs refresh.
   • Writer (seo-blog-writer) uses inventory for internal links and existing page constraints.
   • QA (seo-content-qa) uses inventory to check page purpose, links, assets, and facts.
   • Publishing (cms-publishing-adapter) uses inventory to read back and update status.

Validation

Before saving or returning inventory:

• Check URL normalization does not merge distinct valid pages.
• Check excluded locales/topics are not reintroduced.
• Check manually entered strategy fields are preserved unless explicitly overwritten.
• Check metrics have date ranges and source labels.
• Check active task IDs still exist if you can reach the task tracker.

What to hand back

For a full inventory update, fill in this template and attach the records themselves.

# Content inventory update: <site>, <date>

**What I found:** <one plain-English sentence>
**What matters most:** <one sentence>
**What to do first:** <one sentence>

## Inventory file
- <path or attachment: CSV/JSON, one row per URL, record model fields; sources and date ranges>

## Counts
- By section: <blog x, landing x, comparison x, ...>
- By status: <live x, draft x, redirected x, noindex x, unknown x>
- By locale: <...>

## New URLs
## Removed or redirected URLs
## Changed metadata
- <URL>: <field> changed from <old> to <new>

## Performance updates
- <URL>: <metric, date window, source>

## Detected issues
- <URL>: <issue> (seen / tool / inferred, high / medium / low confidence)

## Recommended actions
- <URL>: <action> | `Fix now` / `Fix next` / `Worth doing` / `Leave it` | why

## Records needing human review
- <URL>: <what is unclear or conflicting>

## What I could not check
- <...>

For a specific page, use this instead:

# Inventory record: <URL>

**What I found:** <one sentence>
**What matters most:** <one sentence>
**What to do first:** <one sentence>

- Normalized URL / canonical URL: <...> / <...>
- Page purpose / content type: <...>
- Target keyword cluster: <...>
- Search intent: <...>
- Current metrics: <clicks, impressions, CTR, position, sessions, conversions; date window and source>
- Historical movement summary: <...>
- Internal and conversion links: <...>
- Asset / schema status: <...>
- Active task / recommendation status: <...>
- Next recommended action: <...>

## What I could not check
- <...>

Stop and flag if

Fail the inventory update, and say so instead of saving or returning it, if:

• It overwrites strategy fields without evidence.
• It treats stale crawl/CMS data as fresher than connected live data.
• It cannot distinguish localized versions.
• It stores raw massive API payloads instead of compact records.
• It cannot support duplicate checks by URL + cluster + intent.

Next step

• Run seo-opportunity-research with the inventory to find gaps and page-2 wins without duplicating existing pages.
• Run seo-performance-audit with the inventory and a Search Console date comparison to explain movement.
• If the inventory shows status, canonical or noindex surprises, run technical-seo-audit on those URLs.

Part of the free RomeoSEO skill library: https://romeoseo.com/skills