Content inventory template: know what is on your site before adding more

Open the CSV in your spreadsheet tool, duplicate the sheet, and replace the three sample rows with real pages. Keep a copy of your first snapshot before editing the site. The template contains no measured traffic results or keyword opportunities; it is an inventory structure with illustrative entries.

URL,Page title,Page type,Reader task,Owner,Published date,Last reviewed,Product destinations,Evidence source,Performance window,Next action,Priority,Status
/blogs/guides/planter-drainage,Planter drainage guide,Article,Understand drainage,Editor,,,Review current product links,Manufacturer specifications,,Verify stale links,High,Needs review
/collections/indoor-planters,Indoor planters,Collection,Browse suitable products,Merchandising,,,Current collection,Product catalog,,Check category description,Medium,Needs review
/blogs/guides/ceramic-vs-plastic,Ceramic vs plastic planters,Comparison,Compare materials,Editor,,,Relevant material collections,Verified product labels,,Review overlap with existing guide,Medium,Needs review

Start with a defined collection of pages: the advice blog, one product category and its supporting articles, or another manageable section. Write down what you excluded. A partial inventory is useful when its boundaries are clear; it becomes misleading when the team assumes it represents the whole site.

Collect the current URLs from the publishing system, your sitemap, and a site crawl when available. Compare those lists instead of assuming any one export is complete. A page can exist in the CMS without being published, and an old link can describe a destination that no longer serves the original content.

• Use one row for each current page you intend to maintain.
• Record draft or unpublished status explicitly if those pages are in scope.
• Keep old-to-new URL mappings in a separate migration note when addresses change.
• Do not silently discard a URL just because its title resembles another page.

A title is an identity field, not a complete explanation of purpose. ‘Indoor planters’ could be a collection, a buying guide, or a care article. Add a short reader task such as ‘browse available indoor planters’ or ‘understand how to check drainage before ordering.’ That sentence helps distinguish pages that share product words but serve different needs.

For the fictional store, the collection helps a shopper browse current products, while the drainage guide explains what to check. Those pages can support each other. Two guides offering the same explanation deserve a closer review, but the inventory should record the overlap before recommending a merge.

Use the keyword mapping template when assigning future search targets. The inventory describes what exists; the keyword map explains which page should answer a researched query. Linking those documents avoids planning a new article that duplicates an existing answer.

Open the live page before filling its accuracy fields. Record the current source for important product claims, the destinations of recommendations, and the last verified review date. A timestamp from the CMS tells you when a record changed; it does not prove someone checked every fact in the article.

If you add search metrics, record the report, dates, and filters with the numbers. Search Console’s Performance report can group observations by page and query. Compare like-for-like scopes and distinguish an article with declining history from a new page with little data.

Prioritize by the importance of the problem and the page’s role, rather than a traffic column alone. A misleading product claim may need attention even on a quiet article. Keep the action narrow enough that a reviewer can tell when it is finished.

Where performance has faded, use the content decay process to investigate before rewriting. Where pages overlap, run a keyword cannibalization check. These are follow-up investigations, not labels to apply automatically to every inventory row.

After an edit, confirm the live result and update the current URL, review date, action status, and evidence. Keep historical observations in dated notes or snapshots so the sheet does not erase the context needed for later comparisons. Name a person responsible for maintaining the inventory itself.

For a new article, add its record during the publication check. For a renamed Shopify article, attach the old-to-new mapping described in the URL structure guide. Maintenance becomes easier when it is part of publishing rather than a large cleanup months later.