Content Types Audit Summary
The page-audit skill loads this in Phase 0 once it's identified what type of page it's looking at. The audit lens is different for a pricing page than for a how-to, and applying the wrong lens produces a generic checklist. This file tells you which concerns actually matter per type.
Quick reference table
| Content Type | Unique Audit Concerns | Required Schema | Common Failure Modes |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to / tutorial | Visual per step, prerequisites section, specific error messages / versions, quick-answer paragraph front-loaded | HowTo + FAQ | Answer buried below intro, no screenshots, generic steps that could apply to anything |
| Definition / "what is" | First sentence IS the definition (no preamble), types/categories section, practical examples grounded in a specific market | DefinedTerm + FAQ | Circular definitions, jargon-first, missing "types of X" section, no local/market context |
| Pillar page | Table of contents, section-level self-containment, links out to cluster articles, scheduled updates | Article + FAQ | 5,000 words of shallow content, no cluster links, no ToC, treated as a one-time publish |
| FAQ page | Questions match real search language (PAA, GSC, support tickets), answers front-load the fact, logical grouping | FAQPage | Made-up questions, answers too long (200+ words) or too short, no grouping, duplicate of other pages |
| Comparison (X vs Y) | Verdict before scroll, consistent criteria applied to both, honest methodology section, pricing with gotchas | FAQ + Product (both items) | No upfront verdict, inconsistent criteria, missing methodology, one-sided pros |
| Listicle / roundup | Summary table above the fold, "best for X" differentiation per item, real drawbacks per item, documented evaluation process | ItemList + FAQ | Every item described equally positively, no methodology, 20+ items with no curation, outdated pricing |
| Product review (single) | First-person usage with dates, original screenshots, honest cons, current pricing, "who should skip this" section | Review + Product | Review of product the author never used (policy violation), all pros no cons, marketing-copy rewrite |
| Product page (e-commerce) | Unique copy (not manufacturer boilerplate), price visible, complete spec table, customer reviews, Product+Offer schema both populated | Product + Offer + AggregateRating | Manufacturer copy-paste, single image, hidden price, missing schema, no "who is this for" context |
| Category page (e-commerce) | Unique editorial above or below grid, faceted nav crawlability, breadcrumbs, duplicate content check against sibling categories | CollectionPage + ItemList + BreadcrumbList | No editorial, product-grid only, duplicate descriptions across categories, faceted URL bloat |
| Pricing page | Price visible without scrolling, recommended tier highlighted, complete feature comparison table, monthly/annual toggle, no hidden fees | Product + Offer (per tier) | "Contact sales" for all tiers, no comparison table, no FAQ handling billing questions, outdated prices |
| Service page | One service per page (not combined), clear process steps, pricing transparency or range, results with real numbers, strong above-fold CTA | Service + LocalBusiness (if local) + FAQ | Multiple services combined, generic differentiators, hidden pricing, no case study proof, CTA below fold |
| Location page | Genuinely unique content per location (not city-name swap), local case studies, NAP matches GBP, embedded map, location-specific info | LocalBusiness + Service + FAQ | Doorway pages (city-swap), NAP inconsistency, missing LocalBusiness schema, no local proof |
| Case study | Headline metric in H1, specific verifiable numbers with timeline, named client with permission, process transparency, before/after visuals | Article + Organization (client) | Vague results, no timeline, anonymous client, no process description, only-perfect outcomes |
| About page | Real team photos (not stock), named people with credentials, specific differentiators, linked LinkedIn profiles, Organization schema complete | Organization + Person (per team) | Stock photos, no named people, generic corporate values, 3,000 words of self-praise, no contact link |
| Programmatic page | Quality gate per page, unique value vs sibling pages, conditional template logic, hub-and-spoke internal linking, noindex threshold | Dataset / LocalBusiness / Product (depends) + BreadcrumbList | No quality gate, obviously templated text, same copy regardless of data values, orphaned pages |
Per-type deep dive
The eight types below have the most distinct audit concerns. For the rest, the table above is enough.
Product page (e-commerce)
Audit for three things in order: unique copy, price visibility, schema completeness. Unique copy is the most-failed dimension. If the product description reads identically to the manufacturer's site or any competitor selling the same SKU, you have a duplicate-content problem that on-page SEO can't rescue. Grep a sentence from the product description into Google and see how many hits come back. Ten+ means rewrite from scratch. Price visibility is the next most-failed: anything that requires scrolling, clicking, or a "request quote" flow costs you high-intent buyers. Schema completeness means Product + Offer + AggregateRating all populated with real data. Missing Offer.availability kills rich results even when the rest looks fine.
Category page (e-commerce)
The audit tension here is the product grid vs. editorial content balance. Users came to browse, not to read, so a 2,000-word wall of text above the grid actively hurts. But Google needs unique content to distinguish this category from sibling categories selling 60% of the same products. The resolution: keep the editorial concise (300–1,000 words) and place most of it below the grid where it serves SEO without blocking UX. Second thing to audit: faceted navigation crawlability. Filters should refine the on-page list, but filter URLs shouldn't generate thousands of indexable thin pages. Run a quick site: search with a filter param and see how many variants Google has indexed.
Pricing page
Three things determine whether a pricing page actually works: price visibility, trust signals near the price, and completeness of the feature comparison table. Price visibility is binary. Either the number is above the fold or you've already lost self-service buyers. The trust signals are where most pages fall short: money-back guarantee, customer count at each tier, "most popular" badge, short testimonial per plan. Product+Offer schema per tier is required for rich results in pricing queries. Common failure: a page with three beautiful pricing cards and no FAQ handling "what happens when I exceed my limit" or "can I switch plans." These are the #1 pre-purchase questions, and leaving them unanswered kills conversion more than the pricing itself.
Location page (local / service area)
The single biggest audit question: is this a genuinely unique page or a doorway? The doorway test is brutal. Copy a paragraph from the target location page and paste it into a sibling location page (same service, different city). If the only substantive difference is the city name, Google treats it as a doorway and you risk a manual action. Genuine location pages have local case studies with photos, local pricing factors, local regulations, local response times: content only a business actually operating in that area would know. Secondary audit: NAP (Name / Address / Phone) must match the Google Business Profile character-for-character. Inconsistency torpedoes local pack rankings. Third: LocalBusiness schema with real geo coordinates. Missing this forfeits local pack eligibility.
Case study
This is the page type where E-E-A-T Experience signals matter most and get audited hardest. The load-bearing element is a specific, verifiable metric in the H1 with a timeline attached. "142% more organic traffic in 6 months" passes; "significantly improved results" fails. The audit hunt: (1) Is the headline number in the H1 and above the fold? (2) Is there a named client (with permission) or a verifiable descriptor? (3) Is the process described in enough detail that a reader can evaluate the expertise, or is it "we did great work"? (4) Is there a timeline showing how long results took? Cases with no timeline are meaningless: results without duration could mean 2 weeks or 5 years. Vague case studies fail Dimension 3 scoring hard even when every other dimension is clean.
About page
Google's Quality Raters specifically check About pages as an E-E-A-T signal, so this type gets audited through the E-E-A-T lens more than any other. Real team photos (not stock) is the first thing to verify. A single reverse-image search on the hero photo tells you. Named people with credentials relevant to what the business does comes second. "PhD in molecular biology" on a content marketing company is a red flag, not a green one. Third: specific differentiators with evidence. "15 years in renewable energy installations, certified by X" passes; "we care about quality" fails. The common over-failure mode: a 3,000-word self-congratulation essay. About pages should be 500–1,500 words of substance. Longer usually means less trustworthy, not more.
Programmatic page
The audit question for programmatic content is always: does this page earn its index slot? Quality gates are non-negotiable: pages that don't have enough unique data to distinguish them from siblings should be noindexed, not published. Audit a programmatic page by looking at 3–5 sibling pages at the same time. If the template text is word-for-word identical and only the entity name changes, you're looking at thin content that will eventually get classified as doorway/low-value by Google's HCU classifier. The fix: conditional logic in the template so different data values produce substantively different text. Also audit hub-and-spoke linking. Orphan programmatic pages don't get crawled, which means they don't get indexed, which means the whole project was wasted.
Pillar page
Pillar pages fail most often at one thing: they're written as comprehensive-essay rather than hub. A good pillar page covers each subtopic at overview depth (2–4 paragraphs) and links out to a dedicated cluster article for the deep dive. A bad pillar page tries to be the deep dive for everything simultaneously and ends up at 5,000 words of shallow summary. Audit: count the outbound links to cluster content. Fewer than 6–8 internal links to dedicated topic pages means it's not functioning as a hub. Second audit: is there a table of contents with anchor links? A 3,000+ word page without navigation is a bounce factory.
Cross-reference
The full per-type content templates (with structure, word counts, schema, CTA placement, internal linking strategy, anti-AI focus) live in write-content/references/content-types/. Load those when the audit needs to recommend a restructure or rewrite, not when you're just scoring. For this audit skill, the summary above is sufficient to apply the right lens in Phase 0.