Regular content refreshes should be a core component of every content strategy.

They’re vital to keep information, data, and sources up-to-date, as well as to maintain or improve SEO performance.

But it can be tricky to determine exactly what should be updated, and what shouldn’t, when it comes to SEO performance.

Plus, if you have a large content library, content refreshes can also be time-consuming, reducing capacity for producing new content.

Enter: content refresh tools.

7 tools to help you identify content decay and make optimisations

In this article we’ll take a look at the features, pricing, and reviews for 7 of the best tools for content refreshing that are on the market in 2025:

1. Google Search Console

Here’s a quick overview before we get into the details:

Google Search Console

When it comes to refreshing content, Google Search Console is really the only tool you need – as long as you have the time to then put in the work to make the updates needed.

The best part? Google Search Console is a completely free tool.

To use Google Search Console for content refreshing, the first step is to use the ‘pages’ view in the ‘search results’ report to regularly audit existing content on your website and identify individual pages where the SEO performance is starting to plateau or decline – when the impressions and clicks for a page are levelling off or reducing.

Content refresh results example in search console

In the same view you’ll be able to analyse all of the queries that search users are using when they come across that piece of content – those with the most impressions are keywords that you should check that the content is optimised for to make the most of the traffic.

Using the ‘average position’ also enables you to identify content that is having some success for certain keywords, and could potentially reach page 1 for those keywords if further optimisations were made.

Where Google Search Console can’t help is with actually making the updates to your content.

It’s over to you for optimising for high potential keywords, refreshing any out-of-date information or statistics, and adding additional information to increase the quality of the content – or you could use one of the SEO tools reviewed later in this article which do support with content optimisation.

Animalz Revive

Content agency Animalz have released a content refresh tool named Revive – it’s free, so a great place to start, but it does have limited functionality.

You connect a Google Analytics account, and Revive analyses the data to find content that is declining in SEO performance, ranked by potential for increased performance. The results can then be exported to CSV to inform content plans.

So, if you simply want to identify which content to prioritise for refreshes, Animalz Revive might be perfect for you – and it’s completely free, so I’m highlighting it up front.

However, if you’re looking for a tool to support the actual content refreshing work, you’ll need one of the other tools outlined in this article, so keep reading!

MarketMuse

MarketMuse is an SEO tool which can be used for many purposes, including content refreshes.

MarketMuse content optimisation features

MarketMuse’s ‘optimize’ feature can be used to:

Monitor content performance and highlight content that’s damaging performance and needs to be refreshed or improved
Determine how best to refresh each piece of content that has been flagged, including insights on which areas to expand, remove, or add in
Compare your content on a topic to that of competitors to identify key gaps in competitor content that you could fill to ensure your content is the best on the market.

MarketMuse pricing

MarketMuse has three pricing tiers.

Here’s the key differences in terms of using the tool for content refreshing:

Optimise: $99 per month. Includes site inventory (i.e. monitoring your site performance), with 100 tracked topics and 1 user included.
Research $249 per month. Includes site inventory with 500 tracked topics and 3 users included.
Strategy $499 per month. Includes site inventory with 10,000 tracked topics and 5 users included.

MarketMuse does have a free trial available, but it does not include the ability to add a site inventory, which means the free trial cannot be used for content optimisation purposes.

MarketMuse reviews

MarketMuse has a G2 rating of 4.6 out of 5.

SEOwind

SEOwind is a content intelligence tool, primarily used for AI content writing – but includes a content update feature which can be used for content refresh purposes.

SEOwind content optimisation features

SEOwind’s content update feature enables users to:

Analyse SEO content to understand which content is ranking well and which is underperforming and, therefore, may be an opportunity for a content refresh
Automatically suggest improvements to underperforming content – including areas where content is out-of-date, trusted statistics and sources, new opportunities for internal links, and more.
Automatically suggest new content ideas based on SERP analysis, identifying content and keyword gaps that could improve topical authority.

SEOwind pricing

SEOwind offers a free trial which gives users 3 days of access to the platform for free, including the option to write or update 2 articles – so this is a great way to test out the content update functionality to see if it fits your content refresh needs.

Beyond this, SEOwind has three pricing tiers. The key differences for the content update functionality are:

Basic $49 per month. Write or update 96 articles for 1 domain.
Pro $119 per month. Write or update 240 articles across 2 domains.
Agency $299 per month. Write or update 1200 articles across 12 domains.

SEOwind reviews

SEOwind has a top G2 rating of 4.9 out of 5.

Clearscope

Clearscope is an SEO tool which, like many others, includes functionality for updating and optimising existing content – perfect for content refreshing.

Clearscope content optimisation features

Clearscope’s ‘optimize’ feature enables users to:

Grade content: Understand how well optimised existing content is for SEO and keyword opportunities.
Monitor content decay: Track the performance of existing content and identify when performance is declining and so a content refresh is needed.
Identify content gap opportunities: Get recommendations for keywords in ‘striking distance’ i.e. easy content gap wins that could improve SEO performance quickly.

Clearscope pricing

Clearscope has three pricing tiers.

The key differences in terms of content optimisation functionality are as follows:

Essential $189 per month. Track 100 pages, receive 20 content reports, identify 50 high-potential keywords.
Business $399 per month. Track 300 pages, receive 20 content reports, identify 50 high-potential keywords, access to a dedicated account manager.
Enterprise: available on request – custom pricing, custom features.

Clearscope reviews

Clearscope has a top G2 rating of 4.9 out of 5.

SurferSEO

SurferSEO is an SEO tool which includes a content audit feature that can be used for content refreshes.

SurferSEO content optimisation features

SurferSEO’s content audit feature enables users to:

Score existing content based on SEO performance
Receive weekly suggestions to improve poor-scoring content through fresh insights and better quality writing
Automatically optimise poor-scoring content using the tool’s suggestions
Identify content gaps to provide direction for future content that will boost SEO performance.

SurferSEO pricing

Like most of the other content refresh tools reviewed here, SurferSEO has three pricing tiers.

In terms of the content audit features, the key differences are:

Essential $99 per month. Track 200 articles per month, make automatic optimisations to 30 articles per month, generate 5 AI articles per month. 5 teammates allowed.
Scale $219 per month. Track 1,000 articles per month, make automatic optimisations to 100 articles per month, generate 20 AI articles per month. 10 teammates allowed. Access support from SurferSEO’s team.
Enterprise: available on request – custom pricing, custom features.

SurferSEO reviews

SurferSEO has a G2 rating of 4.8 out of 5.

Dashword

Dashword is content optimisation software – the only tool in this list specifically targeting content audits and refreshes only (for now at least).

Dashword content optimisation features

As a content optimisation tool, Dashboard enables users to:

Monitor content post-publication to see how it performs for SEO
Identify underperforming pages which could improve performance through a content refresh
Highlight optimisation opportunities in a content editor, to improve underperforming pages
Regular reports on keywords and rank tracking to identify future opportunities to improve SEO performance.

Dashword pricing

Dashword has two pricing tiers:

Startup $99 per month. 30 content reports,100,000 AI written words, 5 users per account.
Business $349 per month. Content monitoring functionality, 100 content reports, unlimited AI written words, 10 users per account.

Dashword reviews

Dashword has a ProductHunt rating of 4.6 out of 5.

💡 SEO refreshes, done for you

Whilst the tools listed in this article can support with identifying underperforming content and making AI suggestions for improvements, they can’t offer in-depth content refreshing support to drastically improve the quality of content – additional research, subject matter expert input, data analysis, and so on.

It’s likely a better use of budget to work with a trusted content refresh expert, someone who has real-world experience of SEO refreshes to boost performance.

Interested? Find out more and get in touch.