Content continues its reign as a king. There aren’t any suitable rebels to challenge the power that content marketing holds. Proof? Demand Metric confirms that in contrast with traditional marketing tactics, content marketing requires 62% less investment. On top of that, it generates roughly three times the leads’ volume.
This is the reason why almost 90% of the organizations employ this king to generate profit for their business. An analysis of companies that curate content shows that such ventures noted six times the conversion rate. This was in contrast with businesses that don’t use content creation as part of their marketing strategy.
If numbers don’t paint a realistic enough picture, you can always glimpse into Robbie Richard’s content marketing wonders. He had zero connections, a month-old blog, and a dry-as-a-desert marketing budget. Even so, content creation yielded an increase of 272% traffic in only a month’s time.
No wonder, content marketing is such an asset for any marketing agency. You can check out how content marketing can be beneficial for a business below. That said, the key is to curate the right content and deliver it to the right people. To this end, you need to keep an eye on metrics that tap into the progress that you’re making or vice versa.
Let’s dig into these content marketing metrics that you should track for yourself as well as your clients:
- Traffic
Tracking this content marketing metrics is a no-brainer. If you need a website to succeed, you need the right audience coming in. The page’s traffic pays testament to the number of people coming to visit the content. You need to pay attention to the traffic that is flowing in and its source.
Moreover, scrutinize the type of content that brings in more traffic. For instance, content on a topic such as, “5 on-page SEO tips to boost your content’s ranking” may be getting a lot more views than a write-up on “What is off-page SEO?” This will help you determine the content flavors that your audience enjoys. In doing so, you can curate content as per the liking of your traffic.
As you create content that is suited to the tastes of your audience, you can easily grow yours or your client’s business. Use Google Analytics to track the traffic. Simply click on Behavior on the main menu, go to Site Content and then Landing Pages to view the traffic flow.
- Time on site
You need to keep tabs on the visit duration metrics too. In simple words, you don’t need visitors quickly strolling by your website. You need them to stop and spend good time munching the content. This is what determines user engagement.
You won’t see good ROI if potential clients are just flying by your webpage like Santa in his carriage on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, HubSpot indicates that more than half of the visitors tend to spend less than 15 seconds on a website.
Plus, such a short visit duration hurts your site’s SEO game as well. The solution to any such problem starts with awareness. Focus on Google Analytics in this case as well, click on Audience and then Overview to learn the engagement rates. Check out your visitors’ average time on site and uncover how bad or how good you are doing.
If, unfortunately, your ship isn’t sailing smoothly, observe the pages where visitors have stayed for longer and learn what’s keeping them there. Use the discovered tactic on other pages to boost the time that users spend on your or your client’s business page.
- Social shares
We Are Social outlines that there are a total of 3.196 billion social media users across the globe in 2018. As a marketer, this gives you a vast reserve of people to tap into. Besides, social media is the very source that births viral content and influencer marketing. Therefore, it offers broad exposure for your content, which is why you need to trace your content’s social shares.
This metric can help you unfold content pieces that are shared on social networks. You can also learn about who is sharing the content and how often it is being shared. Consequently, this pointer allows you to follow the course of the off-site engagement.
This is essential for summing up the ROI generated from content marketing. Most social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook give a picture of how well your content curation efforts are doing. In other cases, you may need third-party tools.
Use Buffer to monitor your content’s social activity. On top of that, BuzzSumo can help you pinpoint topics that are shared the most.
- Click-through rate (CTR)
If you aim to get your visitors to another page on your or your client’s website, then you need to keep your eyes on the CTR. The click-through rate refers to the links that people are clicking on your content.
You can note your click-through rate via the Search Analytics feature in Google Search Console. Head to the Dashboard and click Search Analytics from there. Go on to marking Clicks, Impressions, and CTR boxes. In the last step, filter the results until you get to the Pages that will show the clicks earned by specific pages.
If people are not clicking the desired links, then half of your efforts are going down the drain. As a solution, you need to work on your call-to-action to make the link more appealing. You can link the relevant target destination in the body of the content that you create.
What’s more is that you can craft a direct call-to-action or “see also” links. This can boost the time that a visitor spends on your website. It is important to craft an attractive meta-title and description to catch the reader’s attention.
- SEO
The content that you curate doesn’t only have to please the audience but also the search engine. This sets the importance of focusing on the search engine optimization (SEO) marker to calculate the ROI of your content marketing efforts.
Among other factors, the increased flow of audience to your content and their engagement rate assist in making your website more SEO-friendly. Subsequently, the browser rewards you by taking your webpage up on the search engine results page (SERPs).
An improved positioning on the search engine means that your web app ranks high on the browser. This spirals your traffic and increases your potential leads and sales. After all, people tend to click the first links that appear in their search.
You’d be surprised to know that 75% of the web traffic doesn’t go beyond the first result’s page. To monitor SEO adequately, check how well your target keywords are ranking and if you are getting inbound links. Explore if your content is popping in the answer boxes for associated terms. Scan your domain authority too.
For learning about how well your keywords are faring, open a private window on your browser and type in the term or phrase. The results that appear will speak for themselves. Over and above that, you can utilize Moz’s Open Site Explorer to dig out your domain and page authority. You can also hunt down the domain and page authority of inbound links from here.
Bottom line
Summing up, there’s no denying that content is king. However, to learn about how successful its rule is, you need to track some key content marketing metrics. The hard work that you pour into content curation should not only be yielding growth in attracting and retaining your audience but it should also ante up your search engine ranking.
Besides, a high number of social shares are another measure of the potential outcome of content marketing. In this regard, chart the courses of your traffic, engagement, social shares, click-through rate, and SEO as discussed above.
