What Content Marketing KPIs You Should Be Monitoring?

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By Jacob Maslow

Your content marketing efforts aim to attract leads and convert them. You put a lot of time, money, and energy into creating the perfect blogs, videos, podcasts, etc., but if you still feel that you haven’t got the desired results, remember content marketing is a long-term effort. Determining the results of your efforts requires collecting and analyzing the right performance metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

However, more than 20 content marketing KPIs are not always relevant to all businesses. Read on to find the correct data to monitor to ensure you are spending your content marketing budget correctly:

1.      Webpage Traffic

Determining the number of people who visit your webpage from organic search results is crucial. Remember, the more people viewing your website, the more possible customers you gain. Every time someone visits your business website, you have an opportunity to make an impression, create new leads, build a relationship and enhance your brand’s reputation.

Two of the most critical webpage traffic metrics are the number of visitors to your website over a pre-defined period and the total number of page views. These metrics give you a good idea of your website’s popularity.

2.      Conversion Metrics

Conversion metrics measure how your marketing content across social media, website content, and emails inspires readers to respond to the actions you want them as they move down the sales funnel. Whether you want them to subscribe to your newsletter, register for a webinar, download your e-book, sign up for a free trial, or proceed to buy, you want to know what percentage of users took the desired action.

Working out the percentage of viewers who convert is easy – divide the users who took the desired action into the total audience of your content. If you see a low conversion rate for the defined period, you may need to make corrections to your marketing strategy, call to action, or content.

Furthermore, measure the final revenue generated by your content marketing to see how successful it was. If it is low, you must focus on improving conversion rates. Don’t forget that prospects sometimes require several visits to your content before converting.

3.      Time Spent Engaged

The user engagement rate looks at how long they interact with your content once they land on your page or blog. Besides the time spent, you must also measure the number of page views and the bounce rate (how quickly people leave). Looking at all these together gives you a complete picture of what content your users desire from you. Use this insight to provide them with what they want by creating new content or optimizing older posts.

4.      Keyword Ranking Tracking

Another crucial KPI that requires monitoring is keyword ranking to see how these rank through organic searches. Determine which terms your pages and content rank for and which bring up your listing higher in search results.

If the results show that pages don’t rank for the number of keywords you want, take the time to reoptimize the content to improve your SEO and search engine results.

Additionally, if your older content continues to drive traffic to your website, then now is the time to update its information and links, making it more current. Finally, it would help if you also considered promoting this content on other channels to exploit its power.

5.      Tracking Your Backlinks

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, augment your content from another authority website because it sends users through to you. Therefore, backlinks also show you as an authority in your industry. Moreover, besides sending trust signals to users, it increases loyalty and improves SEO on Google and other search engines, boosting your content ranking and marketing campaigns.

The higher your inbound links, the more relevant your topics are, showing that you are helping to inform readers. Take note of which sites drive traffic to your website to ensure you continue to provide the information they want. On the other hand, if your content fails to provide inbound links, make a plan to reoptimize it.

Last Word

Content marketing is a fiercely competitive domain but essential for meeting your business goals. Monitoring content performance requires KPI tracking, but you wouldn’t have much time for anything else with many KPIs available. Therefore, the best tactic is to measure the most important ones and concentrate on providing your audiences with relevant and informative content. Whether you prefer Google Analytics or another KPI tool doesn’t matter; hone in on the information you need and get all your actionable insights today.

 

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