You have a website for your business and you’re doing your best to post blog posts each week. You even have a free guide you created as a lead magnet for your audience. Yet, you find yourself wondering if there’s anybody out there each time you hit publish. After all, your inbox isn’t flooded with new leads.
Creating high-quality content takes time and effort. When you fail to see immediate results, you may decide it’s just not worth doing anymore. Before you quit, though, we encourage you to evaluate the data behind your efforts.
How to Use Basic Analytics to Visualize Your Copy’s Success
If you’re not measuring the success of your content, you’re working harder, not smarter. It’s like putting a blindfold on before you throw the dart. You need analytics to see which content is working and which isn’t. Otherwise, you might be putting effort into creating content that simply won’t convert.
First Things First: Get Google Analytics
Although there are many content analytics tools out there (SEMrush, Sumo, etc.), the basic tools found in Google Analytics are perfect for general testing. Google has an easy-to-follow guide for you to get started.
The 5 Basic Analytics You Should Track to Measure Content Success
Before we go any further, please hear us out: you don’t have to go down the rabbit hole that is website analytics. Instead, all you need to start testing your website content, blog copy and other published content are these five basic metrics.
- Traffic increase: We’re betting that one of your content marketing goals is to increase your website traffic. If your content strategy is working, you’ll gradually see your traffic increase over time.
- Time on page: It makes sense that if your audience enjoys your content, they’ll spend time on your website to fully consume it. How long are visitors spending reading your blog posts? If they’re sticking around long enough to read the whole thing, you’ve got a winner.
- Pages per visit: Content that converts is content that includes internal links to other pages on your website. After all, the purpose of your content is to build awareness of what you have to offer. If they’re clicking those links, that means they trust there’s content worth seeing on the other side.
- Returning visitors: Good content keeps your audience coming back for more. If you have a good number of returning visitors, you’re doing something right.
- Social sharing: Content that’s shared often is content that elicits a response so strong that the reader feels compelled to pass it along. This is the type of content you want to focus your attention on.
How to Use These Insights
It isn’t enough to track these metrics. You need to do something with them. Once you see a piece of content that’s doing particularly well, analyze it. What’s the subject matter? What’s different about that piece of content compared to others? Use these insights to create new and improved content.
Dig Deeper: Look Beyond Your Content’s Analytics
There are some areas to review beyond Google Analytics. When you’re ready to dig even deeper, consider:
- Social engagement: Is your audience commenting on and liking your social posts? Social engagement is a great way to measure which content your audience wants to see.
- Questions and comments: Check your blog comments or social media for questions your audience may have. This will help you discover if your content is meeting their needs.
- Lead quality: When your content does result in a lead, is the lead qualified? Meaning, is that lead a target customer likely to make a purchase? If not, your content needs tweaking to attract the right audience.
High-Quality, Audience-Focused Content Always Wins
Creating and analyzing content is a dance that you’ll do a million times over as you build a solid content marketing strategy. While it may feel foreign to you now, it will become second nature to you as you move forward. And, if you need encouragement as you’re starting out, just remember that high-quality content that delivers value to your audience always wins. If you’re not sure how to create high-quality, winning content or you simply can’t find the time to do it on your own, send us a message.
