Content Marketing KPIs

You can put all the content you want out there, but if you aren’t analyzing how it performs, you don’t know where it’s landing or how effective it is. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) evaluate how effectively marketing activities positively impact your business objectives and goals. Are potential customers able to easily find you, are current customers engaged and responding to your calls to action?  Measuring your KPIs will tell you what’s working and what needs improvement.

Tools to Use

Google has a plethora of marketing tools at your disposal. However, knowing which ones provide the insight and data you need will be most effective in increasing the number of visitors to your site.  The most popular, Google Analytics, is user-oriented and provides data related to how users interact with your website, such as visits, bounce rates, average page time, etc. Google Search Console is search-engine focused and gives insight on website visibility, search queries, click-through rates, HTML errors, and identifies opportunities to improve overall performance.

KPIs You Should Be Measuring  

You could spend days analyzing different performance data, so how do you know what is most important.  Understanding and tracking these 8 KPIs can provide a boost to your success online.

1. Organic Impressions

The number of times your landing page appears in search results viewed by a user is a good KPI indicator of how your content performs. If your impressions are high, it means that your content is consistently displaying in users’ search results.  This pre-click data is provided by Google Search Console and can help you determine what content is relevant.

If you aren’t receiving the impressions, you hoped for, adjust your landing page. To increase visibility, make sure your content is concise, up to date, and contains keywords that users frequently search.

2. Organic Queries

Using Google Search Console, organic queries (keywords) indicate the total number of searches that returned your landing page over a set time, not including paid searches. To optimize your content, you need to understand the connection between what users search for and how often your landing page appears in those queries. These reports will help you improve search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your site’s visibility and rankings in search results.

Exploring keyword data is essential, along with quality content that draws in new users.

3. Organic Traffic

Most of us cringe at traffic on the roads, but we welcome traffic to our website, quality traffic, that is. You want to be sure your content reaches your target audiences. Otherwise, users quickly leave your site and can increase your bounce rate. Google Analytics provides an in-depth look at the channels, sources, and referrals of how users find your landing page.

Once again, keywords play an important role along with optimizing existing content and creating fresh content.

4. Inbound Links 

Also known as backlinks, inbound links are website links that direct users back to your site. Google interprets inbound links as an indicator of how high quality your content is and is a crucial element in SEO.

Earned links take time to gain, but if your content is receiving consistent inbound links, you’ve got a strong indicator that it resonates with your target audience. 

5. Social referral traffic 

Measuring social traffic to your landing page from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter allows you to monitor how many people you’re driving from social media to your website. Social referral traffic can be a great indicator that users are interested enough in your content to leave the social platform they are on.   

6. Social shares of the content 

Social shares can be powerful in KPIs. Someone else touting your excellence goes a lot further than you touting your own.  To increase social shares, leverage your existing audience to share your content with their social media, groups, influencers, and connections.  This allows your content to reach new users that previously you may not have had access to.

Not to be overlooked, make your content easy to share with accessible share buttons in all of your social channels.

7. Social Engagement Metrics for social posts sharing the content 

You’ve got a user’s attention, but are they engaging with your content? To increase performance, users need to be consistently engaging with your content in the form of likes, shares, and comments. Social engagement is part of a customer’s experience. Transparency, open dialogue, and two-way communication are what customers expect. Incorporating these elements will ensure you build a loyal community that stays engaged.

8. Conversion rate

How frequently are the number of visitors who, after clicking on a link, take action on your page, such as an email newsletter signup? A high conversion rate shows that users value your content and are compelled to act. A low conversion rate means you lost your audience at some point in their journey.

•         Was your call to action clear?
•         Were there too many steps to complete?
•         Is your page easy to navigate?

Conducting A/B testing can be effective in assessing if your content is performing or if other improvements need to be made to your site to increase conversions.

KPIs are more than just numbers on a spreadsheet or chart. They tell the story of how your marketing content is performing and how to improve your efforts. It would be best to analyze them monthly and compare them quarterly to ensure they align with your current marketing strategy and goals.