10 Content Marketing Metrics To Measure Success

Inbound marketing through content creation gets a great return on investment — if you do it right. The only way to be sure you’re going in the right direction is with content marketing metrics.

Indeed, 76% of companies that measure content marketing success metrics have a clear understanding of content performance. How come the rest aren’t so clear about it?

It’s not enough to grab data for data’s sake. You need the right metrics, and you should understand what they mean to your efforts.

Discover which content marketing metrics are the most important to track and what they mean to your strategy.

Why Do You Need To Use Content Marketing Metrics? 

Marketing either works or it doesn’t, right? That mindset can lead you to the old “spray and pray” approach that never provides repeatable success. Metrics help you answer why something worked (or didn’t) and how you can do the right things again or avoid missteps.

What Are the Best Content Marketing Success Metrics?

Make sure you have the following key performance indicators (KPIs) in your content marketing strategy.

1. Page Views

An elemental content marketing metric is views. That’s literally just how many times devices visited your page.

The value of this metric is it shows you which content is working and what to keep making. However, you need to use additional metrics to determine how much of the attraction is toward the subject matter and what effect the content format has.

2. Traffic Sources

Along with views, you should understand where your visitors came from. It’s important to determine whether people are clicking on paid ads, links from social media, or search engine results pages (SERPs). The answer can tell you where to focus your efforts.

Keep in mind that paid ads can get expensive. Therefore, if most of your traffic is coming through those campaigns, you need to figure out how to improve your content to draw in more traffic organically.

You can use Google Analytics to find these metrics in the Reports menu in the Acquisition dropdown “Traffic Acquisition.” Google Search Console shows specific organic search traffic in its Performance sidebar.

3. Keyword Rankings

Keyword rankings specify a domain’s position on SERPs. These content marketing metrics help you see the impact of your efforts to target specific industry-specific words and phrases. Rising performance for keywords shows you you’re doing things correctly.

You also need to monitor how your competitors are doing with keywords. If they’re ranking for phrases that you’re not using, you should find ways to target those keywords and their variations. While you can do some research with Google Search Console, a paid tool or service, such as Semrush, Ahrefs, or BKA Content, makes it easier, especially for competitor research.

4. Impressions

Each platform where you display content should have a report that shows the impressions each piece of content received. This metric measures the number of times your post or content showed up on someone’s screen. Knowing this number is important as a baseline by which to compare other metrics.

5. Backlinks

Another indicator that your content is showing signs of thought leadership is when others link to it in their content and websites. That’s especially true when you get links from reputable, industry-leading sites.

Building backlinks is one of the trickiest parts of search engine optimization (SEO), but it’s worth it. SEO tools, good networking skills, and the assistance of SEO experts are keys to raising these content marketing metrics.

6. Average Time on Page

You could be getting a lot of clicks to your page, but that doesn’t mean visitors find what they’re looking for or even like your content. The more time that people spend on pages, the more engaging you know your content is. Compare the attributes of content with a high average time on page with those that do poorly to discover the distinction.

7. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

One of the real kickers of whether your content hits the mark is when viewers click on links and calls to action (CTAs). Assess the CTR of each page and link to uncover which aspects of your content motivate viewers to move further down the lead funnel.

8. Conversion Rate

Like your CTR, conversion rate is another of your content marketing metrics where the rubber meets the road. How many people executed a desired action on a page? Remember, your conversions shouldn’t just be sales. Subscribing to your blog, requesting lead magnets, and scheduling appointments are helpful conversions that lead to sales and maintain engagement.

Google Analytics allows you to create specific conversion events. You can see how many people landed on a page because of converting after some CTA.

9. Bounce Rate

You shouldn’t just check the positive KPIs that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Find out how many visitors show up and leave quickly by looking at the bounce rate.

Issues that cause visitors to click away from your pages include:

• The content doesn’t match their search intent.
• The page loads slowly.
• The page is unattractive.
• The page doesn’t display correctly on a mobile device.

You should expect some visitors to bounce because of honest mistakes. If you find a high-percentage bounce rate in your content marketing metrics, however, you should figure out what’s pushing people away.

10. Social Media Engagements

Remember that social media posts support content marketing but aren’t a content strategy within themselves. (That’s what’s led some influencers to get many views on a social platform but few sales on their own pages.)

The goal is to get people off of social media and onto your page so you can convert them into brand advocates. Social media also provides a better idea of what content your target audience wants to see. Keep an eye on comments, likes, and shares to find out what’s making an impact.

Improve Your Content Marketing Metrics With Expert Guidance

Measuring and interpreting your KPIs takes careful and continual attention. You might still be finding your way or simply lack the time for it in between all of your duties.

Thankfully, you can get support from the content marketing pros at BKA. Chat with us about our managed SEO services to see how we use content marketing metrics to get you more traffic and visibility.