When it comes to growing an agency or a client’s business, content marketing can be one of the most valuable strategies.
Looking at our content marketing strategy, we see a dizzying array of content marketing metrics. Keeping track of multiple clients’ content marketing data can be time-consuming and overly challenging–without the right strategy.
There are so many metrics for measuring your client’s content marketing strategy. Which ones are most important, and how do you keep track? Which metrics are essential for measuring success?
This blog post guides you on the right content marketing metrics and how to measure them effectively for your client’s specific needs. You will also find a list of the most important 15 Content Marketing Metrics and how to measure them.
These content marketing metrics are split into three main categories, including:
Let’s get started!
What Are Content Marketing Metrics?
Content marketing metrics are data points that help your agency understand your content strategy and track its success. For example, metrics can determine how well a client’s content is performing on social media, how much traffic it generates, and any sales or leads coming as a result. It’s possible to track several metrics depending on the type of content being produced.
The best content marketing metrics are relevant, actionable, and easy to measure in most cases.
Importance of Setting Content Marketing Goals
Content marketing has many benefits for your client’s business, including increasing brand awareness and building customer loyalty. However, it can take time to see results from your content marketing efforts. By setting goals for your content marketing strategy, you can help ensure that your efforts for your client are having the desired impact on your business.
Setting clear goals will help you determine what type of content to create and how often you should post. It can also help you track your progress over time to make adjustments as needed.
By determining the goals you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy and setting clear benchmarks, you ensure that your content marketing efforts impact your client’s business.
One of the most important things you can do to set your client up for success with content marketing is goal-setting. Without goals to work towards, it is easy to lose sight of what your content marketing strategy is trying to accomplish.
For example, if you want to grow your client’s email list, you should have a goal of creating a certain number of engaging blog posts each week. By having specific goals in place, you are more likely to stay on track and achieve the results that you are looking for.
Content marketing provides organic search traffic and builds your clients’ brand and reputation as a thought leader in the industry.
While many agencies and marketers understand the benefits of content marketing well, the challenge is that it’s a much more long-term strategy than paid advertising, for example. Unfortunately, this also means it can be much more difficult to pinpoint an exact ROI on your content marketing than to track the ROAS of paid ads.
What Are Your Objectives and KPIs for Content Marketing?
Your client’s business objectives will determine the KPIs you should track. For example, you should track metrics like traffic and conversion rates if you’re using content marketing to generate leads for your client. To build awareness, track metrics like engagement and shares.
Depending on your client’s goals, you may also want to track things like domain authority and page authority. Domain authority measures the strength of a website’s domain. Page authority measures the strength of individual pages on the website.
Whether you’re using content marketing for SEO purposes or not, these metrics can help you track the overall health of your client’s site.
Before deciding which marketing metrics to measure, ensure that every member of your marketing team (and your client) understands each content campaign’s objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs).
This is distinct from the overall topic of “how do you quantify content marketing ROI?” (which we answer near the end of this article).
Identifying your core objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) is critical in selecting which metrics to employ to measure your content marketing activities.
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15 Important Content Marketing Metrics to Track
Content marketing has the dual benefit of providing organic search traffic while building your company’s brand and reputation as a thought leader in the industry.
While many agencies and marketers understand the benefits of content marketing well, the challenge is that it’s a much more long-term strategy than paid advertising, for example. Unfortunately, this also means it can be much more difficult to pinpoint an exact ROI on your content marketing than to track the ROAS of paid ads.
Despite this inherent challenge, there are a number of metrics and KPIs that agencies should use to measure the performance of their content marketing strategy for a client. This article will discuss 15+ metrics you should be tracking to make content marketing a worthwhile investment for your clients.
User Behavior Metrics
User behavior metrics indicate how well each article or page performs in terms of overall traffic and how users interact with the content based on its quality. One of the best ways to track and measure user behavior metrics is our Google Analytics integration which includes each of the metrics below in a unified dashboard.
Pageviews
When it comes to content marketing, the first metric you’ll typically look at is Pageviews, which tells you the total number of times a page has been loaded. Unlike Sessions, Google Analytics counts a Pageview as each instance a browser loads a particular page, regardless of whether it’s viewed multiple times by the same person.
Pageviews can provide you with a general indication of how well an article or webpage is performing. However, it must be combined with other metrics to get a complete picture of performance.
Users
In Google Analytics, users refer to the total number of unique visitors to your website. Unlike pageviews that count a person’s visit multiple times, users tell you how many actual people are landing on your website. Users can also be further broken down into returning users and new users based on if they’ve visited your site before.
Sessions
Sessions represent a single visit to your website. For example, if a user comes to your client’s website and spends five minutes reading one article, that would count as a single session. If that user comes back to your site and reads another article, that wouldn’t count as a new user but as a new session.
To find the number of sessions for a specific piece of content, you can simply click on “Pages” and toggle “Sessions” on:
Percentage of New Sessions
The percentage of new sessions is another helpful metric that tells you the number of first-time visitors to your site vs. returning visitors.
The percentage of new sessions is calculated by dividing New Sessions by All Sessions. This metric can be considered an indirect engagement metric. A high number of returning visitors indicates that people are interested in your content and learning more about your business.
Website Sessions by Source
Website sessions by source is another valuable metric for content marketing. It tells you which channels are performing well and which sources may be an opportunity for growth. Knowing which traffic sources perform best can also help plan your content distribution strategy.
Average Time on Page
The average time a user spends on a page is another helpful indicator of content quality and gives you an idea of the type of content that resonates with your audience.
By determining the pages with the highest time on page, you can look for similarities in the content—for example, if they included infographics, videos, etc. Then, once you know what’s working, you can double down on that type of content going forward.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors that navigate away from a site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate can indicate that you need to add or adjust a call-to-action (CTAs) to the post in content marketing. Aside from CTAs, you should also check the page speed and scan for potential SEO issues with a site audit tool to improve bounce rate.
Pages Per Session
Pages per session are defined as the average number of pages viewed during a single session. This is another valuable metric to get an idea of an article’s level of engagement. One strategy to increase the average pages per session is to use interlinking on your content or linking to other pages with more information on the subject.
SEO Metrics
Without organic search traffic, there’s a good chance your content won’t deliver the leads or conversions you or your clients are looking for. This section will look at five SEO metrics related to your content’s performance in search engines.
Impressions & Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The combination of these two metrics together can provide valuable insight into your content’s search performance. For example, a high number of impressions and a low CTR may mean that you need to change the post’s title or meta description. You can use our Google Search Console integration to track impressions and CTR. It can be segmented based on top queries, top pages, countries, and devices:
Average Position
Average position is another useful search metric that can tell you which content you should be focused on optimizing. For example, suppose an article is ranked at position 11 on page 2 of SERPs. In that case, this presents a considerable SEO opportunity as it’s estimated that 95% of searchers will never go past the first page. You can track the average position in Google Search Console or use our keyword rank tracker to monitor for changes in the average position in both Google and Bing:
Backlinks
Another useful metric that can influence your search rankings is the number and quality of backlinks. For example, with our backlink checker, you can track new and lost links and additional metrics, including Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and more.
Conversion Metrics
Although traffic is a valuable performance indicator of your content marketing strategy, most clients and businesses care more about leads and conversions. Specifically, attributing a monetary value to your content marketing will go a long way to retaining clients over the long run.
Goal Completions
Also referred to as conversions, Goal Completions allow you to track the number of specific actions a visitor took on the website. Goals can range from signing up for a newsletter, adding a product to the cart, or completing a purchase. You can access Goal Completions for specific keywords with our Google Analytics integration under the Acquisition -> Organic Search tab:
Goal Value
It is the monetary value associated with completing a specific goal. Assigning a Goal Value is optional in Google Analytics, as not all goals have a clear monetary value. However, if you can assign a dollar amount to goals, you can tell a story about your services concerning their business goals. You can find the Goal Value for specific pages under the Pages -> Landing Pages tab in Google Analytics:
Conversion Rate
Also referred to as Goal Completion Rate, tracking the conversion rate of your content allows you to determine how effectively you’re moving prospects from the awareness and consideration stage towards a conversion. Conversion rate also identifies which pages may need further conversion rate optimization (CRO) if they’re below a specific baseline relative to other pages. For content marketing, examples of CRO best practices include adding call-to-actions throughout the page and clearly defining the next steps you want visitors to take.
Page Value
Page value is another useful metric in Google Analytics that tells you the most valuable pages regarding how they contribute to the site’s revenue. Page value is the average value of a page that a user visited before reaching the goal page or completing a transaction. You can find both the average page value across all pages and specific values of each page under the Pages -> All pages tab with our Google Analytics integration:
How to Measure Content Marketing ROI
As an agency, you want to know if you are creating effective content marketing strategies for clients. You also want to know if people are reading and engaging with the content you are creating for clients. Finally, you want to know if your client’s visitors share your content and click on your links. How can you consistently measure this for your clients?
Many businesses use Google Analytics to track their website traffic, but it’s impossible to track all readers who come from social media. So instead, you should use both analytics tools and third-party measurement tools to get the most accurate picture of your content’s reach.
These measurement tools will help you track the impact of your content, allowing you to see which posts are most successful and which social media platforms are best for reaching your target audience.
Summary: Content Marketing Metrics to Measure Success
When creating a content marketing strategy for your agency or clients, defining the metrics you’ll use to measure performance is essential. Whether it’s a certain number of leads or purchases, working backward from the ROI you’re looking for allows you to specify the traffic and conversion rate you’ll need to achieve those goals.
Each of these content marketing metrics is valuable to measure the success of your campaign, although looking at them as a whole in a unified dashboard allows you to pinpoint what’s working and what needs refining. Whether it’s changing the type of content you’re creating or the distribution strategy, keep in mind that content marketing is an investment, and tracking these metrics will help you to succeed in the long run.