Web analytics have come a long way since the days of just calculating the number of hits on a site to determine the traffic. Nowadays, there is a long list of key performance indicators (KPIs) that needs to be measured to evaluate the efficiency of your content marketing initiatives.
No matter how simple or intense your content marketing campaign is, these KPIs hold true for almost all types of campaigns and industry verticals. Let us take a look at them and understand how they contribute in assessing the effectiveness of your online content marketing campaign.
1. Unique Visits
Unique visits are considered as the most customary measure of how many unique visitors stopped over your website and browsed it in a given time frame. However, it is to be noted that not all visits are similar. Some are genuinely interested in your offerings while some landed up on your site just while browsing the internet without any intention of buying. Not all unique visits hold same value to your business. Some are much more valuable than other especially when they spend a considerable amount of time browsing your site.
2. Mobile Readership
Well, most of the times, individuals surfing the internet on their mobile devices generally browse sites that they find useful in some or other way. It’s really great to know how many visits your site receives from mobile users. It’s important to find out how much time they spent and what pages they read. Besides this, which mobile devices they are using is an important indicator.
Understanding how mobile users read the content can help you find out how to optimize the content and the website design for upcoming publications.
3. Geography
Of course, your content is for a particular group or segment of people and it won’t be read everywhere. Therefore, it’s important to understand where your content is being read. It helps you in assessing if it’s making a mark on the right set of people or your target audience or you need to further customize the content according to their needs.
Google analytics is a wonderful tool that provides page-level details including geographic information. Using this, you can actually find out where you got the visits from. You can then optimize the content for the geographical locations you want to target.
4. Time Spent on the Site
Time spent by visitors on the site is certainly one of the critical factors to learn about the reader engagement. A high bounce rate means that you failed to deliver the content that could fulfill their expectations.
It is in vain if you received thousands of visitors in a month with average time ranging from 12 to 30 seconds. You would be in a better position when you received fewer visitors spending more time on your website. That would mean that you gained relevant traffic.
So, the number of unique visits is not the only standard that is to be measured. The average time spent by visitors on your web pages is equally important.
5. Page Views
This is one of the main KPIs when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of your content marketing campaign. Despite its importance, most marketers often overlook it and are unable to understand the co-relation between unique visits and page views. Higher the page views, better it is for your online business. This is a good sign indicating that your audience is engaged and are interested in your offerings.
Check out which pages receive maximum visits and which receive average visits. Customize the content and improve its quality so that they also go through the less read content.
6. Click Patterns
There are numerous good tools to help you understand the click patterns illustrating which sections of the pages are most viewed. Google analytics in-page analytics allows you to track click patterns. Such information is critical to understand what your audience likes the most, basis which you can churn out similar content while adding more value to it.
7. Social Sharing
One of the most critical indicator in the times of social networking, social sharing stats tell you straightaway how popular your content is. The reach of your content can expand exponentially with just a few social shares. Churn out the content that grabs the eyeballs of your readers and they are compelled to share it with people in their network.
8. Comments
Is your content subject to two-way communication? Comments on your posts determine it. In the era when people spend a large portion of their daily life on social media channels, it’s important to engage them in a conversation with you. However, make sure that your discussions on social media do not take a negative note. But if somehow you couldn’t avoid it, ensure to deal with the criticism carefully. A negative comment serves as a great feedback as they help you gain insights into your content marketing efforts.
The ultimate aim of a content marketing initiative is to increase your reach and gain relevant traffic to your website so that you can generate leads and convert your readers into your brand ambassadors. However, it is equally important to measure your content marketing efforts in order to find out if you’re on the right track. Consider these KPIs to shape your content better so that you can get maximum out of your investments and efforts.