When you’re pumping out incredible, industry-relevant content, you want to take the time to monitor its performance to ensure it’s helping your business grow. But if you don’t know what key performance indicators (KPIs) to track, you may struggle to see the return you get from creating content.
That’s why we’ve compiled this list of seven content marketing KPIs for you to track. Keep reading to learn how to monitor content performance effectively by following these metrics:
P.S. Looking for ways to amplify your marketing performance? Join 200,000 savvy marketers by subscribing to our email newsletter, Revenue Weekly, to get free tips and tricks from our team of experts!
Content marketing KPIs: 7 of the best content marketing KPIs to start tracking now
Ready to monitor content performance effectively? Here are seven content marketing KPIs to help you measure the impact of your content!
1. Time on page
One critical metric to monitor is time spent on your content pages. When you create content, you want people to stay on the page and spend time reading your content. You want to create content that answers your audience’s questions and provides them with the helpful information they need.
By monitoring time on the page, you can see which pieces of content keep people engaged longer. You may find that your pages with videos have a longer time on page.
You may also find that some pieces of content don’t perform as well as others. It creates an opportunity for you to figure out where it fell short and how you can improve your content.
How this content marketing KPI can help you improve your content
Tracking your time on page can help you figure out what’s working for your audience and keep their attention. Referring to the previous example, you may start including more videos on your blog posts and informational pages to help boost time on page.
Tracking this metric can help inform future marketing decisions and significantly impact your content performance.
2. Bounce rate
Another one of the best content marketing KPIs to track is bounce rate. Time on page and bounce rate are great metrics to monitor together, as they both indicate how people interact with your content.
Bounce rate shows you how many people visit your content page and leave without visiting any other pages. Tracking this content marketing KPI helps you see if your content drives people to continue engaging on your website.
Keep in mind: Bounce rate doesn’t always signal that something is wrong. People may come to your content, find precisely what they need, and leave. That’s why you need to track other metrics, like time on page, to get a complete picture of what’s happening on your content.
How this content marketing KPI can help you improve your content
Tracking bounce rate enables you to understand if your content delivers what your audience wants. If you have a lot of content with low time on page and high bounce rate, there’s a good chance your content doesn’t deliver what your audience needs.
By tracking this content marketing KPI, you can identify pages that you need to rework to drive better results for your business.
3. Leads
Content creation plays a critical role in helping you generate leads. When people read your content, they may feel compelled to take action by joining your email list, filling out a form, or signing up for a newsletter.
Your content will often drive people to complete conversion-focused actions.
Keep in mind, though, that content doesn’t always result in sales. People don’t always read your content and buy something immediately. Content often serves as a stepping stone towards guiding people to convert.
People may read a few blog posts from you before they subscribe to your emails or buy something. You’ll still want to attribute this content to obtaining that lead, as it helped move those leads towards converting.
How this content marketing KPI can help you improve your content
Tracking leads with your content is critical for helping you see if your content marketing achieves your marketing goals. It’s good to track the leads your content generates because it can help you identify which types of content result in more leads.
You may find that specific formats or topics help drive more leads than others. You can use this information to help inform your content strategy and adjust as needed.
4. Pages per session
Next on our list of content marketing KPIs is pages per session. Pages per session measures how many pages people visit when they enter your website. This metric is critical to track because it shows you what people do when they read your content.
When you create content, you want people to visit other pages on your website and learn more about your business. Whether they visit other blog posts, look at pricing pages, or service pages, you want people to stay engaged on your website and learn more about your business.
With pages per session, you can see how many pages people visit after viewing a piece of content. It can help you see if your content prompts people to learn more about a topic or explore products or services related to your content.
Additionally, you can monitor clicks on internal links to see what people click on when reading your content. It helps you better understand what catches your audience’s attention when reading content.
How this content marketing KPI can help you improve your content
You want to track pages per session when you monitor content performance because it can help you understand how effective your content is in keeping leads engaged. If you see that people aren’t looking at more than one page after reading your content, you can optimize your pages to drive better results.
5. Inbound links
One of the best content marketing KPIs to track is inbound links. Inbound links are links to your content from other authority sites, also known as backlinks. These links help build your website’s authority and send trust signals to search engines like Google, which helps improve the rank of your content.
You want to track your inbound links to see who’s linking to your content. If you’re seeing numerous inbound links to your pages, it indicates that it’s relevant to the topic and informative for readers.
How this content marketing KPI can help you improve your content
Tracking your inbound links can help you understand the quality of your content. If you’re continually earning high-quality inbound links, it indicates that you’re creating relevant content people want to see. It also means you’re covering the topic thoroughly and providing the information people need.
If your content doesn’t earn many inbound links, you want to look at how you can improve your content and reoptimize it to meet the search intent better.
6. Organic rankings
Next on our list of KPIs for content marketing is organic rankings. With organic rankings, you track where your content ranks in search results. You want to have high rankings with your content to drive qualified traffic for your business.
This KPI helps you see if you’re creating content that delivers the information your audience wants. You can see if you’re matching user search intent.
Keep in mind that you shouldn’t leverage the success of your content marketing solely on organic rankings. You want your content to rank well, but not every piece you create will make it to the number one spot. Generally, overall, you want your content to rank on the first page of results consistently.
How this content marketing KPI can help you improve your content
Tracking your organic rankings can help inform your future content marketing decisions. Specific formats or features can help content rank better for your business. You may find that doing listicles, adding a table of contents, or integrating a video helps boost content performance.
If that’s the case, you can use that data to help improve other content pages to perform better for your business.
7. Keywords
To round up this list of KPIs for content marketing, let’s look at keywords. Whether you create blog posts, informational pieces, or other similar content, you want it to rank for relevant terms in search results.
By tracking your keywords, you can see how many terms your pages rank for and what terms your listing appears for in search results.
How this content marketing KPI can help you improve your content
When you monitor content performance and track this content marketing KPI, you may find that your pages don’t rank for as many keywords as you want. If you have pages with low keyword counts, you have an opportunity to reoptimize them to help them rank better.
Get help tracking critical content marketing KPIs
When you monitor content performance, you need to know which KPIs to track to improve your performance. If you’re looking for a company that can help you create engagement-worthy content and continually improve content performance, look no further than WebFX.
With over 25 in digital marketing, you can feel confident our team of experts knows how to create content that helps you drive qualified traffic and leads. We’ve driven over 7.8 million leads for our clients in the past five years and we can do the same for you!
If you’re ready to start earning qualified traffic that turns into leads, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our content marketing services!
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