One of the most important parts of content marketing is figuring out works and what doesn’t for your audience. Effective content leads to more awareness, loyal customers, sales and revenue over the longer term. But over half of marketers cite measuring the effectiveness of their content as their biggest challenge.

To help determine if your content is working, I’ve put together a list of some of the most important metrics to track.

Why Shouldn’t I Just Look at Pageviews
Your pageviews measure your content’s performance, but those numbers tell you more about traffic than actual engagement. There are several other KPIs that can give you a significantly more accurate picture of how well your content resonates with your audience.

What Metrics Should I Look At?

  • Bounce rate: This KPI is defined as the percentage of website visitors who leave without viewing any of your other content. A high bounce rate for your website means that visitors are not finding a compelling reason to stick around. Many factors could lead to a high bounce rate:
    • Your pages might load slowly
    • Your content may not align well with the keywords you’ve chosen
    • Your content isn’t easy to skim through or understand
    • Your site’s navigation could use improvement
    • You don’t give them a reason or opportunity to look at more content
  • Dwell time: This refers to the amount of time a user spends on a page. The more time visitors spend on your content, the more it is likely to be resonating with them. Boosting dwell time requires many of the same tactics needed to improve your bounce rate:
    • producing better-quality content
    • improving site navigation
    • suggesting recommended content in an effort to get visitors to read something else
  • Pages per visit: The average number of pages per visit is another good way to measure how compelling your overall content is. Well-written, engaging content should inspire visitors to keep clicking and reading. This metric can also be impacted by your site’s navigation.
  • Social shares: Tracking your content’s social shares is essential. In a survey of nearly 400 SEO professionals, this metric was voted as the most important KPI in content marketing. Social shares are a great way to measure your content’s reach, with each share making it more likely that key influencers and prospects will see your content. Another benefit of social shares is that they promote buzz around your content. People are more likely to assume a piece is important and worth reading when someone they know has already signed off on it.
  • Likes and comments: When users take the time to interact with your content, especially by commenting on it, it’s a clear indicator of engagement. They want to be part of the community and conversation surrounding the content. Content that’s being actively commented on attracts other readers to join the conversation and adds value for both your brand and audience.

Don’t Miss the Big Picture

 There are many ways to measure the effectiveness of a content marketing campaign. Although pageviews are a commonly quoted metric, they only reveal one piece of the puzzle. Using a wide range of KPIs will give you a better picture of how users respond to and interact with your content and how it is contributing to you reaching your content goals.

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