You can learn a lot about the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy through Google Analytics (GA). Google Analytics is free and available to anyone with a Google account. However, with so much information provided, it can get confusing to know what metrics and reports to pay attention to.
Below we share the most important metrics to focus on in GA and what they mean for your content marketing strategy. Over time, you’ll be able to create better content, more often!
Pageviews
Pageviews are recorded every time a person visits your page, even when a person hits the back button or hits refresh. Even though pageviews are general, they help you understand which content pieces see the most traffic.
Pageviews by Source
Looking at pageviews by source tells you which marketing channels bring the most people to your content. Is the content doing well on social? Organic? As you identify trends on your top-performing content, you can make changes to other content to get more traffic.
Pageviews by Title
Which titles get the most clicks? For example, do list-based titles see more clicks than others? Do you find that clickbait titles get fewer clicks? As you notice trends between your more popular titles, you can follow the same steps to create more enticing headings.
Demographics
What similarities do your readers have in common? If you know the demographics of your audience, you can target your content to this unique group. You can also set up effective remarketing campaigns that keep your brand front and center.
Referral Visits
Referral visits are visits that come from other websites. There are a couple of things you can learn from referral visits. First, which content pieces do people find most interesting? People are willing to link to these posts, so they must be valuable in some way. Second, what types of content are the links pointing to? You can create similar styles of content that appeal to others.
Social Referrals
Each social network has a unique audience, so it’s helpful to know what types of content are being liked and shared on each. This way, you can create tailored content that is targeted and segmented appropriately on each social network.
There are many ways to measure the performance of your content marketing, and this list gives you a few suggestions for getting started. By viewing the right reports and asking the right questions, you can create content that is more targeted, segmented and effective for your audience.
