The Most Important Content Marketing KPIs and How to Measure Them

Gone are the days when people were measuring “hits” on a site and considering that as a key indicator for their website performance.

Today, and after years of experience and observations, marketers are recommending a set of metrics, on which any website owner or marketer can measure how well their content marketing is.

Here are the top content marketing KPIs (content performance indicators) that will tell you if your content marketing efforts are paying off, and ways to measure each indicator.

You’ll also find some factors to include when setting KPIs for content writers in the team and how to measure their performance.

1. Page Visits

• How many new users are visiting your store every day?
• How many recurring visitors are coming back to your website?

The number of page visits, whether unique or recurring, is on top of the list you should check for content marketing KPIs.

As long as the number of page visits is growing up and you’re getting more leads, then you know that your team’s efforts are paying off and content KPIs are doing well.

How to Measure Page Visits?

A simple and free tool, like Google Analytics, is great to measure page visits and know exactly how many people are landing on your website.

You can also measure the traffic for any page on your store, and get insights about where do these visitors come from so that you can craft your content to attract different people from various channels.

Tip 💡 Different types of content attract more visitors to your website, known as lead generation content: eBooks, blog articles, webinars, etc. That can be one of the KPIs for the content writer.

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2. Time on Page or Session Time

How much time do visitors spend on your website?

Is your content engaging and attractive enough for users to spend time reading?

How many users bounce off the website and after how much time?

Watch users’ session time on your site as this is an important factor of content KPIs; it gives you a full picture of visibility, attractiveness, and engagement.

How to Measure Session Time?

Again, Google Analytics tells you in detail the bounce rate, time spent on every page, and all the information you need.

If the analysis and reports tell you that X of people are actually staying on your page long enough to read an entire article or fill out a form, then you’re on the right track.

Bounce Rate Definition 🙋

The bounce rate of a website is the percentage of visitors that leave a page immediately after landing on it.

Attention ⚡ If the bounce rate is high, you have two options to consider: either you organize the blog and structure visual information well, or you make sure that the content matches the promise made by the title or the description.

Tip 💡 Use heat maps, like the all-famous Hotjar, to track mouse movement and clicks or touches on links from each user visiting your site. Redesign the layout or rearrange the information in a way that’s more appealing or natural to browse to your audience.

Thus, heat maps help you increase session time and measure content KPIs.

On top of that, you can set KPIs for content writers based on the heat map analysis.

3. Downloads

• How popular is your content?
• How interesting your content is for someone to enter their email or fill a form to download?

Downloading an eBook or podcast from your website is a good indicator that your content marketing efforts are doing well.

Downloadable material also brings not only leads but also more information about them.

Here is an example from the ExpandCart Blog 👇 Competitive Analysis Templates Ready-to-Use & How to Build Yours

How to Measure Downloads?

You wouldn’t just put up the material you have for nothing in return.

You’ll ask your website visitor to enter an email or phone number, fill out a form, answer a survey, etc. It depends on your goal or objective from creating and uploading this material.

Watching the sheet of leads’ information getting bigger is one way to measure your content marketing KPIs and adjust accordingly.

A good marketing automation tool like Hootsuite can help you track the number of downloads in real-time.

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4. Comments and Interactions

There’s a section at the end of each blog article for readers to leave a comment or ask a question; how successful was the content creator to engage the reader enough to take the time and write a comment?

Better, do your visitors trust you enough to consider you as a source of liable information and leave a question relevant to the topic you just covered?

If yes, check comments and interactions of the content marketing KPIs list.

How to Measure Comments and Interactions?

Obviously, comments and interactions on any content piece are right there in front of you, whether on the piece itself or on the backend of your website.

But my advice to you is: don’t just count the number of comments. Take into consideration the quality, diversity, and tone of interactors.

You should also reply back to them, not just an automated reply but a personal one.

5. Keyword Ranking

Unless you’re writing a text message to your mother telling her that you’ll be late for dinner, then you’re writing to rank on search engines with specific keywords.

We keep track of our website ranking all the time.

We are always watching our keywords’ ranking and track the keywords that drive the most engagement to our website’s pages.

Then, one of the most important content marketing KPIs is when the content you write ranks well in search engines for your chosen keywords.

How to Measure Keyword Ranking?

There are free tools that give you reports about each and every keyword you’re using and ranking with, like Google Analytics.

There are also some paid tools that do an incredible job in that sense; ahrefs is one of them, if not the best.

Tip 💡 Track the keywords that drive the most engagement to your website, write a list of phrases for each content piece, and then center future content around the main phrases in your existing content that ranks well.

6. Inbound Links

How many other websites are linking back to your website?

How many people out there look up to you as an authority in your field or niche?

How many links does your website get from other sites in your niche as a credible source of information and experience?

Inbound Links Definition 🙋

An inbound link, or backlink, for a given website, is a link from some other website to that website.

Not only do inbound links increase your site traffic and help you achieve a higher spot in search rankings, but they are also an extremely important indicator that your content marketing performance is not less than AMAZING.

We guess you’d like to read this related article 👉 What Are Website Backlinks and How to Build Them?

How to Measure Number of Inbound Links

Moz is one of the best tools that help website owners and marketers track and measure performance.

Use Moz’s link explorer tool to track inbound links to your site and measure content marketing KPIs based on the results.

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7. Conversion Rate

How many users contact you for details, book a phone call, click an affiliate link, make a purchase, or download a template?

You should be tracking the number and percentage of users who take the desired action on a page, who convert.

Conversion Rate Definition 🙋

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take the desired action on a given page on a website or online store.

We guess you’d like to read this related article 👉 Testimonial Examples You Can Use to Boost Conversions 

How to Measure Conversion Rate?

Most online advertising (eg, Google Ads, Facebook Ads) and analytics platforms (eg, Google Analytics) can actually show you your conversion rate right in their interface; you just need to set up your tracking right.

8. Number of Subscribers

Are users interested and engaged enough to subscribe to your website and follow your brand?

In fact, brand awareness is measured by the number of followers it has on any given channel.

Then, the more subscribers and followers your website has, the higher your content marketing KPIs are.

Track the number of existing users, new users, and active users on your site. Know exactly what attracts them to subscribe or, god forbid, unsubscribe.

Include this metric in the content writers’ KPIs as this is the core of their job.

How to Measure Number of Subscribers

As usual, automation tools, like klipfolio or any other, are super smart and effective for you to keep track of everything happening on your website.

Learn to use such tools and keep track of the number of existing, new, and active subscribers on your site.

We guess you’d like to read this related article 👉 eCommerce Subscription Business Models: What and Why?

To Sum Up,,,

Your content marketing efforts should not go in vain. Setting metrics and keys that indicate performance is not an option anymore.

Learn and use marketing automation tools that give you detailed insights about what’s happening on your website, and adjust according to these reports.

We are writing for a huge audience, with unpredictable behavior, hoping they’ll take the desired action. Reading and analyzing content marketing KPIs help us do a better job.

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