Your website may be impeccable, your content may be flawless, your marketing efforts and investments may be on target, but how do you know if your efforts are paying off ? How do you demonstrate your overall success on paper?
How do you evaluate the user experience on your website, so you can discover the inferior areas of your site and better them? For this, you’ll need to do some analysis and look at some metrics. Of course, metrics can be boring and tedious, until and unless money gets involved. But only by committing to this process you can constantly increase your content marketing success.
Content Marketing and Key Performance Indicators
As per the Content Marketing Institute, 42% of B2B marketers boast about their effectiveness in content marketing. But when it comes to analysis and metrics, according to the LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, a meagre 8% of marketers confidently say that they are ‘very successful’ or ‘very effective’ at tracking their content marketing stats. By tracking, some of us think we just have to see the page-views and overall number of visitors to know how the site is performing. This is not going to work if we want to advance in content marketing and generate sales. We need to know about the whole journey of the users from the moment they enter our site, to the moment they leave the page. By taking everything into consideration we can improve our website’s performance.
KPIs or ‘key performance indicators’ are the essential tools you need to get acquainted with while analyzing your metrics. KPIs will help you reach the destination of utmost user satisfaction. They will draw a clear picture of your current campaign’s success. Knowing the most important KPIs and keeping them in mind while continuing with your analysis, can be difficult. But, don’t fret! Read this blog until the last phrase and find out everything you need to know about these performance indicators.
1. Organic sessions/visits
This may be the most important KPI as it shows you the exact thing you want to know: the number of eyeballs on your website. Organic visits or views are earned by you through your content, keywords or brand popularity. Organic searches clearly mean that people are searching for your brand name on search engines.
Here, you’ll see how your marketing efforts are showing profit. The more brand awareness you have, the more organic traffic you’ll attract. If your optimization is successful, your ranking on search engines will automatically lead to a large number of visitors. Also, the CPC value of your website will escalate, which will eventually help you make the jump to the 1st or 2nd page of popular search engines like Google and Bing. The best tool to analyze your organic sessions is Google Analytics. Also, keep in mind that a session means the whole journey of the user on your webpage, from arrival to departure.
2. Keyword ranking
Keyword ranking happens when your site ranks for certain keywords you have focused your content on. The higher it ranks, of course, the better. There will be some keywords for which you’ll be automatically ranking higher, like your brand name or specific products.
For other frequently searched keywords, you have to work hard to rank higher. As you rank higher for frequently searched keywords, Google’s algorithms will make your page appear higher in search engine results. The best tools for analysing keyword rankings are SEranking and SEMrush.
3. Bounce rate
Bounce rate will analyze the percentage of users who terminated their visit on your website almost immediately after entering, without taking any action. You can analyze your bounce rate on Google analytics. A higher bounce rate tells the search engine algorithms that your site is not providing value, or that it’s not relevant for a certain keyword. Hence, your page ranking will drop.
To decrease your bounce rate you should constantly improve your site’s technical outlook.
4. Pages per session
This is a very important KPI as it tells you how many page-views your site had per session. A single user can do multiple page views. This KPI indicates how well your site engages users and walks them through different pages.
With this KPI you can analyze and improve your website’s pages, so that users can navigate them easily.
5. Average session duration
As the name indicates, this KPI gives you detailed metrics about how much time a user spends on your site per visit. The time spent on your site is evidence that your content is catchy and provides value to the user. The more time users spend on your pages, the easier will be for you to temp them into buying your products.
You can check this KPI to improve the CTA of your site and convert the audience into buyers.
6. Page load time
This is also a paramount KPI that helps you improve your site’s bounce rate. Think as a user for a moment. You don’t want a webpage to take too much time to load. You want it to load almost instantly. Similarly, users on your webpage are looking for immediate gratification.
If users notice that your website takes too much time to load, in 90% of the cases, they will leave. What causes websites to become too heavy? Large images, videos, and content. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to find out what’s your site’s loading time and what you can do to improve it. Keep optimizing your content and don’t forget to test your site’s loading time now and then.
Also read, How to find the images that slow down your website
7. Top exit pages
This KPI tells you which is the last page a user visits on your website. An exit page can be the purchase confirmation page for some users or the first page for others. Of course, you want the purchase page to be the exit page for your users but sometimes this isn’t the case, and that’s why it’s important to determine what made your visitors leave your site. Google analytics can help you analyze the exit pages of your website.
If you notice that most users leave your site after being on an exit page that isn’t the exit page you’d want them to be on, you can make the necessary adjustments to improve both your webpage and your visitors’ experience.
Conclusion
By using these 7 fundamental KPIs you will gradually notice a growth in customers’ numbers and, obviously, in profit. Strengthen the weaknesses of your site and prepare for success!
Author Bio: Justin Kemp is working as a junior content writer and blogger with Ranking By SEO. He can be seen blogging about digital marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, and much more.