13 Content Performance Metrics You Need To Track

According to CoBloom’s analysis of the 250 largest SaaS companies, the top 10% of their blogs generate an average of 45,700 organic visits. An average blog published by these 250 companies is visited 573 times. Even this data reveals how important it is to have good content marketing and regular review and analysis of content.

In addition, according to the survey published by Semrush in 2022 The State of Content Marketing report, 97% of 1500 participating companies say that content marketing has an important place in their strategy. Despite this, 47% of these companies are just starting to take this business seriously. If you want to take more confident steps in content marketing, which is on the rise among companies, read on to find out which content performance metrics will work.

Revenue by content

Revenue by content is a metric where you observe which content brings you more profit. With this metric, you can identify which of your content leads your user to make a purchase and analyze which content topics are consumed more by your users. In this way, you can draw a strategy for your content within these topics.

Revenue by channel

Like revenue by content, revenue by channel is a marketing attribution metric that allows you to measure and monitor which channel makes more profit. With the data you get from this metric, you can quickly determine which track you should give more weight to. In this way, you can direct your content marketing strategies.

Content Activation Rate

Content activation is one of the most critical metrics that will make SaaS companies stand out from others in content marketing. This metric is an effective way to effectively execute your content strategy and improve the transition between your content channels.

As you can see, content activation helps you to establish a strategy that will bring the content that customers need when they need it. You can take your potential users who consume your content on a customized content journey by increasing your content activation. Moreover, with this efficient and customized content journey, you can direct your users to make a purchase. In other words, increasing your content activation rate means getting rid of passive content that does not lead the customer journey to the next step.

One of the most straightforward ways to increase your content activation rate is to plan a compelling content journey. For example, if you deal with a potential user interested in data visualization, you can direct him to a Content Track with related blogs and posts. In this way, you ensure yourself by minimizing the chance of that potential user not getting a confirmation from you.

Rankings

Keyword rankings refer to your website’s position in search results when users search for a particular keyword. It is significant for your content analysis to determine which keywords your content is ranking for and what position. In this way, you can further optimize your content. In addition, how high you rank indicates that your users are benefiting from your content and that you are doing a more prominent job on the topic covering that keyword than other content. Because search engine rankings are directly related to how many times users click on your content and how much time they spend on your content. Tracking your rankings gives you the right direction regarding your content strategies.

In addition to all these, the keyword rankings metric also helps measure your position compared to your competitors. It tells you whether your competitors are taking advantage of landing pages or content to check their rankings, such as starting a new flow. This way, you can create a more precise game plan for how you can keep traffic under your control. Thus, you can move your rankings to the top and strengthen them.

Time spent on site

The time spent on site metric is a metric that measures the average time spent by all users visiting a website on that website. It can also be called session duration. This metric is calculated as follows:

Time spent on page = (Total time spent on the page by all users) / (Site views- Site exits)

For example, in the month you are considering, your site has been viewed 1000 times, you have 500 site exits, and the time all users spent on your website that month is 400 minutes. In this case, your average time spent on site is 400 / (1000-500) = 0.8 minutes.

A good time spent on the page is 2-3 minutes on average. Although this may sound like a short time, it is enough time for users to interact with your website. However, it would be best if you did not ignore this: Although this metric gives an idea of how attractive your site is, it is average. Therefore, when analyzing this metric, verify your inferences with other metrics.

Organic Traffic

In its simplest terms, organic traffic is traffic that reaches your website from free accessible sources (for example, search engines). Organic traffic often has a better conversion rate than paid traffic. Therefore, it provides a great benefit to your website and content marketing. In addition, having more organic traffic increases the credibility of your website in the eyes of users.

The most straightforward way to increase organic traffic is to tailor your search engine optimizations to suit your users. One of the biggest reasons that bring organic traffic is routinely shared content. When you optimize your content for your readers, the chance of this content appearing before your target audience increases; in addition, take care to regularly share content suitable for your target audience, your potential users. Also, taking advantage of meta and internal links can increase your organic traffic much more than you expect. So make sure your content has enough internal links.

Organic traffic is significant to your content marketing because it is a long-term approach and allows you to reach your qualified potential users. It also increases your user loyalty and reputation by allowing only customers you are interested in to discover you.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is one of the essential metrics for website engagement. This rate refers to how users leave the website without interacting with the website. Therefore, the lower your Bounce Rate, the better the strategies you apply on the website. In B2B websites, this rate is between 25% and 55% on average. Also, keep in mind that the average bounce rate varies depending on users’ devices. According to the 2022 Digital Experience Benchmark report published by Contentsquare, regardless of the industry, the highest bounce rate belongs to mobile devices with 51%.

There are many different reasons why your bounce rate might be high. For example, your website may not be compatible with mobile devices. For a lower bounce rate, make sure you have a website that doesn’t overwhelm mobile visits. Also, pay attention to which keywords your website matches. If your website and associated keywords are not compatible enough, you will attract the wrong audience to your website. Therefore, your bounce rate increases.

Sessions per user

Session rate per user is one of the metrics that best shows the traffic density of your website. It is calculated by dividing the number of sessions by the total number of users. The higher this rate, the more active your users use your website. That is an indication that your website is reaching the right target audience.

The average session rate per user is 1.4. Rates lower than 1.2 are in the worst 20%, while rates higher than 1.6 are in the best 20%.

Returning users

To grow your company, you need returning users and new users. Returning users have previously visited your website and interacted with your content before. In addition, since returning users are mostly made up of users who have visited your website before and are satisfied, they are much more likely than new users to purchase after interacting with the content again.

There are several reasons why a high returning user rate is significant. First of all, if you have many users, your product has a high stickiness rate. In addition, how often these users return and how often they return gives invaluable information about your content marketing strategies and your website. If your returning users return very soon after their first visit, it’s a sign that you’re following a suitable procedure.

Internal Links’ Signup Influence

An internal link refers to another page or content on the same page. It is often used to share some content on similar topics with the user, especially in blog posts. Thanks to this method, you can collect all the content and pages on the same subject on your website in a single range.

Internal links are an excellent way to generate organic traffic on your site. With these links, you can present more content to your users, who already consume content on a topic of interest on your website, than your website on that topic. Thus, it increases the rate of users visiting your site and creates an “Aha!” You are one step closer to the moment.

Social Media Interactions & Engagement

Your content marketing activities on your company’s website are significant. However, being active on various social media platforms is very important for your company’s awareness and organic traffic. The importance of social media becomes even more apparent when you consider that today, approximately 59% of the world uses social media, and the average daily consumption of social media is about two and a half hours.

Whether you post branded content on Instagram or stories on Facebook, you need to track your social media engagement and the simplest way to do it is to compare your total number of likes or comments to your number of followers. The higher this ratio, the more people who follow you interact with you. This ratio is also a sign of a good attribution funnel that can result in a successful purchase at the end of the day.

Exit Rate

The exit rate is the rate of people who visit your website and then leave. It is very similar to the bounce rate by definition. The difference is that the exit rate is the rate of all users leaving the site. On the other hand, the bounce rate only considers users who exit the website immediately after a single session.

The following formula calculates the exit rate:

(All users exit a site) / (Total number of views of that site)

Having a very high exit rate may signify something you need to change about your website. For example, your website may be running very slowly. If a page takes minutes to load, users will leave your website without waiting for that page to load. Or your website may be getting very little and poor quality traffic. If your website is linked to the wrong keywords, users will not find what they are looking for and leave your website. So if your exit rate is higher than you expected, it’s a good idea to review this and various potential issues like these.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer acquisition cost is the sum of the sales and marketing costs required to acquire a new user within the specified time frame. It refers to the cost required to convert a potential prospect into a user. It is calculated as the ratio of the total cost spent on sales and marketing to new users joining the company. A lower customer acquisition cost indicates that companies make more efficient decisions and achieve higher profitability.

The main thing you need to consider to reduce your customer acquisition rate is to improve your customer relationship management (CRM). With CRM, you can track the movements in your sales funnel. You can use these gestures to manage your marketing campaigns. Thus, you can shorten your sales cycle by interacting with more qualified users in a shorter time. In addition, add value to your users by valuing their opinions. Paying attention to your users’ feedback and giving them what they want will make it easier for your users to make more purchases in a shorter time.

Conclusion

Content performance metrics is an essential tool to analyze your overall situation in content marketing and review your strategies and identify new ones. It also helps you identify your needs and optimize this process by observing your customers’ interaction with your content.

The easiest way to analyze content performance metrics is to get help from a good analytics tool. Therefore, with Hockeytack, you can instantly and quickly explore these metrics’ performance. In this way, you can more easily direct your strategies.

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