Time to brag a little! You've got the best writers ever. They whip up content in no time, and it’s always fresh, original, and full of personality. Basically, you’ve got content magic on your hands.✨

So, when you post it, you just hit publish and cross your fingers, trusting that your writers’ brilliance will work its magic.

But here’s the reality:

Source: Giphy

Your content isn’t performing and doesn’t yield the results you want. Today’s digital world doesn’t demand huge amounts of content but it does want an uplift in quality. 

So, say a warm ‘hello’ to content performance. In this article, discover what content performance is, why it’s important, some best practices, and more.

What is content performance?

Content performance measures the impact your content has on the target audience and whether that impact aligns with your overall business goals. For example, you may want your blog posts to convert users to your newsletter but if your articles are more geared to lead generation than bringing in new subscribers, you may be disappointed. 

In a nutshell, performance is all about achieving your marketing goals. So, to make sure your content marketing strategy is worth the investment, you need to measure how your content performs through different metrics. 

But metrics are a thing we can discuss later, so stay tuned!

Now, you might wonder what the purpose of content performance is. Particularly if you’ve got comfortable with just crossing your fingers and hoping your content works. 🤞

Maybe discussing the importance of content performance will change your mind. 

Why is content performance important?

In short: people. You do it all for your audience. 

The equation is simple: interesting content = more website visitors. 

By analyzing content performance, you can see what you can do to improve and optimize your content so that it jives with your audience. 

Think about it: content creation takes a lot of sweat and tears. Seeing all your efforts go down the drain isn’t something you want to experience. Content performance ensures your pieces of content are generating the desired results: 

• Driving brand awareness
• Helping you make better decisions
• Yielding high returns on investment (ROI)

Hopefully, this convinced you that content performance is important. How do you measure it, though? 

It’s time to chat about that. 😉

What are the content marketing metrics and KPIs to track?

To track the performance of your content, you should keep in mind these metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). Write them down: 

Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics offer valuable insights into whether your content resonates with your users.

It’s about how well your content engages them. And there are a few engagement metrics you should keep an eye on, such as: 

• Average engagement time: This indicates how long an active user stays on your website and how well your content resonates with them. This also helps your content rank high in search engine results. 
• Likes, shares, and comments: If your content is ‘wow,’ people on social media platforms will leave their impressions through a like, share, or comment. This metric also shows what kind of posts your audience likes. 
• Click-through rate (CTR): How many people clicked on your links? CTR will show you the exact number of people who actually clicked on a link instead of just seeing it. 
• Time on page: As the name suggests, this metric indicates how long a visitor spends on a page, which indicates people’s level of interest. 
• Scroll depth: This metric tracks how far users scroll down a page, which highlights whether or not certain sections engage people.
• Bounce rate: This KPI measures the number of users who leave after viewing one page. If this metric is high, it signals low engagement. 

User behavior KPIs

Source: Giphy

If you want to know how people behave on a website or app (especially if they’re buying stuff or not) then these KPIs are for you:

• Views: This metric represents the number of visits your site gets within a specific period. It can come from organic searches, social media, referrals, etc. It helps you understand which types of content are popular among your people so you can use them in the future. 
• Pages per session: Pages per session refers to the number of web pages a person looks at in one visit, indicating whether your website is easy to navigate and engaging. 
• Returning vs. new visitors: Compares the number of unique visitors (those seeing your site for the first time) and returning ones, mostly indicating user loyalty. 
• Conversion rate: This is a KPI that tracks the percentage of new visitors who complete the desired action, such as making a purchase. 
• Exit rate: How many people leave your website from a specific page? This is what exit rate measures, helping you analyze weak points in the user experience. 

SEO and visibility metrics

SEO shows how well your site is performing in search results and if your content is appropriately optimized. 

Here’s a list of the metrics you should measure: 

• Organic traffic: The number of visitors arriving at your site through search engines, reflecting how discoverable your content is to people performing searches. 
• Keyword rankings: Track the position of your content in search results for targeted keywords showing if your content is visible to the audience you’re trying to reach. 
• Backlinks: This metric refers to the number of external websites linking to your content, which boosts search rankings and authority.  
• Impressions: While they don’t necessarily indicate engagement, they do show how often your content appears in search results. Impressions mostly indicate how visible your content is to people. 
• Domain authority (DA): A metric that reflects your site's overall strength and authority in search engine rankings.  

Content production metrics

Before you create your content calendar, it’s essential to pay attention to the metrics that optimize your editorial process. These metrics include: 

• Content publishing frequency: How often you publish your future content matters. This metric tracks how frequently new content is produced and published, signaling your content output. 
• Time to publish: This refers to how long it takes to create the content, from ideation to publication. Monitoring this shows how efficient your content workflow is and identifies potential bottlenecks in the process. 
• Average content length: Kinda obvious, but this metric measures the length of posts or articles, which often need to balance depth with readability. 
• Content cost: You probably have a set budget for content you don’t want to cross. That’s why this metric assesses the cost of creating pieces of content, including tools, human resources, promotion expenses, etc. 
• Content audit score: A content audit means analyzing the existing content on your website and seeing how well it supports your business goals. This shows the overall performance of the content, helping you identify the best- and worst-performing pieces. 

Revenue KPIs

Of course, we can’t forget about revenue.💸 These KPIs show whether your content will reach your financial goals. Some examples include: 

• Revenue per visit (RPV): How much income each visitor generates. RPV is a reflection of the monetary impact of your content. 
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): This KPI calculates how much it costs to acquire a new customer through high-quality content and marketing campaigns. 
• Lead-generation rate: This tracks how many leads you generate with your content.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): A metric that measures the total revenue expected from a customer over your entire relationship. 
• Return on content investment (ROCI): Calculates the profit generated from content against the production and distribution costs. 

***

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to track content performance — you just need the right analytics tool to do that. 

Let’s look at a list of your best options, shall we?

What tools should be used to analyze content performance?

The world is full of tools that can analyze performance, from benchmarking to page views to search traffic. The question is, “Where are these tools?!” 

Well, they’re in this article: 🤭: 

1. Google Analytics — Probably the most popular option, Google Analytics collects data from your apps and sites (page views, bounce rates, user interaction, etc.) and transforms them into valuable insights for your brand by creating reports. 
2. Google Search Console — Another tool from Google? Well, Google didn’t become a search engine giant by accident! With this platform, you'll mostly improve your performance on Google Search—helping you track search traffic, find indexing issues, and analyze external links.
3. Semrush — A tool that does SEO, monitoring keyword rankings, visibility, and search volume easily. Through its huge database, you can get valuable insights that your competitors don’t. Ahrefs is a good alternative and also focuses on SEO.
4. Adobe Marketo Engage — This tool is all about lead nurturing and attracting the right buyers across channels. As an AI-powered marketing automation platform, it helps teams provide personalized interactions and deliver insights that matter. 
5. HubSpot — HubSpot brings your marketing, sales, and service teams together to make it easy to provide a unified view of your clients at every point in their buying journey. So, if you want to know where your customers are and what they do, this solution is made for you. 

You know what all these tools have in common? Not just that they analyze your content’s performance, but that they all integrate seamlessly with Ceros — a platform designed to help teams create high-quality interactive content. 

So, if you’re looking to elevate your content strategy and take full advantage of these tools, Ceros is the perfect addition to your workflow. 

What are the best practices for improving content performance?

So, if you want your content performance to reach perfection? Not a problem! Take care of these content issues and you’ll be unbeatable: 

Poor website traffic

Do you often find that few users visit your website? The only people who do visit are probably your family and friends; a low number of visitors often stems from ineffective marketing strategies, a lack of engaging content, or a weak social media presence. 

The consequences of poor website traffic are dire: if your site isn't receiving the traffic it needs, it won’t be visible to other customers. 😬 This results in wasted resources and marketing efforts and missed growth opportunities. 

Solution: 

The biggest ace up your sleeve is creating useful, relevant, and informative content. If people like your content, they’ll be more likely to share it and promote it on social media, spreading the word about your business. 

So, spend extra time on that intro. Break up your posts with images and make them easy to read. Most importantly, use your mailing list to let people know that you have a new blog post! 

Low conversion rates

When we talk about low conversion rates, we’re talking about customers who visit your site but don’t take the desired action (e.g., subscribing to a newsletter or filling out a contact form). 

Why does this happen? Mostly because of poor user experience. Maybe your site is too complicated to navigate and its cluttered layout frustrates your potential clients until they leave. 

Moreover, the call-to-action (CTA) is unclear, so people don’t know what to do to progress. Another pet peeve of most people is slow page load times. I know if I have to wait more than three seconds, I’m gone.

Solution: 

Pay attention to your CTA. Make sure you have one and that its wording makes it clear what you want customers to do. The placement is also vital, as it has a big impact on user behavior. If you make it small, chances are your visitors will miss it. 

Put it in different places on the page and make it impactful! 

Poor average time on site

You might attract people through nice headlines and such, but they spend very little time on your website. They catch a glimpse of it before ALT+F4ing out of there. 

Oh no! Why? 😥 It might be because people don’t find value in the content you’re giving them. Or it’s not the content for them and it fails to capture their attention because it’s irrelevant and outdated.

Once again, another reason why people leave is a slow loading speed. Before people even get to engage with your content, they’re likely to abandon your site completely if it takes too long to load. 

Solution: 

Keep the ball rolling by interlinking your articles, which means persuading users to look at other posts that are relevant to them. Usually, it starts with a pillar post that covers a wide range of topics and links to cluster pages that cover these subjects in greater detail. 

Plus, don’t neglect your poor website. If it’s moving like an old person trying to cross the street, tune it up and make sure the pages are loading quickly. 

High bounce rates

Accurate representation of bounce rates: 😄

Source: Giphy

In translation, it means people land on a page and leave without interacting with it or moving forward in the journey. People see your page and are turned off by it (aka, it’s not engaging enough or they can’t find anything of value on it) so the session ends. 

Again, it might be because of poor UX: the design is cluttered and confusing, maybe, with too many distracting elements or excessive ads. It can also be because of broken links or 404 errors — no one likes to see that! Mismatch with user intent is another cause, especially if the content is low-quality. 

Solution: 

Ensure you structure your content in a clear and readable way. Break your page into engaging subheadings and use bullet points to convey ideas quickly. 

When it comes to images, don’t overuse them! They should be relevant, but not repeat the same information your text is trying to say. Images should reinforce your image, not bore people. 

Weak keyword rankings

You know very well the importance of saying the right words in an email to your CEO, for example. This also applies when promoting your content on a website: if you don’t rank for relevant search terms (for your industry and target audience) on search engines, it affects your site’s visibility, traffic, and online presence. 

Low rankings result when keywords aren’t properly introduced in title tags, meta descriptions, and content. As a result, search engines might struggle to understand what the hell your content is about. 

A weak or nonexistent backlink profile might also be a cause; if your website lacks quality links from authoritative sources, your rankings will suffer. 

Solution: 

A good tip is to revise your content and see if it contains relevant keywords. Use them in the headlines, in your titles, everywhere you can, to tell Google, “Yes, look, I produce relevant content, I promise!” 

Make sure to also include semantically related keywords to give your content more nuance. Not only does it cast a wider net, but it also attracts users who want to get into the nitty-gritty of a topic. 

Poor click-through rates (CTR)

This relates to the percentage of users who see your ads (or your site links) and click on them. If people don’t find your advertising compelling enough to click on, well, that leads to a poor click-through rate. 

This is possible because of irrelevant keyword use or unattractive and misleading content. But it can also be because of poorly designed paid ads: the copy is unclear and doesn’t address user pain points. But it might also target the wrong people. 

Solution: 

Optimize your content so it reflects the interests of your target audience, but also perfect your timing. This is especially important if you use email to promote your content; you can gain more people’s attention if you send emails when they’re most likely to open them.  

Weak social media engagement

You post on social media frequently. However, when somebody asks you a question on LinkedIn, for example, you leave them hanging. Next time, if that same person has a question, they’ll feel less motivated to interact with your brand. 

Failing to engage and not responding to comments makes people feel ignored. If you don’t take the time to like or share your followers’ posts, it leads to weak engagement instead of fostering a sense of community. 

Moreover, another reason why people don’t engage with you is an irregular posting schedule. Posting once a month might cause your audience to lose interest and even forget your brand. 😱 

On the other hand, posting too often overwhelms visitors and leads them to unfollow. 

Solution: 

When it comes to improving social media engagement, try to be active and respond promptly to people’s attempts to communicate with you. Address their pain points and be empathetic to their problems. Moreover, it’s vital to understand where they come from and what their needs and desires are.

Also, find the right balance between too much or too little. Consistency is key to keeping people invested in your brand. Don’t forget to find the ideal time to post your content, when people are more likely to engage with your articles. 

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Huh, what do you know? That’s about it! So, congrats! 🎉

Over to you!

Listen. There’s one thing you have to do before you start measuring the performance of your content: create the actual content. 

You don’t have to take this journey alone. Ceros is a wonderful partner if you choose to go down this path. Here’s what people say about it: 

“We came across the Ceros product and have been really impressed. It is easy to use so my team, who are not graphic designers, can maintain and fix assets. 

It is a collaborative platform, so our graphics firm can do their piece while we are editing, and we can review it together online.” 

Sounds like something you need? Then, schedule a demo with Ceros today.