How should you track each KPI for content marketing?
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:55 am
Before we get into what KPIs you should track, let’s discuss how to track them. To get started, you’ll need a few tools. Something like Google Analytics, for example, would be a great platform for tracking KPIs pertaining to web traffic.
Then you have session replay and heatmap tools like DataDog and Hotjar , which can help determine how your audience professors edu email database interacts with each page. Social media marketing tools, like Hootsuite , can help you look at changes in likes, comments, followers, and overall engagement. You can also use these tools to measure the effectiveness of each post, including how many people saw your posts (impressions) versus how many interacted with them (clicked or shared).
As for your SEO content marketing, tools like SurferSEO and Frase can help you optimize your content for the SERPs. While these tools are powerful allies in content creation and in order to have data to analyze, you need to optimize first, they don’t offer the analytics you need to track KPIs.
That’s where tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush come in . These are the frontrunners in the SEO industry and can track crucial metrics for your SEO strategy.
Ahrefs stats - SEO Strategy
Source: Ahrefs
This will help you identify gaps in your content strategy and opportunities for improvement.
These types of tools offer a wide range of features, such as rank trackers, site explorers, and reports on specific KPIs. You can run these reports manually or schedule them to run automatically and receive the results via email.
These tools complement Google Analytics 4 to provide the most detailed and accurate information.
What KPIs should content marketers monitor?
Now that you know the background, it’s time to start digging into the KPIs you need to track.
Bounce rate
While it's great to know how many people are coming to your site, it's equally important to understand what they do and how long they stay on your site.
This is where our first content marketing KPI, bounce rate, comes into play. Bounce rate shows the percentage of website visitors who leave your website after viewing just one page.
Bounce Rate Formula Explained
Source: The online advertising guide
It's clear that something is wrong if someone comes, takes a look, and immediately leaves. Of course, there will always be those who do this. After all, there are always those who find you by chance or realize that what you offer is not what they are looking for. But measuring this metric is essential because if your bounce rate is abnormally high, you are targeting the wrong audience or there is something in your content that is repelling ideal customers.
Bounce rate can be measured with a free tool like Google Analytics . You can then use one of the session replay and heatmap tools mentioned above to determine what these people are doing on your site. Look for instances of click-rage and try to isolate the point at which each bounce occurs. You should start to see patterns.
Several factors can influence bounce rates. For example, if someone clicks on your blog post and doesn't scroll past the first few paragraphs, you lose them in your introduction. The message is ineffective if they watch the video and don't take action.
If someone comes to your site and then leaves without taking action, either the site is performing too slowly, they clicked by mistake, or something at the top of the page turned them off.
Then you have session replay and heatmap tools like DataDog and Hotjar , which can help determine how your audience professors edu email database interacts with each page. Social media marketing tools, like Hootsuite , can help you look at changes in likes, comments, followers, and overall engagement. You can also use these tools to measure the effectiveness of each post, including how many people saw your posts (impressions) versus how many interacted with them (clicked or shared).
As for your SEO content marketing, tools like SurferSEO and Frase can help you optimize your content for the SERPs. While these tools are powerful allies in content creation and in order to have data to analyze, you need to optimize first, they don’t offer the analytics you need to track KPIs.
That’s where tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush come in . These are the frontrunners in the SEO industry and can track crucial metrics for your SEO strategy.
Ahrefs stats - SEO Strategy
Source: Ahrefs
This will help you identify gaps in your content strategy and opportunities for improvement.
These types of tools offer a wide range of features, such as rank trackers, site explorers, and reports on specific KPIs. You can run these reports manually or schedule them to run automatically and receive the results via email.
These tools complement Google Analytics 4 to provide the most detailed and accurate information.
What KPIs should content marketers monitor?
Now that you know the background, it’s time to start digging into the KPIs you need to track.
Bounce rate
While it's great to know how many people are coming to your site, it's equally important to understand what they do and how long they stay on your site.
This is where our first content marketing KPI, bounce rate, comes into play. Bounce rate shows the percentage of website visitors who leave your website after viewing just one page.
Bounce Rate Formula Explained
Source: The online advertising guide
It's clear that something is wrong if someone comes, takes a look, and immediately leaves. Of course, there will always be those who do this. After all, there are always those who find you by chance or realize that what you offer is not what they are looking for. But measuring this metric is essential because if your bounce rate is abnormally high, you are targeting the wrong audience or there is something in your content that is repelling ideal customers.
Bounce rate can be measured with a free tool like Google Analytics . You can then use one of the session replay and heatmap tools mentioned above to determine what these people are doing on your site. Look for instances of click-rage and try to isolate the point at which each bounce occurs. You should start to see patterns.
Several factors can influence bounce rates. For example, if someone clicks on your blog post and doesn't scroll past the first few paragraphs, you lose them in your introduction. The message is ineffective if they watch the video and don't take action.
If someone comes to your site and then leaves without taking action, either the site is performing too slowly, they clicked by mistake, or something at the top of the page turned them off.