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How do you know if your SEO content marketing activity is working and how do you calculate ROI?
Have you been asking yourself how to measure SEO content marketing? At the end of the day, marketing departments are responsible for reporting on spend and ensuring that any marketing investment yields a positive ROI – so this means looking at metrics like leads, right?
Almost!
Content marketing programmes are more fluid than advertising campaigns where the ROI is calculated by dividing the cost of activity, by the number of leads – also known as cost per conversion. This simplified calculation cannot be the only way to measure the success of a content marketing programme for one key reason. It doesn’t take into consideration the other valuable results created via your SEO content marketing efforts.
It is essential to understand that assessing the ROI of your content marketing campaign is not just about leads. There are other metrics that are equally important in measuring what success truly looks like.
Don’t let the elephant in the room trample your business’s success – let’s analyse the whole impact!
How to measure SEO content marketing!
Look at Engagement levels
Engagement is a great metric to use to measure your SEO content marketing. How many people are reading and interacting with your content? Are they leaving comments, sharing your posts, or signing up for your newsletter? These are all indicators of engagement, valuable data which helps you assess your content’s effectiveness.
By tracking engagement over time, you can get a sense of what types of content are resonating with your audience and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Organic Traffic
Are you seeing an increase in traffic to your website because of your content marketing efforts? If so, that’s a good sign that your content resonates with your target audience. It indicates that your content is reaching a wider audience and driving brand awareness.
Organic traffic arriving on your website shows that visitors are finding the answers they are searching for. Search engines, over time, reward this behaviour by increasing your website’s page/domain authority.
Not only this, but some visitors may create backlinks to your website from theirs, this behaviour also improves your page/domain authority.
But engagement and traffic are just the beginning.
Keyword Rankings
Understanding where your keywords and phrases are ranked, and then monitoring and optimising them to increase their position in the SERP is a key metric to measure. By reviewing their position in the rankings, you will be able to identify how effective your content has been and this will give you the opportunity to optimise your content for maximum gains.
An estimated 75% of all clicks go to the top 3 organic results so it is more important than ever, to get your business positioned at the top of the SERP. In another post, we explored and discussed ‘How to plan your SEO content marketing strategy’ and the importance of keyword research. This will help you to increase your:
Visibility
The higher the keyword ranks, the better opportunity you have for converting traffic.
Credibility
High-ranked keywords add credibility to the webpage in the eyes of the user (Study by Cornell University “The Inherent Credibility of Internet Search Engines”).
Traffic
75% of all clicks go to the first 3 organic listings, with less than 10% of users clicking through to page 2 of SERPs.
Conversions
With increased traffic, you should be able to secure more conversions. It is important to note, that if you have increased organic traffic but are not seeing an increase in conversions, you need to monitor the user journey and investigate any sticking points that may inhibit users from completing their journey. Consider gated content. Perhaps your form is the problem. Is it asking too many questions, making it difficult and time-consuming for users to fill out? This could be a major turn-off, causing potential leads to abandon your resources and look elsewhere. Remember, the goal of lead generation is to make it easy for potential customers to engage with your business, not frustrate them with cumbersome forms.
Conversions and Click Through Rates (CTR)
Conversions refer to any action taken by a user as a result of your content. Measuring conversion rates and CTRs can help to better understand the impact your content is having in line with your business goals. There is a multitude of actions that can be monitored but some of the most common conversions to track are:
- Email signups
- Form submissions
- Downloads
- Video views
- Live chat conversations
Brand Awareness
Measure how well your content is promoting your brand and increasing your brand visibility by monitoring metrics such as social media mentions and search engine rankings. The more you have the better.
Reviews
While reviews are not a direct ranking factor for SEO, they can indirectly impact your website’s visibility and traffic. If your business has a high rating and plentiful positive reviews, people are more likely to click on your listing when they see it in the SERP. This increased CTR can indicate to search engines that your website is relevant and valuable to users, which can help improve your rankings.
Reviews and comments are also useful tools to gauge how well your content resonates with your users. The number of both positive and negative reviews can provide insights into the success and challenges experienced by your users. We recommend that you assess them regularly so that you can optimise your content in real time. In addition, negative reviews can highlight any perceived challenges and give you an opportunity to address them. By doing so, you effectively ensure that negative reviews can be turned into positive reviews, thus supporting your business goals further.
Customer Lifetime Value
By measuring the total value of a customer to your business over the course of their relationship with you, you can understand how your content marketing efforts are contributing to the long-term success of your business.
Conclusion
Remember, SEO content marketing is a long-term strategy and it’s not something that will necessarily show immediate results. However, by monitoring your metrics over time, you can develop a clear picture of the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts and adjust, as needed, to optimise your efforts. Doing this will ensure that you’re achieving the best possible ROI.
By using tools like Google Analytics to monitor traffic and engagement, and by tracking leads and conversions using your CRM or marketing automation software, you will have greater clarity and insight into the results of your activity.
If you would like to expand your brand reputation, grow your engagement and in turn, create conversions then speak to our digital marketing team today.