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Is your investment in content writing performing the way you want? Are you making progress and gaining traction, or are you stuck spinning your wheels and wondering why things aren't working? Understanding the impact of your efforts requires looking beyond where your content lands in search results and analyzing a wide variety of metrics. Using this data, you can zero in on the right audiences, make effective changes to content, and ultimately start building the ROI you want to see.
Where do you even start doing something like that? Equipping your business with the right tools to capture and analyze information is a can't-miss step on the road to success in digital marketing. There's still another step before even that one: understanding what data you need in the first place. Join us for a quick look at the best opportunities you have to measure and improve your online impact.
Use Web Analytics for Understanding Your Traffic
What kind of traffic is your content receiving? How many views are you actually getting, and do you see traffic coming from non-search engine links? These basic web analytics are vital to understanding your content's performance. Even if you rank well for certain keywords, your content might not perform as you expect. Analytics also let you view metrics such as bounce rate—how many people arrive but leave without acting. Bounce rates can vary substantially, with the average landing as high as 70% or as relatively low as 26%. Do you know yours?
Deep Content Analysis for SEO Effectiveness
What's the right level of keyword density that will make it easiest for readers to find you and search engines to evaluate you? Don't just guess—use one of the many tools out there that let you run your content through it for analysis. Before posting, you can use these tools to ensure you're hitting the right level of density based on high-ranking competitors and other factors. As a bonus, these tools can often also suggest related keywords and phrases that can give you a much-needed boost.
Content Auditing Tools
Auditing and assessing your existing content is an effort you can't afford to overlook. Content audits reveal under-performing areas of your website and opportunities to haul in extra traffic without a major investment in brand-new production. Solutions that provide on-page SEO assessments use advanced programming to analyze your content, compare it to what else ranks well, and offer insights for improvement.
Readability Analysis
If you aren't seeing readers interacting in ways you anticipate, is your content writing possibly too dense or difficult to read? This is a common problem, especially in industries where a high level of consumer education is necessary to make products accessible. Consider that the average American reads at roughly a 7th or 8th-grade reading level. Where does your content fall? Use tools to assess your readability and explore how to make changes.
Measuring Organic Conversions
There's no way to tell if you're really making an impact if you can't reliably show how many conversions your organic search traffic creates. Don't overlook utilities that separate this data from all the noise and let you zero in on the most effective pages. Doing so also shines a light on where and why other pages fall short. Organic conversion rates are a must-watch metric, not just to gauge success but also to indicate when older content needs a refresh too.
Keep Your Eye on the Data
From tracking the number of page views you get to evaluating whether you're producing readable blogs, the data you generate from content writing is by far one of the best tools at your disposal. Preparing yourself to collect that data—and learning to understand what it all means—is a vital step. Overlook this information at your own risk, or embrace the opportunity to learn, iterate, and improve to build marketing campaigns that drive real world results.
