There are a plethora of free and paid tools available that allow you to track the analytics and metrics related to your website and content marketing efforts.
Every tool offers similar information, although some require you to pay more for certain features.
Using a web analytics tool to measure and track your progress online can be overwhelming. There are so many metrics to measure—how do you know which ones are the most important? Which metrics reveal the bottom line?
We use Google Analytics to follow our website and content marketing efforts, but any tool you decide to use will be fine.
If you do nothing else related to your marketing efforts, measure and track these 5 website metrics.
1. Keywords
What words are leading people to your website? You need to know the keywords that people are already using to find you online. Keywords are one of the most valuable website metrics to track.
Once you know the most popular keywords for your website, you can tailor and customize your content to include those words and better fit the topics your audience is searching for. This will give your site more leverage in search engine rankings, helping more people see your site and content.
2. Referrers
What websites were people browsing before they were referred to yours? It’s wise to know and track the top referrers to your website so you can start building relationships with them to further leverage the amount of referrals they’re sending to your website.
Your top referrers might let you write a guest post for them, cross-promote your brand’s content, give shout-outs on social media, or help promote your upcoming events and specials.
Additionally, you should always track your top referrers and ensure they’re saying things that benefit your business rather than chip away at your reputation.
3. Traffic sources
What sources did your website visitors come from? Traffic sources are broad categories that depict whether a person landed on your website via a search engine, website, or direct traffic (someone typed in your website URL).
Once you know how much traffic you’re receiving from each category, you can tailor your content plan to mirror the results you’d like to get; for example, you might notice you don’t get many visitors from search, which would prompt you to improve your SEO efforts.
4. Visitors
Your website visitors are all potential customers. Visitors are one of the most critical website metrics to measure and track over time. You brought them to your site using marketing and ad campaigns, specific keywords, targeted content, and engaging social media posts. Now, you should track:
- The total number of daily visitors
- The total number of unique daily visitors
- The total number of repeat daily visitors
If you’re succeeding at winning loyal customers, you’ll see the number of repeat visitors creep up over time. That’s a great sign–it means you’re on the right track!
5. Most popular content
The pages on your website that get visited most often are your most popular content. When you discover what your best performing content is, you can further analyze that content to find what’s unique about it. What engages visitors when they see this blog post, video, or infographic? More importantly, how can you improve it and make it even more engaging next time?
By finding your best performing content, you can also take a look at your worst performing content. Analyze it, too—what’s different about this and your top content? Try to define the traits that aren’t appealing to your audience and avoid including those in your future content.
This is what’s at the heart of marketing—finding what’s working best and making sure that even your least effective efforts are always getting better.
So, if you only measure 5 website metrics, make it these: Keywords, referrers, traffic sources, visitors, and best performing content. You’ll get a solid sense of where your content marketing efforts are leading you.
