Content marketing has become an indispensable part of digital marketing strategies, with brands curating a plethora of content ranging from blog posts to videos. The landscape is not only about creating content but also about measuring its impact.

Metrics are the heart of understanding a content strategy's effectiveness, and yet, with so many data points available, it can be overwhelming to determine which metrics truly matter. To navigate this domain successfully, digital marketers and content strategists need to focus on the key metrics that give a clear understanding of their content's performance.

In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into four crucial groups of content marketing metrics that every marketer should measure. These metrics are instrumental in providing insights into audience behaviors, content engagement, and how your content is contributing to your business's growth.

Traffic and Consumption Metrics: Your Content's First Impression

The first group of metrics to consider is how much traffic your content is driving and how that traffic is consuming it. Traffic metrics, such as unique page views and sessions, give a high-level snapshot of your content's reach. They tell you how many people are discovering your content, but they don't tell you the whole story.

What to Measure:

• Page Views and Time on Page: High page views with a low average time on the page may indicate that visitors are not engaging with the content. It could be due to various factors such as unclear information, lack of visual appeal, or a disconnect between the content and visitors' expectations. It is important to analyze the content structure, layout, and relevance to ensure that visitors are finding value and spending a sufficient amount of time on your pages.

• Bounce Rate: A high bounce rate could mean that your content is not meeting visitor expectations or isn't engaging enough to keep them on your site. This could be a result of slow page load times, unappealing design, or irrelevant content. To decrease bounce rates, consider improving the overall user experience, optimizing page load speed, and ensuring your content is relevant and engaging to your target audience.

• ‍Entry and Exit Pages: Analyzing entry and exit pages will show you which content pieces are attracting visitors and which ones are failing to retain them. By identifying the pages that visitors first land on, you can gain insights into the effectiveness of your content promotion strategies. Similarly, analyzing exit pages can help identify potential issues that may be driving visitors away. This information can guide you in optimizing your content to better capture and retain visitors' attention.

• Traffic Sources: Understanding where your traffic is coming from (organic search, social media, email, etc.) can help you tailor your content promotion strategies. By knowing the sources that drive the most traffic, you can allocate resources and efforts accordingly. For example, if you find that a significant portion of your traffic is coming from social media, you can focus on creating and promoting content specifically for those platforms. This data can help you optimize your content distribution and maximize its reach to the right audience.

By closely monitoring these metrics, you can adjust the distribution channels, content types, and engagement strategies to ensure that your content not only attracts but also retains users.

Image Source: AgencyAnalytics

Engagement Metrics: How Valuable is Your Content to Your Readers?

Engagement metrics go beyond the simple view count and start to paint a picture of how users are interacting with your content. They are a key indicator of content relevance and value to your audience.

What to Measure:

• Social Shares and Comments: Monitoring the number of social shares and comments on your content can provide valuable insights into audience engagement. When people find your content engaging and actionable, they are more likely to share it with others and leave comments, indicating that they found value in it.

• Scroll Depth: Examining how far users scroll on your webpage can reveal their level of interest and attention. If users scroll through the entire content, it suggests they are actively engaging with it and consuming the information. On the other hand, if they drop off early and don't scroll far, it may indicate that the content is not holding their interest.

• Form Submissions and Click-Through Rates: If your content includes a call-to-action (CTA), analyzing conversion rates on these CTA elements can provide deeper insights into user engagement. By tracking the number of form submissions and click-through rates, you can gauge how effective your content is in driving desired actions from your audience.

High engagement often translates to content that resonates with your audience, and it's a sign that you're on the right track with your content marketing strategy. Low engagement, on the other hand, can be a strong signal that changes need to be made.

Conversion Metrics: Content That Drives Action

Ultimately, your content should support your business goals, which is where conversion metrics come in. They show how well your content is persuading readers to take the next step in your funnel, whether that’s signing up for a newsletter, downloading a whitepaper, or making a purchase.

What to Measure:

• Conversion Rate: The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, such as submitting a form or making a purchase. It provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your content. A higher conversion rate indicates that your content is resonating with your audience and driving them to take the desired action. By tracking and optimizing your conversion rate, you can improve the overall performance of your content marketing strategy.

• Click-through Rate (CTR): If your content includes a call-to-action (CTA), the click-through rate (CTR) measures how effective your content is at compelling users to click and take the next step. A higher CTR indicates that your content is engaging and persuasive, encouraging users to take action. By monitoring and improving your CTR, you can optimize your content to generate more clicks and drive higher levels of engagement.

• Lead Quality and Sales: While conversions are important, it's equally crucial to assess the quality of leads generated through your content and evaluate their impact on eventual sales. By tracking the quality of leads and attributing sales to specific content pieces, you can gain insights into the return on investment (ROI) of your content marketing tactics. This enables you to focus on creating content that not only generates leads but also drives meaningful sales, leading to long-term business growth and success.

Using these metrics, you can identify your top-performing content in terms of driving desired actions and allocate resources to create similar high-conversion content in the future.

Image Source: WebCube

SEO Metrics: Ensuring Your Content Rises in Search Rankings

In the digital ecosystem, organic search can be a significant source of traffic. SEO metrics help you understand how well your content is ranking in search engines and how much organic traffic it’s driving.

What to Measure:

• Keyword Rankings: Are you ranking for the keywords that matter to your business? If not, you may need to optimize your content by conducting thorough keyword research, identifying relevant search terms, and strategically incorporating them into your website and marketing materials.

• Organic Traffic: An increase in organic traffic shows that your content is becoming more discoverable by people who are actively searching for information related to your industry or offerings. This can be achieved through effective search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, such as improving your website's structure, creating high-quality and relevant content, and enhancing user experience.
  
  
• Backlinks and Referring Domains: High-quality backlinks from reputable websites can significantly improve your site's authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. These backlinks act as endorsements, signaling to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy. Building relationships with influential websites within your industry and earning natural backlinks can positively impact your search rankings and organic visibility.

• Click-Through from Search Results: If your content is ranking well in search results but not generating sufficient clicks, it may be worth considering optimizing your meta descriptions and titles. Compelling, concise, and keyword-rich meta descriptions can entice users to click on your content, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversions. Similarly, crafting attention-grabbing and relevant titles can improve the visibility and click-through rate of your pages in search results.

By focusing on these metrics, you can ensure that your content is optimized for search engines, making it easier for your target audience to find it. Regularly reviewing and refining these elements can help maximize the visibility and effectiveness of your content.

User Behavior Metrics: Gauging Audience Interactions

Diving deeper into how users are interacting with your content can provide actionable insights that go beyond surface-level statistics. User behavior metrics offer a closer look at the audience's preferences and their journey through your content. This data helps in tailoring user experience and improving the content to better suit their needs.

What to Measure:

• Pages per Session: This metric measures the effectiveness of your content by indicating the number of pages a user visits during a single session. A higher number of pages visited often indicates greater engagement and interest in your website's offerings.

• Average Session Duration: The amount of time users spend on your site reflects the value and relevance of your content. When users spend more time exploring your website, it suggests that they find your content informative and engaging.

• Event Tracking: Event tracking encompasses various user actions such as downloads, video plays, and interactions with interactive elements. By tracking these events, you can gain insights into user behavior and preferences, allowing you to optimize your content and user experience accordingly.

• New vs Returning Visitors: Understanding the balance between new and returning visitors can provide valuable insights into the reach and impact of your content. By analyzing this data, you can assess the effectiveness of your content in attracting new audiences and retaining existing ones, enabling you to refine your content strategies for sustainable growth.

By leveraging these user behavior metrics, marketers can get a nuanced understanding of how their audience interacts with their content, which is crucial for refining content strategy and achieving long-term engagement.

Image Source: Influencer MarketingHub

Additional Key Metrics to Consider for Comprehensive Analysis

While the primary groups of metrics provide substantial insights into content performance, there are additional metrics that can offer even deeper analysis for content marketers aiming for a holistic view.

What to Measure:

• Influencer Metrics: In the age of social media, tracking the engagement and reach of content shared by influencers can provide valuable insights into your influencer marketing efforts. By monitoring metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and follower growth, you can assess the impact of influencers on your brand's visibility and audience engagement. This data can help you identify the most effective influencers for your target audience and optimize your influencer marketing campaigns.

• Content Lifecycle Value: This metric helps in understanding the long-term value of content pieces, including their continued relevance and ability to draw traffic or generate leads over time. By analyzing how content performs throughout its lifecycle, from the initial publication to weeks or even months later, you can gain insights into which pieces have enduring value and can continue to attract and engage your audience. This information allows you to make informed decisions about content promotion, repurposing, and optimization to maximize its impact and ROI.

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Gauging user satisfaction through direct feedback on content can help in making customer-centric improvements. By implementing surveys, ratings, or feedback mechanisms, you can collect valuable insights into how your content is meeting the needs and expectations of your audience. This feedback can be used to identify areas for improvement, address pain points, and enhance the overall content experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Cost per Acquisition (CPA): The cost associated with acquiring a customer through a specific content piece is crucial for evaluating the financial efficiency of content marketing strategies. By tracking the expenses incurred in creating and promoting content, as well as the number of conversions or acquisitions attributed to that content, you can calculate the CPA. This metric enables you to assess the cost-effectiveness of your content marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions about resource allocation, budget optimization, and campaign refinement to drive higher ROI and business growth.

By incorporating these additional metrics into their analysis, marketers can gain a comprehensive understanding of their content's performance and its direct impact on brand growth and customer relationships.

In addition to measuring critical metrics, marketers can utilize services like white label content services by DashClicks to amplify their content marketing efforts.

DashClicks provides businesses with the opportunity to outsource content creation while maintaining their own branding. This service is ideal for agencies looking to expand their content offerings without increasing overhead costs.

By partnering with DashClicks, marketers can ensure that their content is not only high-quality and relevant but also consistently aligns with their client’s brand voice and objectives.

Whether it's blog posts, whitepapers, or social media content, DashClicks' expert team delivers tailor-made content solutions that can seamlessly integrate into a business's existing content strategy.

Using white-label services facilitates the ability to scale content production, maintain a high standard of quality, and foster client relationships by providing comprehensive, branded content solutions.

This strategic advantage can help agencies deliver more value to their clients, enhance their content marketing packages, and ultimately drive greater success in their content marketing metrics.

Wrapping Up: Strategy Beyond the Numbers

Measuring these key groups of metrics provides a depth of understanding that standard page views and likes cannot convey. They are the gateway to refining your content marketing strategies and ensuring that what you create resonates with your audience and supports your business objectives.

However, metrics are just a starting point. It's crucial to analyze the data holistically and understand not only what the numbers are telling you but also why they’re telling you that. Are there trends you can capitalize on? Areas that need improvement? By continuously iterating on your content marketing based on these metrics, you’ll not only enhance your SEO and brand awareness but also drive tangible business growth.

Content marketing is an ever-evolving landscape, and the metrics that matter today might not be the same tomorrow. Stay agile, keep experimenting, and let the data guide you. It’s through this iterative approach that you’ll find long-term success in the competitive world of content marketing. Remember, it's not just about the content you create; it's also about how you measure the impact of that content.

The latest statistics reveal that 82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing, and for a good reason. It's simply one of the most powerful strategies for boosting website traffic, obtaining qualified leads, and increasing conversions.

If you are not currently leveraging content marketing for your brand, it's about time you do so. Although a word of caution here. Staying abreast with the latest trends is important owing to the ever-changing nature of content marketing. It's key to creating a solid content strategy.

In this post, we discuss these trends that will help amp up and fine-tune your strategy for 2023 and set your brand up for success!

Let's begin:

1. Create Long-Form Content

Why produce long-form content?

The answer is simple long-form content provides the most value to your audience. Also, when you offer your audience comprehensive information on a topic, they are curious to learn more about your business and stay on your pages longer. This way, you generate more leads for your business. You also gradually start to become their go-to information source for getting valuable information, further giving you a chance to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

Note: if you publish a long-form, high-quality content piece, Google will rank your page higher.

Image Source: Bramework

In all, long-form content is a win-win both for your business and your potential customers.

2. Focus on Voice Search

In 2022, voice search accounted for around 20% of total searches and is continuously growing. As more and more people opt for voice search, this will cause a change in content in the coming years.

When voice searching, the content we speak is not always parallel with the content we put in a search box. So, marketers will have to adapt their content to natural language; this includes questions and answers as well, since 50% of the voice searches depend upon featured snippets.

For this, marketers can use common words, include long-tail keywords in heads and titles, and utilize FAQs. For example, "what are the strategies for optimizing content?"

Tip: Take the lead by optimizing the natural language of the pages for "near me" searches.

3. Repurpose Content

One of the top B2C and B2B content marketing trends of all times is repurposing content. When you recycle or repurpose your content, you are able to:

• Re-use content on separate channels, such as social media and email.
• Update old content and augment your content marketing tactics.

Pro Tip: When you repurpose content, don't copy and paste. We recommend that you make changes according to the channel you will use. For instance, don't send a complete 1500-word content piece over email. Instead, trim the content to around 200 words and send it to your email subscribers along with a link to the full post.

4. Create Interactive Content

As you may already know, reaching and engaging today's consumer is becoming more of a challenge. With so much content out there, it is increasingly becoming hard to stand out and be memorable. People's limited attention span only adds to the problem. But we have a solution that can help you engage your audience and make a lasting impression Produce Interactive content.

You may have seen interactive content around you in the form of polls, quizzes, surveys, and calculators. Interactive content, as the name suggests, is interactive in nature. Hence, your audience is able to interact with such content rather than passively consuming it. And the amazing thing is, they enjoy the process!

This content doesn't even take much time to create and helps successfully drive two-way conversations.

Note: Create interactive content that offers your audience insights/tailored results on topics they care about or a problem they are struggling with.

5. Produce Niche Content

One of the latest content marketing trends to follow is creating niche content.

For those new to the term, niche content lays focus on a certain subtopic associated with your industry or business. The aim of the content is to appeal to a small group of individuals.

Let's take an example to understand the importance of creating niche content:

Suppose you own a bakery and you publish content on different baking-related recipes. As the content is generic in nature, it will appeal to anyone who is interested in baking. But, you can also create content that interests lactose-free, vegan, or gluten-free bakers.

Why do this?

This is because it will enable you to target smaller niches of bakers and get them interested in your content. If you think about it, it acts as a great way to attract specific leads, which you can then nurture to conversion.

6. Content Experience Is Paramount

Content experience is the manner in which your content is presented to your audience, from the way it engages your users to the page it lives on. Always remember to tailor your content experience as per your target audience. It will only lead to a boost in engagement and overall interactions.

Image Source: MKTR.AI

Keeping tabs on the latest customer preference and trends will also help you provide an optimum content experience.

Note: Always remember that your audience will consume your content only if it is convenient for them to do so. A video that takes a lot of time to load on their browser or a blog post containing a lot of pop-up ads isn't something that will keep their attention for long.

7. Use Videos

You may instantly think of blogging when it comes to creating content. But, it's about time that videos get their due credit.

Utilizing videos is hailed as one of the biggest content marketing trends that you need to follow for the coming year.

Why create videos?

This is because they are highly effective in engaging your audience and can influence their decision to buy. Take a look at these stats:

• 94% of marketers are of the opinion that videos have helped boost user understanding of their service or product.
• 90% of people are of the view that videos assist them in making a purchase decision.
• According to Hubspot, 83% of video marketers have said that they have acquired leads with the help of video content.

You can produce a variety of videos for your audience, such as live videos, informational videos, webinars, and explainer or how-to videos.

Here are some tips you can follow to create the most effective videos:

• Capture your audience’s attention by talking about an interesting fact or telling a story.
• Create mobile-friendly videos so that your audience doesn’t face a hard time watching them on their smartphones.
• Nowadays, people tend to have a lower attention span. Hence, make it a point to put important information in your video first.
• Follow a consistent posting schedule so that you don’t keep your audience waiting.

8. Optimize Content for Search Engines

This is one trend that never gets old.

Make sure you adequately optimize your content for search engines. It boosts the likelihood of search engines finding your content and increasing its ranking in the search results.

Take a look at some of the steps you can take to optimize your content for search engines:

• Use proper keywords and phrases. Learn how to do keyword research for SEO.
• Check how Google ranks its content. Optimize your content with EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

9. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is one of the top content marketing trends for both B2B and B2C businesses.

For those new to the term, influencer marketing means partnering with influencers for the promotion of a service or product. Essentially, influencers are individuals on online platforms such as social media who can reach a massive audience via endorsements.

As you already may know, influencer marketing has long been famous with consumer brands. But, it's increasingly become the preferred choice for B2B businesses as well. The biggest benefit of using this type of marketing is that it helps get your brand in front of a large audience that you wouldn't have been able to otherwise. You don't even have to shell out loads of money in order to use this marketing.

10. Build Personalized Content

Personalized content is regarded as one of the most important trends of content marketing. Building such content helps provide a better and more unique experience to your audience.

But what really is personalized marketing?

Basically, it's a one-to-one marketing strategy that helps you offer a customized experience to your potential customers.

Image Source: Automatad

Let's understand this kind of marketing with the help of an example.

Suppose a person lands on your website to take a look at the ebook you are offering. In exchange for the ebook, you ask for their name and email id, which they provide. Now, the next time they visit your site, they receive a message on their screen that reads “Welcome back, [name]!” This kind of personalized message can create a lasting impression in the mind of the visitor. They get the feeling that the content on the website was created just for them.

Tip: When a visitor returns to your site, apart from showing a personalized message, you can also present them a list of recommended content for them to look at next (the content will be based on their previous interaction with the site). This creates a different kind of user experience altogether.

In all, personalized content helps you stand out and can very well be the reason for a visitor to choose you over your competition.

Rely on DashClicks to Get Relevant, Engaging Content for Your Clients

If you are a digital marketing agency that wishes to outsource content, then you can always rely on white label content services by DashClicks. The expert team at DashClicks creates content that will help generate more organic traffic for your client's website.

Here’s what you can expect when you decide to hire these services from DashClicks:

• Deliver 100% unique, supreme-quality content to your clients.
• The content will be well-researched.
• A team of accomplished writers will carry out the work.
• SEO specialists and writers will inspect the published copy to ensure that it brings the desired results.

Wrapping It Up

So many marketers are already planning to increase their content marketing budget next year. Hence, it's essential that you gear up and implement the latest content marketing trends for your business. It will help differentiate your brand from the others in the year 2023. From utilizing videos to content repurposing, the trends we have discussed so far will help set you up on the path to success and catapult business growth.

Ensure you implement the trends that will best suit your business and you will start to reap their benefits in due course of time. Best of luck!

It's great if you are receiving massive traffic to your blog or site. But, you also need to make sure that your potential customers stick around once they land on your site. Producing topical content and evergreen content can help you achieve this. Apart from boosting site traffic, it will help in making your site visitors stay longer on your website.

Both topical and evergreen content are proven to offer something valuable to your site visitors. Needless to say, producing both kinds of content will eventually help you boost sales for your business.

Now, to the more important question: Which type of contentātopical or evergreen, offers better results? Also, which type makes your potential visitors stay longer on your site? In this post, we'll discover the answer to these questions and learn in detail about these two content types.

Let's dive right in:

What is Topical Content?

Topical content (also called as timely or seasonal) is the type of content offering timely, relevant, and targeted information and is a great way of capturing user attention.

Simply put, this type of content pertains to any recently discovered information or an event that happened.

It can be event-based (St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's), or time-based (based on particular seasons such as summer). You can easily plan this type of content before time.

Now that you know what topical content is, let's discuss its example to understand more about it.

So far, we know that topical content focuses on current information or events to offer targeted and relevant content to its readers. Now, imagine you are a local roofing company. In case your city is hit by a storm, you can talk about wind damage in your latest blog post. This type of content will prove to be highly useful to your target audience as it will educate them about actionable steps to must take when faced with this kind of situation.

Here's another example of topical content (it's an instance of the discussion around the Fyre Festival):

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What is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content is content created in a way that it will always be helpful and of interest to its readers. Let's put it this wayāthis content remains applicable and relevant for long periods of time. It is unlikely to be immediately dated.

The purpose behind producing evergreen content is to be easily found by search engines. This content is SEO-optimized to drive blog or website traffic. Here's an example of evergreen content:

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Note: Evergreen content must:

• Incorporate keywords to optimize for search
• Offer a resolution to an industry pain point
• Include references and citations to develop trust
• Offer value for your target audience

Examples of evergreen content include:

• Listicles
• How-to articles
• Tips

Topical Vs. Evergreen Content

As opposed to the time-based nature of topical content, which needs regular updation at your end, evergreen content always stays relevant. But this shouldn't deter you from producing topical content. Seasonal content is beneficial to capture the immediate interest of readers.

Topical Content Advantages & Disadvantages

If you wish to use topical content on your website, here are its pros and cons you should know about:

Pros

• You get to drive traffic from emails, web searches, and social media sites simultaneously to your website.
• To brainstorm topical content ideas, all you need to do is quickly review digital news outlets and relevant industry websites.

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Cons

• Topical content can make it hard for you to stand out from your competitors. This is because there is a high chance your competition might be leveraging similar topical content ideas for their business.
• Chances are, you may need more than topical content to turn your site visitors into buyers.

Evergreen Content Advantages & Disadvantages

If you want to leverage evergreen content, you need to know its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s begin:

Pros

• Evergreen content drives steady traffic to your site because it remains fresh for longer.
• Because there is always someone out there looking to learn about a topic or a new skill, you can use evergreen content to teach such beginners. Listicles and how-tos are great choices to go for at this time.

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Cons

• Once you have posted a generous amount of evergreen content, you may soon run out of ideas.
• With evergreen content, you can’t expect huge spikes in traffic over a brief period of time.

Tips to Use Topical and Evergreen Content

Both topical and evergreen content in liaison to boost your traffic. Here's in detail about how you should use both these content types for traffic growth:

1. Carry Out Regular Topical Content Refreshes

To ensure your topical content remains relevant, you need to schedule regular refreshes for it. The time duration can vary according to the type of content. Blog posts may require refreshes within 2 to 4 weeks. Social media posts, on the other hand, may require a refresh in less than a week.

2. Think About the Long-Term for Evergreen Content

When it comes to creating evergreen content, you need to consider its long-term traffic potential. Ask yourself these questions - Can it be updated if the market changes? Is the content valuable to your current site visitors?

3. Access the Correct Tools

Tools such as Google Trends and Google AdWords offer you valuable information that helps you devise a winning content strategy.

Google Trends lets you know when a specific event gains momentum, rises up, and falls. This way, you know the right time to post topical content on it.

Google AdWords, on the other hand, allows you to find certain queries about your audience and lets you segment information according to location and date.

4. Look for Seasonal Creativity

At first, a particular holiday or event may not appear to be apt for your brand. But, if you brainstorm, you might come up with content ideas that can perfectly pair your brand with the event.

Take this example for instance:

At first glance, you may not think that a car maintenance business could pair well with Valentine’s Day. But, if the business creates topical content on “How to prevent breakdown on your candlelight dinner date on Valentine’s Day,” it can definitely interest its audience.

Here's another example of how Oreo applied seasonal creativity during the Super Bowl power outage:

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5. You Must Update Evergreen Content Too!

So far, we have established that evergreen content lasts longer than topical ones, but you still need to give it a refresh when needed. Ensure you regularly update the studies and stats you cited in the content. Also, fact-check the photos or links you used in your evergreen content. See if they are outdated and make changes accordingly.

Tip: Apart from implementing these tips to use topical and evergreen content, you can also learn how to create a blog that generates continuous traffic and revenue.

DashClicks - White Label Content Marketing Services

If you are a digital marketing agency that wants to deliver enticing and unique content to your clients to help them generate more traffic for their sites, you can think about outsourcing. We recommend you hire reliable white label content marketing service from a trustable white label agency such as DashClicks.

When you partner with DashClicks, you get to deliver 100% unique content to your clients. Doing so will also help you grow faster, without the headache of doing all the work.

Conclusion

So far, it's safe to say that both evergreen and topical content are advantageous for your website. Evergreen content can help provide you with steady visitor numbers. Topical content, on the other hand, helps your website get discovered when your audience is looking for answers during certain events.

So, instead of choosing one type of content over the other, it's important to strike the right balance between evergreen and topical content. This is the only way your potential customers will stick around and keep returning back for more.

A website content audit is a process of assessing and analyzing the performance of your site content.

Conducting such audits is absolutely necessary.

Why?

Poor on-page search engine optimization (SEO), broken links, and disorganized posts are some of the many issues that can arise when you create content at scale. Also, with the passage of time, these issues can compound, hurting your rankings, conversion rates, audience engagement, and eventually your bottom line.

Plus, if you don’t revisit the content, it can rapidly lose its relevance, become outdated, or get outperformed by your competition.

A content audit helps you take a detailed look at your website’s content to see how it’s performing and to make sure your content is relevant, engaging, and effective.

If you want to know more about a website content audit and how to successfully perform it, read on:

What Is a Website Content Audit?

A content audit is a process in which you systematically analyze and assess all your website’s content. Regardless of a corporation or a small business, a website content audit can benefit any company irrespective of its size.

Performing a content audit is a time-taking process, but it’s an incredibly effective method that helps you understand the performance of your website to take necessary actions. The knowledge you gain during the process sheds light on your audiences, your organization, and helps elevate your content strategy.

Why Do You Need to Conduct a Content Audit?

Running content audits is important if you want to move ahead in your industry. You need to dedicate time to run such audits in order to know about any gaps and to produce better content. You can’t just keep producing content and forget about it, thinking your job is done.

Take a look at these stats that emphasize the importance of performing a content audit:

• ​​65% of companies whose content marketing is successful perform content audits more than twice annually.
• 46% of companies whose content marketing did not succeed in 2021 didn’t perform any content audits.

Here’s a closer look at the benefits of running such an audit:

• Analyzing your content’s performance helps in making data-backed decisions about the pages you should improve.
• You are able to recognize SEO opportunities and content gaps, which you can fill with fresh, interactive content.
• You get to know the pages on your site that aren’t optimized for SEO. For example, some pages may have a poor heading structure.
• You get to improve the quality of content on your site and offer an upgraded reader experience.
• It helps you check for content that you can repurpose.

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Note:

There will be times when performing a content audit becomes absolutely essential. Run a content audit if:

• You are redesigning your site.
• You created your website a few years back and haven’t performed an audit till now.
• You have inherited a content marketing strategy from another team or simply don’t have a clear strategy.
• You think you’ve produced content on all possible topics that fall in your niche.

How to Approach a Content Audit?

How you should approach a content audit depends on your goal behind conducting it. Here’s a detailed look at some possible content audit goals:

1. Improve SEO Results

If you want to conduct a content audit to improve your results from SEO, then you need to perform an SEO content audit and an overall SEO site audit. The reason you need to conduct the SEO audit is to know which pages are getting the most organic traffic and/or which pages are ranking.

Tip: Use Google Analytics to identify the pages that have garnered the most views over time. You can then use this information to recognize pages that hold the potential to rank in the top 10 search results. Also, when you conduct the SEO content audit, you would need to look at title tags, duplicate content, meta descriptions, backlinks, and alt text.

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2. Boost Audience Engagement

If you want to use a content audit to boost your audience engagement, you can focus your content audit process on recognizing what kind of content your audience loves to engage with the most. This information will help you generate that content in the future that you know is going to be popular among your audience.

3. Increase Conversion Rate

If you are looking to boost overall conversions with the insights you gain from a content audit, you need to check the pages with the best user experience and the pages that get you the most leads and sales. Doing so provides valuable information that will help you improve your other pages.

Content Audit Tools

Before we discuss how to conduct a content audit, you should know about some important tools. Certain software tools form a crucial part of the process of content auditing. You can use them to automate a greater part of the process instead of doing everything manually. Here’s a list of these tools:

1. Ubersuggest

Ubrersuggest can help you conduct a content audit to improve your SEO. All you need to do is open the tool, type in your URL, click “Search,” and then click “Site Audit.”

The result will be a snapshot of the prevalent SEO problems on your website and how critical they are. This offers a quick overall look at how your site is doing. And the best part is, it doesn’t cost anything.

2. Google Analytics

You can use Google Analytics to determine traffic data for all the pages and compare the performance of each page.

Note: In favor of Google Analytics 4, Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. Before completing your content audit, you should make the switch to GA4 (if you haven’t already).

3. Broken Link Checkers

When you start analyzing your content, use Ahrefs, Integrity, and Dead Link Checker to search for and fix broken links.

4. Content Inventory

Use a content inventory tool such as DynoMapper or Screaming Frog instead of manually pulling each content link associated with your site. It will save tonnes of your time and you eliminate the risk of overlooking anything.

How Do You Perform a Content Audit?

If you want to know how to conduct a content audit, here is a complete list of steps:

1. Make a List of Your Content Assets

As a first step, create an inventory of your content assets.

Why, you may ask?

This is because when you see all of your assets in a single place, it’s more convenient to analyze content performance, highlight areas that need improvement, and update each content asset in a methodical way.

A tool you can use to extract content assets from your site is the Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool. When you use this tool, ensure you export the data into a spreadsheet and add relevant data points such as target keyword, meta description, number of images, word count, etc. for each content piece.

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Another thing you need to include in the spreadsheet is traffic data for each page. Take the help of Google Analytics for this. This way, you will be able to analyze content performance alongside technical SEO metrics.

Note: You can add a lot of data points and stats alongside each content piece. But you need to see what data is relevant to you according to the goals you want to achieve by performing a content audit.

2. Make a List of Content Issues to Check For

You need to analyze all your content assets after adding them in a single place.

Check each content piece to know how it’s performing. Typically, here’s a list of things you need to check for:

• Content Gaps: Go through your content assets and check whether something is missing in your content. Are there target markets you haven’t spoken to? Are there topics you haven’t produced content on yet?
• Outdated Content: You need to check for content that you need to update. Your site visitors don’t want to read outdated content. Even the search engines overlook it.
• Target Keyword: Check if a content piece targets a particular keyword and include it in the copy.
• Duplicate Content: Search engines give priority to new content. So, if you have duplicate content on your posts and pages, it’s time to remove or rewrite them.
• Metadata: See if you have meta descriptions and titles for all pages. You also need to check which of the descriptions need to be updated.
• Word Count: Check the word count of your pages to see if it needs to be cut down or updated for any of the pages. Your pages and posts should have enough words to optimize for SEO.
• Image Data: Go through the images and see if they have a descriptive title and alt tag. This helps make sure your images are accessibility-friendly and optimized for SEO.

Note: When you check for content issues, ensure you write a note next to every asset stating why it needs improvement, if any.

3. Resolve Content Issues

The last step in our list of content audit steps is resolving content issues.

As you can’t address all your content issues in one go, you need to prioritize which ones to tackle first. One strategy you can follow is group to each optimization issue and resolve them together. For instance, you can fix all the image issues, then update meta data on every page, and so on.

Another route that you can take to prioritize which content issues you should tackle first is to use the tool Ubersuggest. All you need to do is perform an SEO audit on this tool, and you will get recommendations on the basis of an issue’s difficulty as well as SEO impact.

To get a number of quick wins, consider tackling tasks with a high SEO impact and low difficulty first.

Note: At the time of addressing content issues, don’t be afraid to ask for help to split up the work. You and your colleagues can work on different issues instead of one person handling all the work. This will help save tremendous time and improve overall efficiency.

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Wrapping It Up

You may get overwhelmed by looking at all the content audit steps at first. But this shouldn’t stop you from conducting an effective content audit. Performing content audits helps you move in the right direction when it comes to improving your content marketing strategy.

Sure, performing a content audit will take up your resources and time, but it will also help you gain some extremely valuable insights. So, it will be worth it in the end! Perform a new audit at least once a year to check for gaps in your content and to know what and what isn’t working. All the best!

When you think about SEO and content, there is a high chance that you may end up focusing on just one thing – producing fresh content.

But it’s equally important to focus on your “existing content.” This means, removing low-performing and outdated content from your site.

Now, you may wonder, what’s the point of focusing on content that’s already present on your site?

This is because your old content can be negatively affecting your company’s growth. It can be the reason for some of your lagging traffic.

A process called “content pruning” helps remove low-performing and outdated content from your site.

It involves getting rid of content that has no value or usefulness and contains potentially harmful advice. It lets other content, which has potential, to flourish. The content pruning process also helps ensure that your link authority flows only to relevant pages.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the full benefits of content pruning and the steps involved in this process. Let’s begin.

What Is Content Pruning?

Let’s discuss what content pruning is before we move on to discussing its benefits.

Content pruning involves removing or updating content which weighs down a site and hampers its performance. When this dead weight is removed, the website’s overall health increases.

Chances are, you may have heard of the term “pruning.” It is a gardening term that means trimming or cutting back. If you think about it, content pruning is almost the same as pruning a tree. When you prune a tree, you remove the dead leaves and branches. All the tree’s resources then start to go to the parts that you want to grow. This helps increase the overall health of the tree.

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Now, you may be wondering, what kind of content is typically pruned? Here is a list:

• Pages with thin content or duplicate content.
• Pages with outdated information.
• Pages that are not or won’t ever get engagement or traffic.

Why Is Content Pruning Important?

Now, coming to the benefits of content pruning. Here’s a closer look:

1. Better User Experience

Content pruning provides an improved user experience to your site visitors. This is because this process lowers the risk of your site visitors finding any confusing or outdated information on your site.

2. Better Content Quality

Content pruning boosts the overall quality of your content by ‘pruning’ the content that doesn’t add any value.

3. Improves Metrics

Because pruning content leads to enhanced overall content quality, it improves metrics such as conversion rate, time on page, and bounce rate.

4. Speeds Up Indexing of Your Best Content

Another major benefit of content pruning is that it results in faster indexing of your best content.

Now, how is this possible?

This is because content pruning ensures that search engines no longer have to sift through old content pages.

Is Content Pruning Required Only for Large Websites?

Regardless of your website size, you would want your site visitors to find useful and updated information, right? Hence, content pruning is recommended both for large (10,000 pages) and small websites.

When Should You Prune Your Content?

Content pruning is not a one-time process. You need to do it continuously.

We recommend that you do it on a monthly basis. Whenever you create a new piece of content, keep an eye on its performance and state.

The reason we suggest you do regular pruning is because you have a lot to gain from pruning content. You must also go for massive pruning exercises once or twice a year.

To do content pruning on a monthly basis, you need to first complete one full content pruning cycle (talked about in the next section).

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Content Pruning Process

The content pruning process involves the following three steps:

• Content Inventory: Create an overview of your entire content
• Content Audit: Assess your content’s performance
• Decide the Fate of Your Content: Determine what you need to do with the underperforming content. In this step, you will decide whether to remove it or go for an alternate option.

Step 1: Content Inventory

Make a list of all your content.

Also include PDF files, images, and videos.

Next, supplement this list with an export from your CMS and backlink data from a tool (we recommend Ahrefs). Also include data from Google Search Console, your web analytics tool, and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Note: Ensure you eliminate any duplicates.

After you follow all these steps, you will be left with a list of unique URLs. This is the overview of your content.

Now, for every content piece in your list, add the following information:

• Its target audience
• The goal(s) you aim to achieve with it
• The search queries it should be ranking for

Step 2: Content Audit

You need to carry out a content audit to score how well your content is performing.

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Take the final list you have created from the previous step and add:

1. General Performance (visits and conversions in the last 6 months)

For pages, you will find the amount of traffic and conversions in your web analytics tool. For embedded videos, you will find this information in the platform you use to embed the videos. And for downloadable images and PDFs, you will get to know the amount of traffic and conversions if you are tracking clicks on links.

2. Organic Performance (visits and conversions from the last 6 months)

You can find the conversion numbers and the number of visits for all your content types (pages, videos, PDFs, and images) in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and your web analytics tool.

3. Social Performance (visits, shares, and conversions from the last 6 months)

You can know the number of likes and shares in a tool called BuzzSumo. For conversions and visits, you can get to know it from your web analytics tool.

4. If It Contains Outdated Information or Not

Use smart search queries in Google to check for mentions of any previous years in your site. This will help you know if your content contains outdated information.

5. If It Has Thin Content or Not

As per Google, thin content is content with “little or no added value.”

You can check for such content with the help of Screaming Frog.

6. If It’s Cannibalizing Other Content or Not

You can find cannibalizing content by looking for pages that don’t have unique H1 headings, meta descriptions, and title tags. Also look at pages that are ranking for the same queries.

7. The Numbers of External Domains Linking to Your Pages, and Internal Links

To find the number of external domains linking to a URL, you can use Ahrefs.

And to find the number of internal links to a URL, you can use Google Search Console. Open it, click on “links,” and choose “Top linked pages — internally.”

After you add all this information, you may find certain content that doesn’t cater to any purpose. For instance, you may get to know that there are different pages that are telling the same story. You may also find pages over-optimized to the point where people can barely read them!

Step 3: Determining Your Content’s Fate

In this step, you need to mark all the content in a spreadsheet that:

• Isn’t getting any organic traffic
• Offers old information
• Is cannibalizing other content
• Shows poor social media performance
• Has thin content
• Isn’t getting any traffic in general
• Has few external and internal links

You can call all of the above “potential pruning candidates.” But instead of going ahead and removing this kind of content, you can also consider making it non-indexable or improving it.

Improving the Content

Check which content you can get back in shape by carrying out some basic on-page SEO. See if you can rework the title, headings, and/or meta descriptions. Also check if you can get rid of outdated sections and add a few sections that are based on recent developments.

Trimming, Updating, and Moving the Content

You can also think about repurposing certain content. All you need to do is trim it, update it, and move it to an FAQ section, for example. Also, if you have a lot of weak pages on the same topic, you can merge their content to make a single, strong page.

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Note: In case you have outdated content that you think will still be useful, you can do the following:

• Ensure you let the visitors know the date on which it was last updated.
• Include links of any up-to-date resources you may have.
• Add a disclaimer stating that it may contain outdated information.

Making Content Non-Indexable

There can be cases where the content is useful for visitors, but not for search engines. For example blog tags. When used the right way, they are helpful for visitors to navigate around a site. But the pages themselves offer zero value from an SEO point of view.

Removing Content

A word of caution here. When you decide to get rid of low-performing content, your organic traffic can get impacted. Also, when you disavow links, we recommend that you don’t remove all of them at once.

Wrapping It Up

All set and done, you are now in a more informed position to do content pruning. Carefully follow the steps we listed above (creating a content inventory list, conducting a content audit, and deciding your content’s fate and what to do with it) and you are set to reap the benefits of content pruning!

Content pruning is a process that helps maintain your website and boosts the overall quality of your content. It not only improves user experience but also speeds up the indexing of your best content. Ensure you don’t keep putting it off for later as it can negatively impact your SEO strategy’s success.

A word of advice: Always think ahead and carefully plan your content marketing efforts. This will help limit the need for content pruning.

User-generated content (UGC) is one of the most potent tools marketers can use to promote their brand.

But what really is user-generated content?

It can be any content, such as videos, reviews, images, text, etc. that people create rather than brands.

As compared to brand-pushed marketing content, UGC is regarded as the most trustworthy, authentic, and reliable form of content. If you see the latest statistics, 92% of customers trust the recommendations and reviews shared by individuals and not advertisements.

You can imagine UGC as a vote of confidence. If you observe the current scenario, any brand's biggest fans can be seen writing reviews, snapping pictures, and publishing blog posts promoting its services and products, many a time without any prompting.

In all, user-generated content is a killer asset, and can completely change the game for your business. In this post, we unearth the benefits of this kind of content and how your business can leverage it for successful growth. Let's begin:

What is User-Generated Content and Why Is it Important?

User-generated content is any content users create and share based on their opinions, feedback, ideas, or experiences. Different social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook are the hub of this kind of content. Also, with comments sections on blogs, the ability to publish content for free with a single click, and digital forums, UGC is at an all-time high.

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Now that we are done with the definition, let's look at why user-generated content is important:

UGC simply boosts your credibility by outsourcing content creation to users.

It is effective content that builds authenticity and trust in your brand, further saving your financial resources and organization time!

Owing to its many benefits, 86% of companies have added UGC to their marketing strategy.

Here's more on why businesses are increasingly focusing on displaying user-generated content on different platforms:

1. A Win-Win Situation for Both You and Your Fans

User-generated content puts your customers front and center, while benefiting your brand as well.

When you use UGC in your marketing, this is what happens:

• You let your fans tell your story.
• You market “with” your audience and not “at” them.
• Your marketing messages come from your customers.
• You spotlight individuals who are helping shape your brand!

2. UGC Indicates That Your Brand Is Open to Conversation

In this day and age, people look for different ways to share their opinions about different brands. When you share UGC on branded social channels or simply use it in your marketing, it can make your audience feel seen and heard. It also shows that you are open to conversation.

3. You Get To Cut Through the Noise

UGC content marketing offers a way to cut through the various ads and promoted content your customers are bombarded with on a daily basis.

UGC is genuine and not salesy. It instantly grabs the attention of your audience and works to engage them because it is created by a member of your target audience only.

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4. UGC Provides Social Proof

Another reason why user-generated content is important is because it provides social proof.

Social proof is the validation you get from your customers about the authenticity, trust, and reliability of your activities and products. In this digital age, a brand needs to have social proof. This is because social proof can influence the buying decisions of a brand's customers.

5. Unlimited Flow of Content

As creating marketing campaigns is a constant process, there will always be a requirement for trendy, authentic content.

UGC helps you receive an unlimited flow of such content from your users.

It eliminates the need to spend money on constant idea generation and content creation!

Types of User-Generated Content

UGC comes in many formats and styles. Let’s take a look at the different types of user-generated content:

• Videos
• Testimonials
• Images
• Social media content (e.g., a Tweet about your brand)
• Blog posts
• Live streams
• Product reviews (learn how to get customer reviews)
• YouTube content

Top User-Generated Content Examples

Irrespective of their size, brands use UGC to boost social engagement, expand their reach, drive awareness, increase conversions, and cost effectively scale their business.

Here are some of the best user-generated content examples out there:

1. LuluLemon

LuluLemon is a Canadian athleisure brand offering leggings and yoga clothing to its customers. To increase their reach on social media platforms, they asked their followers to share the photos in which they are wearing LuluLemon's garments. They also had to use this hashtag:

#thesweatlife

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This benefited the brand in two ways:

• It got tonnes of easily searchable UGC content for repurposing.
• Sharing content from brand ambassadors increased its reach across social media.

2. GoPro

GoPro is a popular video equipment company that uses UGC for its YouTube channel.

If you check their top three videos, they are actually filmed by customers. These videos had 400 million views in total (as of December 2021).

The best thing is this content didn't cost the brand anything.

3. La Croix

La Croix is a sparkling water brand that also uses a hashtag (#LiveLaCroix), similar to the strategy that LuluLemon used. The hashtag helps the brand mine for UGC on their social media networks.

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The best thing about the brand is that it shares content produced by anyone and not just brand loyalists with higher follower counts. This makes their UGC super relatable to their followers.

User-Generated Content Tips

It's now time we discuss some important user-generated content tips. Let's begin:

1. Requesting Permission Is Mandatory

Always ask for your customer's consent before using or republishing their content. It keeps you out of hot waters regarding copyright concerns.

Asking for consent is also important because a lot of times individuals can use your branded hashtags without even knowing that you have tied them to a UGC campaign.

2. Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

Ensure you give proper credit to the original creator when you share UGC on your social media networks. What we mean is, directly tag them in the post and indicate if you are using their visuals and/or words.

Note: You may also want to share UGC across social media networks. For instance, you may want to share a picture from Instagram on your Facebook page. In this case, you can always ask the original creator how they want to be credited on the other platform.

Why is giving credit so important anyway?

Giving credit not only recognizes the work of content creators but also encourages them to use and post more about your brand.

3. Provide Clear Guidelines

If you observe the current scenario, only some businesses provide clear guidelines on the kind of UGC they want followers to create and share. UGC creators want to share their content, but they also want to know exactly what to do when it comes to UGC.

Don't be afraid to share specific requirements and tell the creators what kind of content fits your needs.

Tip: To determine the kind of content you should feature, ensure you follow these two steps:

• Sit with your social media strategy document to look for ways user-generated content aligns with your current marketing goals.
• Use this information to create a statement that tells users what type of content you will most likely feature.

Share your UGC task at places you know individuals will interact with your brand, such as your website, your social channel bios, your product packaging, or in other UGC social media posts.

4. Make UGC Entertaining

UGC should be entertaining for your followers. Sometimes it doesn't have to be product-related at all!

For instance, one of the best UGC trends you can see out there is:

Brands reposting their follower's tweets on their Instagram feed.

How to Get More UGC for Your Brand?

Apart from creating a unique hashtag, here are some ideas on how to get more UGC for your brand:

• Ask for feedback from users.
• Launch a contest on Instagram.
• Create a compelling challenge that pushes users creatively or physically. For instance, a fitness content creator can design a multi-day fitness challenge in which users can participate and share their progress on social media.

The Bottom Line

From helping you increase your reach to providing social proof, it's easy to see why user-generated content is important for brands in this digital age. It is a complete game-changer for businesses because it increases user engagement, which in turn boosts conversions and revenue.

All in all, UGC is a secret ingredient for successful marketing, and brands and marketers should definitely leverage it in their marketing activities. Just ensure you follow important user-generated content tips like always asking the customer's consent before you republish or use their content.