In the mission to get traffic to your site and gain those valuable conversions, content is key. SEO plays a vital part in this picture, but quality content pitched well also drives posts to the top of search results.
But it’s one thing to know good content boosts SEO, but it’s another to know exactly how well your content is working. Without evaluating and measuring the SEO value of your content, it’s impossible to get a clear picture or improve. Before we look at ways to evaluate the SEO value of your content, let’s look at why SEO value matters.
Notable SEO Statistics in the First Half of 2022
An incredible 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, and SEO and organic traffic generate the most leads. 70% of online marketers recommend SEO over PPC (pay per click) for boosting sales. So, in terms of online content, it is crucial.
But it also matters how high in searches your content rises. Getting your content on the first search results page is vital, as 75% of people never scroll past the first page. The type and quality of content also matter; the average first-page result on Google is around 1,400 words. So, there’s an optimum length in getting on that first page.
What Is SEO Value?
How valuable SEO is to your business will depend on your business goals. Perhaps your goal is to raise brand awareness, promote a new product, or gain sales. But to measure to what extent SEO is getting your business to the top of a Google search, you need to evaluate its performance.
One option is to try out content in a limited way by running a pilot SEO campaign, allowing time to assess its impact; before embarking on the full version.
There are various ways to evaluate SEO which we’ll look at in more detail, but broadly, you should be looking at your return on investment, gathered data on the traffic gained through paid search, and data on your competitors’ tactics and approaches.
Why Should You Be Consistent in Improving the SEO Value of Your Content?
Your content represents your brand – it speaks in your company’s voice and communicates its messages. You must be consistent in content quality and any improvements and changes you make.
Consumers notice content that is rarely updated. It’s no good updating the landing page regularly but having out-of-date blog posts. It’s worth taking the time and having the human resources to create a blog from scratch. Consistently updated, quality content reassures consumers and builds brand trust.
- Continuous increase in organic traffic
Organic traffic comes to your website through consumers searching for something in particular, from words typed into a search engine. If your organic traffic is increasing, it’s a good indicator that your SEO strategy is working. It’s making your site visible and bringing in potential customers. If conversion and sales are made after getting traffic to your site, it’s due to the quality of your content.
- Higher leads generation
Lead generation, in other words, the number of customers who follow a link, is also important in measuring the success of SEO. Getting leads to turn into more engagement or purchases relies on the quality of the content on your site, as well as your products and services; creating blog posts that make people convert is vital.
- Increase in revenue
Whether from organic traffic or through leads that turn into sales, increased revenue is the ultimate goal and a good measure of your content SEO quality. Measuring these results is vital, and whether you have driven conversions through enhancing your content or by leads generated through affiliate management, assess a boost in revenue and the data recorded.
- Boost local foot traffic
Creating location-specific sites and ensuring your content has local SEO can boost revenue effectively. A high proportion of consumers look up the physical location of a local business using an online map, mostly on a mobile device. Making sure your keywords and content have a local hook boosts local traffic.
- Improve online presence
A key factor with content and SEO is its ability to boost brand awareness and reputation. This is not always straightforward to track, but looking at social media and customer comments can be an indication. Some reactions can be measured more easily, such as impressions; how often the content is clicked on, displayed, or engaged with. But it’s also possible to look at how often the brand’s name appears in searches.
6 Ways to Evaluate the SEO Value of your Content
Let’s look at specific ways to evaluate how well your content is working for your brand. We’ll look at a range of evaluation methods ranging from cost to quality and performance.
1. What High-Quality Content means to Google
Google notices if you lift the quality of your content. But quality doesn’t only mean good writing and regularly updated content. Quality means useful content; if customers find the answers to their questions and solutions to their problems, and if content is informed and well crafted, it will get pushed to the top of a Google search.
Of course, content needs to be optimized for search engine results, but allowing keywords to dominate doesn’t necessarily make good content in the eyes of your consumers. Strike a balance between what humans and machines respond to.
2. Cost to acquire vs. performance
The cost of gaining traffic through paid search can be high, so it’s crucial to gauge how you’re ranking with search engines for the keywords you’ve paid for. The best way to calculate this is to find out how frequently your keywords are searched for, then compare this with their cost.
3. Review Technical SEO Metrics
Drilling down into SEO metrics can give you data to evaluate your content. Areas to look at include traffic to your site; keywords’ ranking, the click-through rate, how many visitors click but don’t engage further, and the backlinks; the number of inbound links that lead to your site.
Focussing on these areas will give you a good picture in terms of stats of how well your content strategy is serving your brand.
4. Social Media Metrics Tracking
With mobile devices and app integration becoming the norm, consumers have social media platforms to hand at all times. How they react to a brand’s content is another helpful way of evaluating SEO value.
Monitoring shares, likes, and followers can give a good snapshot of a brand’s reach and impact. Noticing and logging which posts and content are attracting the most attention indicate what’s working and where to focus future efforts. Many of these reactions and engagements can be tracked by looking at metrics on your site or your social media account.
5. Evaluate competitor performance
Having a clear picture of the successes, failures, and innovations of your competitors, is a useful general business tactic as well as an essential part of evaluating your content. For example, if a competitor has posted a popular piece on using a VoIP call center, it’s certainly worth adding content on this topic to your site.
Look at where your competitors’ content features on search engine result pages (SERP). There are tools available to assess the traffic and conversions they are achieving. Make comparisons with your results and apply lessons learned.
6. Revenue Growth Metrics
The driving force behind any evaluation of your content is whether or not it leads to increased revenue. Without seeing this goal achieved, it’s impossible to say whether your content and SEO strategy has been worthwhile.
You’ll need to combine the approaches we’ve looked at to get a clear picture of your content’s value. You’ll then need to look at sales figures and use attribution modeling to determine which aspects of your content contributed to any boost in revenue.
Why Is it Important for Your Business to Thoroughly Assess Your Content Performance and Improve its SEO value?
Drilling down into what’s working or not in terms of your content’s SEO value is not a one-off task. Reviewing your content’s effectiveness should be an ongoing process. Quality of content should override keywords in terms of value. Ask yourself; is it made to measure? Does it answer customer questions and solve problems? Does it inform and engage?
Keywords are also important; Do the words feature high enough in searches? Have you found natural and optimal ways of including them in content?
Conclusion
Rankings and metrics are great ways to assess the value of your content, but remember to gather more personal feedback; chatbots and conversational AI can help gain insights into your content’s appeal to customers. After all, numbers can show which pieces were popular, but they won’t tell you why.
Your content should shout who your company is and what it can offer, but the net gain must be increased revenue. With the comprehensive set of methods we’ve outlined to evaluate the SEO value of your content. Instead of guesswork, you’ll have facts to guide you as you build on success and boost sales.
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