Ecommerce marketing is now in an era where SEO and content marketing are equally important. If you want success on search engines, you will need to come up with great content.
It is important to understand the connection between content marketing and SEO – whether it is a way to earn rankings, convert and educate users or a link building tactic.
It is worth noting though; success does not come in the form of one metric. To assess and understand the impact of your content marketing strategies, you will need to:
- Identify the key metrics to take into consideration
- Understand how to track them
- Recognize which metrics are specifically suitable for your campaigns and business
That being said, here are SEO metrics that will help you improve your content ranking in no time.
Links
When it comes to SEO, links are a necessary for content marketing efforts.
If you want other websites to create relevant, high-quality links to your own website, you will need to create relevant and unique content. The content will automatically gain popularity if it is exceptional in quality. The more useful your content proves to be, the greater the chances of someone finding it valuable for their readers, resulting in getting a link to your content.
Come to think of it, links are right up there as the top three ranking factors for Google. But they are just not links if you participate in link schemes, which is a clear violation of Google’s guidelines. This includes indulging in schemes like:
- Paid links
- Links created via automated services
- Usage of keyword-rich anchor texts
- Unnecessary use of anchor texts that are keyword-rich
Simply put, links must be earned, they should not be bought – and the best way to make that possible is by coming up with great and unique content.
Position/Ranking
To get organic search traffic to your content, you will need it to rank on Bing, Google, and other search engines to make this happen.
If it isn’t obvious enough, this in itself makes ranking a vital SEO metric, but it may not be as important as it once was.
In fact, it is a misinformed decision to place great importance of rankings alone. If you are wondering why, it is because there are a lot of different factors that require equal attention i.e. ad space, personalized search, local pack listings and position zero and so on.
The real question is how important rankings are in the first place. They are not as important as you think they are on their own, unless combined with other metrics like click-through rate (CTR), impressions, and organic traffic.
To obtain metrics, you could invest in rank tracking tools or you could simply get all the information you need from the Google Search Console.
Organic Search Traffic
Perhaps what is even more important than ranking position is the organic search traffic received by content.
The greater the traffic on your content, the easier it will be to convert them into business. This is one of those key metrics that does not only need to be tracked, but it needs to be improved upon continuously.
Combining this with search query data will result in powerful data using which you can make informed decisions for new strategies.
Fortunately, identifying organic search traffic is not as complicated as it seems. To do so, all you need is the Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
CTR/Impressions/Organic Clicks
Organic search traffic data on its own only tells you how much traffic a page or your website received via organic search, but not the search queries they came from — your organic CTR and potential search traffic.
Once you have gathered enough data regarding specific queries, you will be well equipped to make informed decisions on how to grow, especially when taking ranking position data into consideration.
To establish opportunities, the following metrics can be used:
- High impressions but poor CTR results in low clicks. Greater focus will need to be placed on improving CTR
- High CTR but low impressions. Consider researching new keywords to optimize your content for greater impressions
You will be collecting data to make it easier in the decision making process and take steps accordingly, and not just rely on traffic alone.
Organic Conversion Rate
The primary goal for all SEO campaigns is to encourage conversion from visitors, be it hard or soft conversions, or even something in that lies in-between.
Keeping this in mind, it is important to track your organic conversion rate, which is the percentage of visitors who take predefined actions against specific goals.
This metrics will give you valuable insight about your website as a whole and other content, all the while highlighting instances where there are opportunities to make the necessary improvements to increase conversions. For this to work, you will need to know what you are tracking when it comes to conversion.
You may already be tracking goals in Google Analytics, but when it comes to content marketing, there is more to it than the overall conversion goals of your website.
Whether you are tracking email signups, leads, sales or time on page, as long as they have been set up in Analytics, you will find it easier to determine organic conversion rate for each page on your site.
Mobile Rankings
Seeing how Google has moved to the mobile-first index, it is important to understand how your content and site is optimized for mobile devices.
Now, the metrics you used to track your website as a whole will need to be divided by device type.
For mobile rankings, it is important to understand how content performs on both, desktop and mobile devices, giving you the ability to make improvements where necessary for visibility.
The good news is this can be accomplished by the Google Search Console as well.
Mobile Search Traffic
In a world that is now about mobiles, you will need to establish the source of your organic search traffic. It is mobile devices or desktop?
To identify the source, you simply need to filter Google Analytics by device, which is thankfully, pretty straightforward.
These are just a few ways you can go about improving content ranking for SEO metrics. But at least you have an idea where to begin if you are starting out on your own. No matter how difficult things will seem, they will get easier in due time, and also when you do your homework.
By finding out more about ways to improve content ranking and staying up-to-date with Google, this will be a breeze, but only as long as you stay dedicated to the cause.