How to Measure ROI on Content?

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[Guest post from Marcus Neo of Three Little Pigs.]

Blogging for search engine optimization is one of the strategies that our company uses to increase our search visibility on our website. Blogging is also a great way to target longer tailed keywords that won’t be used on pages, and bring in longer tailed keyword traffic.

However, just producing thin or duplicate content won’t be useful as it’s against Google guidelines. On the other hand, producing thin/ duplicate content may actually hurt your brand in the long run.

I believe that content marketing is still slow, and not as well done in Singapore as it is in the States/ elsewhere. This is why when you Google a query without the location “Singapore” in it, it tends to return international results, as the results from Singapore aren’t as good as the ones internationally created.

Blogging/content marketing is one of the old fashioned ways of building a brand/personal brand. Most website designers and SEOs would much rather outsource their content to content writers from freelance sites such as Upwork and other sources.

I beg to differ.

Google is merely going to get more complicated and more intelligent with their algorithm in the next 10 years. People are going to be a lot more Internet savvy, and reliant on the web to source for their information.

Having great content on your website, done from the get go, will be a competitive advantage for your online marketing profile. This is why I’ve NOT outsourced my SEO content elsewhere. As of now, I’m writing most of the articles myself.

Should I decide to engage writers, I want them to be localized here in Singapore. This will ensure that the content which we produce are relevant and relatable to the Singaporean website owners and Singaporean business owners whom I’m targeting.

How to Measure ROI on Content Marketing?

Content can come in the form of infographics, blog posts or even videos. It’s very much a qualitative subject.

How then can one measure one’s content ROI in a numerical form?

Although I don’t really think that one should be worried about measuring ROI on content put out all the time, I think having a good idea of certain metrics would be beneficial.

Here are some ways to do so.

• Unique Page Views

Page views are one of the most basic metrics for website traffic. Every time someone loads your page, that page gets a page view. The problem with that, however, is that there may be double counting for someone who hits the ‘back button’ on his or her browser.

The solution? Unique page views.

Only one unique page view is counted for each user, no matter how many times they view that page, so long as the views happen in a single 30-minute period (called a “session”) and from the same device.

• Time on Page

This is a no brainer. The longer the time spent on a blog post or page, the more popular it is.

• Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is when someone enters your website and leaves without interacting with any other pages.

This be deduced in one or two ways.

1. The page fulfilled his needs, hence he left the website.
2. The page didn’t fulfill his needs, hence he left the website

Generally, a low bounce rate is a positive metric. One way to look at it is, a high time spent on a page, means that the page is delivering the content that the user wants.

Engagement Metrics

• Social Shares

The number of social shares can be a metric of how popular your content is. Or how shareable it is.

• Comments and Engagement

Comments and engagement can show how personalized your brand is. The more personalized your brand is, the more willing people are to comment on your writings and blog posts.

(Read: Do comment away, I read everything, and I write everything here.)

• Links to Your Post

Writing a useful blog post or a piece of information will attract links to your post or page in the long run. This is a useful metric that you can use to see if the post or page is relevant/ useful.

What’s Your End Goal?

Personally, I don’t think there’s one end goal for content marketing. In most cases, content marketing boils down to two main reasons.

The first reason is usually brand awareness, while the second reason tends to be for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) purposes. For SEO to work, you ideally want the user to be converted into a sale or a lead.

But how can you actually track the user’s behavior on your website?

Often, he is unlikely to get converted just because he read this or that particular blog post. There’re so many other factors that could have convinced the user to enquire about your services.

Perhaps it was the user experience, the way your website was designed, or the quality of the content that you’ve put out.

On the other hand, Google analytics does allow one to track user behaviors on your website. Google analytics can help you filter out popular posts or pages, and help you in deciding which post or page to further optimize.

Is there any ROI for brand awareness then? How can one measure the ROI of a popular brand like Pepsi or Coke? It’s the same principle as branding, ie something that may be challenging to quantify in numbers of metrics.

Blogging/ content marketing should thus be seen as part of a bigger picture, rather just a ROI-based pursuit.

How Should I Outsource My Content?

Of course, not everyone enjoys blogging or creating words like I do. Many would prefer to outsource their content. Because content has always been King (in Google’s eyes) and will continue to do, I highly recommend paying a good price to get relevant and quality content on your website.

Source out longer tail keywords, and pay a good writer to write relevant and updated content on that query. Either that or engage a full-time content marketer for your company.

Huge companies do dedicate a good amount of resources to build their inhouse online marketing team. This is the ensure that the content put out on their website is updated and relevant.

In the long run, Search Engine Optimization is going to be about generating relevant quality content.

About Marcus Neo

Marcus Neo’s passion for digital marketing started when he was a mere 18 years old. He started by building his father’s humble fish stall a website the landed the business an enquiry from a restaurant from Marina Bay Sands. He then moved on to acquire WordPress design and search engine optimization skills. Learn more about him at Three Little Pigs.