Exactly How To Measure Your Blogs Efficiency: using real data, not guesses

Blogs. It seems like everyone has one but only a few people know why. Sort of like the pancreas. Answer the question of “is our blog working” once and for all!

Why do you have a blog? 

There are 4 main reasons for a blog.

1. Update your audience
2. Build authority & trust
3. Gain organic rankings 
4. Influencing your site traffic

First, write down why you have a blog! This will make it easier to answer your questions!

How We Do It For Clients!

Data Collection is the key for measuring the usefulness of your blog! We create something called the “Page Sniper” which allows us to drill into any specific pages usefulness. This is what that looks like

In order to do this we need to make sure we collect the following pieces of information!

• Category of Blog post
  • This is how the Content management system is categorizing your content. Usually, this categorization is based on the blog’s intended audience. (CRM, Marketing efficiency, etc)
• Tags of Blog Post
  • This allows you to drill into specific content tags in the future.
• Scroll Depth
  • Be sure to collect the fall of viewership. We usually use 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 90% as a default.
• Time on page
  • This can be controversial. But usually, we have a 10-second timer that goes off 6 times for a total of 60 seconds on a single page.

This will help you measure if people are reading your blog, but it will not help you answer the question of “what caused the outcome”.

What Blog Post Is Causing Leads?

This is the question most SEOs want to know the answer to. But it can be difficult to get a “true” answer, but this is the best method we have!

You have to set a cookie *or store locally) the first blog post read & the last blog post read.

• The First Blog Post read
  • The logic behind this will be, if there is no value for the first blog read, then we will write one.
  • This helps you set a consistent feedback loop
• The last Blog Post read
  • The logic for this is, EVERY time someone views a blog, you write the value of that blog as a cookie.
  • This allows you to always know where they came from.

This is not a perfect system (there isn’t one), but it allows you to know:

1. What content they found you one.
2. What content caused them to take action (book a call, become a lead, etc)

All The Fields You Will Need In Google Tag Manager & GA4 Parameters

If you want the most robust solution, you will need access to each of these dimensions & to be able to associate them to a metrics like sessions, views, users, etc.

• Scrollable Page Height – Pixels
• Full Page URL
• Post Type: Single/category/etc
• Post Category: The Category of the post
• Post Terms: The Tags of the post
• Last Blog Viewed: Cookie/local session storage that is overwritten by each new blog viewed
• First Blog Views: Cookie/local session storage that is set to the maximum time.
• Scroll Depth: 10,25,50,75, & 90 are a great start
• Clicks: All link clicks gives you the most in future-proofing
• CTA Views: if someone views the CTA in your blog.

Feeling Lost? Join the next BTD Launch here we teach all this and more!

Is Our Blog Getting Organic Rankings? 

This is the more aggressive question.

Meaning that you are now not just providing value, but trying to compete with everyone else as to who is providing the “Most” value in Google’s eyes. 

We now have the ability to measure this. And this is how you do that. 

There are two ways to do this & you should do both!

1. Use Search Console Data
   • This is the most accurate data from google about which pages are ranking & how they are trending.
2. Use Google Analytics (Organic Medium)
   • This will give you session attribution to your traffics start page

WARNING: These will give you different answers. Neither is “right” they are just different

To set up and link your Google Analytics & Search Console:

1. First You are going to go to Google Search Console (if you do not have that setup, Read this)

2. Second, you are going to set up a URL Authentication (not domain level) Read This

3. Third, you are going to link your Google Analytics Account and your Google Search Console Accounts together. Read This

Now, if you go into Google Analytics and view the report of Acquisition > Landing Pages you can filter to just show your organic traffic!

Answering the questions of which landing pages are doing the best organically and furthermore if you add this with the above step you can see where your organic traffic is leaving you. 

I’m just going to leave that there for you. But… if you wanted to go one step deeper. You could measure the effectiveness of the pages you do rank for. 

The Questions You Can Now Answer!

Individual Blog:

• Which blog post is bringing in the most traffic?
• Which blog post is bringing in the most leads/revenue?
  • The first blog they saw
  • The last blog they saw
• Which blog is being read the most?
• Which blog are people scrolling & spending time on?
• Which blog are people clicking the CTAs on?

Blog Category:

• Which category is bringing in the most traffic?
• Which category is bringing in the most leads/revenue?
  • The first category they saw
  • The last category they saw
• Which category is being read the most?
• Which category are people scrolling & spending time on?
• Which category are people clicking the CTAs on?

Trended Answers:

• Which blog/category is growing the fastest
• Which blog/category is increasing leads the fastes
• Which blog is ranking in Google?
• Which blog is losing rank in Google?

Why You Should Measure Your Blog.  

Retargeting. Education. Repurposing.  These are the names of the games.

If your blog post is answering a quick question of “How do I set up an email account” a person might come to your website and then leave. 

You should ask yourself, is this traffic valuable to our business or are these people just passing through. You might just want to spend your retargeting dollars on just the people who hit 80% scroll or people who clicked into your call to action box. 

if you are offering more in-depth strategy-style posts, then it might be advantageous to suggest parallel content within your content clusters.

You can then break out your “Most effecient” blog posts into social articles, content pieces, or podcasts!

In summary

If you have a blog, make sure you know “Why do you have a blog” then measure the effectiveness of that blog.

Often times we just believe it will happen when there are other steps you can take to grow at a faster pace.