Certain metrics tell you how many people are consuming your content and what they are doing with it (for example, 'liking', sharing or commenting). They can also help you figure out which types of content people like and which ones they don’t. 

If you’re wondering which metrics you should be measuring to get the best out of your website and your content, we’ve got the answers you need.

1. Backlinks

Backlinks are incoming hyperlinks from one webpage to another website. The more reputable backlinks you have pointing back to your website, the more popular it will be.

Having authoritative and reputable backlinks pointing to your website is one of the most important rank signals to search engines. So the more authoritative backlinks your website has, the higher up on Google search your website will appear. 

By tracking these, you can see whether or not your content is attracting any links and how many. Your website will get a backlink or attract a link when another site links to your website. This means that they like your content and think its relevant enough for their readers. 

You can then gauge how Google will respond to your website or your content. Your aim is to get as high up in Google search as possible.

Does your website really exist if it’s not on page one of Google search? 

Some content will receive more backlinks than other content. This will create the opportunity to double down on the content that performs the best and therefore create similar content, ensuring that your website gets as many backlinks as possible.

2. Social Shares
Social media and content marketing go hand-in-hand. You can use social media to quickly promote content to a large audience and increase your following.

Social sharing creates a viral effect, so pushing your content and having it shared allows you to reach a large audience without spending any extra capital.

You can track how many social shares your content receives within each individual platform. This will help you figure out what kind of content your audience prefers and what you should post more or less of to get more social shares.

3. Unique visitors 

These are individuals who visit the website at least once in a specific period of time. By measuring this intake, you can see how many people visit your website and how many of those visitors are new.

This will allow you to see what kind of content is bringing people to your website. You can then use this data to channel your energy into high quality traffic sources and to create content similar to what’s popular. 

Measuring this data on a monthly or even a weekly basis will show you whether your new strategies are effective and what further changes you need to make to drive more traffic to your website.

4. Average time spent on page

If users only spend a few seconds on your page and then leave, it doesn’t look good for your content. This could mean that either you aren't publishing content that your target audience is really interested in, or you are marketing to the wrong audience.

By using tools like Google Analytics, you can see how long users spend on your page. Looking at this metric will help you get a sense of what content your customers are interested in. If a piece of content has a high time on the page, it means that it has been read in detail and not skimmed or opened and instantly closed. If people actually read the content then it will give you an indication of what topics are relevant. 

Analysing this data means you can improve the average time spent on your page by:
  • adding visuals like pictures, infographics and videos
  • leading users step-by-step through instructions and tutorials 

5. Bounce rate

Bounce rate shows users who leave without navigating to other pages or interacting with anything on the page. For example, if there is a video and they don't click on it, that will be added to your bounce rate. It is the goal of any website to have the people on their page read multiple posts or engage with the content.

Collecting this data will help you to build a strategy to keep people on your website for longer and encourage them to navigate through the site. For example, putting a link to a different — but relevant — article at the end of a piece of content could encourage more people to explore the website.

Don’t be alarmed if your bounce rate is high. That is normal. The goal is to put strategies in place to keep your bounce rate decreasing. 

What other metrics do you think are essential to measure for your website to thrive and why? Let us know in the comments section below. 

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Now that you’ve got your website metrics to a tee, it’s time to shape up your social media by finding which social media metrics really matter.