15 Key Content Marketing KPIs You Need to Track

You know that content marketing is key to building brand awareness, driving conversions, and earning customer loyalty. But do you know which parts of your content strategy are working from one day to the next? Over half of marketers cite measuring the effectiveness of their content as their biggest challenge. To find out if your content is achieving the desired results, you need to track the right key performance indicators (KPIs). You can analyze pageviews, but this tells you more about traffic than actual engagement. There are several other KPIs that will give you a clearer picture of which content actually resonates with your audience. In this post, we’ll look at some of the most important metrics to track. You can then create more powerful content to help you achieve your content marketing goals. The Most Important Content Marketing KPIs Engagement 1. Time on Page In Google Analytics, you can view â€Å"average time on page† to see how much time users spend, on average, on a particular page. If a visitor stays on a page for longer, it’s a good indication that they’re finding it interesting or useful. Make sure you take into account how much content is on a page and the average reading rate, which is around 200 words per minute. If a page contains a 2,000 word article and a user spends one minute on the page, it’s clear they didn’t read the entire article. 2. Pages Per Session This metric shows you how many site pages the average user views on your site in a given period. For example, if a website has 1,000 sessions and 3,500 pageviews in a certain time period, this would amount to 3.5 pages per session. Ideally, visitors won’t just arrive on your website and then leave without visiting any other pages. If your pages per session rate decreases over time, you need to reevaluate your content quality, navigation, and calls to action. 3. Bounce Rate Related to â€Å"time on page† and â€Å"pages per session,† the bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors that leave your site after viewing just one page. This will give you a good indication of how engaging your content is. A high bounce rate can indicate that your content isn’t meeting visitors’ needs or you’re attracting the wrong kind of web traffic. Many factors can lead to a high bounce rate: Slow-loading pages. Weak or unclear CTAs. Poor website navigation. Your content may not align well with the keywords you’ve chosen. 4. Scroll Depth Scroll depth measures how much content your audience is consuming by tracking where on the page they stop reading. This can help you determine how interesting and easy to read your content is. To measure scroll depth, you need to install the Google Analytics Scroll Depth plugin. This will then track the percentage of the page that visitors scroll to, and pixel depth. 5. Leads Lead generation is closely tied to content marketing. By keeping track of how many leads you generate from content, you can see which pieces of content have a direct impact on sales. To track lead generation, you can set up conversion goals in Google Analytics. These conversion goals allow you to measure how often visitors take a specific action on your site’s pages. 6. Conversions In terms of content marketing, a conversion refers to the number of visitors who find your content engaging enough to sign up to something or become paying customers. Your main conversions to track are sales and leads. Secondary conversions include things like email subscriptions and downloads. Track all of your conversion rates by content type to determine how each area of your content marketing strategy is performing. 7. Page Speed As well as being a search engine ranking factor, page speed is also a crucial factor in user experience. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to measure how fast your pages load on desktop and mobile devices. 8. Email Subscribers Your email subscribers are an important part of your marketing campaigns, so it’s important to measure the growth rate of your email list over time. Email marketing tools such as MailChimp, Aweber, and Drip can help you track your list growth, as well as giving you other useful data. Reach 9. Mobile Rankings and Search Traffic Do you know where your organic search traffic is coming from? Is it mainly from desktop or mobile devices? With a mobile-first Google index, it’s now more important than ever to measure how your content performs in mobile search. Google’s Search Console will show you device-specific rankings according to search query, as well as stats such as average click-through rates. 10. Unique Visits How many unique visitors are landing on your website? The number of unique visits to your website is a useful KPI for comparing content engagement over time. However, it’s important to remember that a unique visit to a white paper may be more valuable to you than a unique visit to a blog post. 11. Inbound Links Another important way to measure the value of your content is to determine how much of your traffic is coming from links. Your links should be coming from relevant and quality sources, which is why black-hat SEO practices such as link building can have disastrous consequences for your business. Be sure to track the number of visitors coming from backlinks as well as who is linking to you. You should also determine how valuable and relevant this traffic is by looking out for conversion rates, page visits, and bounce rates among referred visitors. Google’s Search Console will show you most of your inbound links, but for more detailed analysis, use a tool like SEMrush Backlink Analytics, or Moz’s Link Explorer. 12. Social Media Followers The number of social media followers you have is a good indication of brand awareness. If increasing your brand awareness is one of your primary marketing goals, make sure you track these numbers across your social channels. Follow the numbers for each channel to determine which platforms have more brand-building potential. 13. Social Shares In a survey of nearly 400 SEO professionals, this metric was voted as the most important KPI in content marketing. Social shares are a great way to measure your content’s reach, with each share making it more likely that key influencers and prospects will see your content. Another benefit of social shares is that they promote buzz around your content. People are more likely to assume content is worth reading when someone they know has already signed off on it. Track the number of times people are sharing your content as well as which platforms they tend to share it on. You can also measure how many visits you get from each social network and how these visitors behave when they reach your site. This KPI can be measured on a blog post as the number of social shares. On Twitter, it’s the amount of retweets. On Facebook and Google Plus, you can track the number of Likes or +1s per post. 14. Likes and Comments Likes and comments are great indications that your content is having an impact on your readers. Content that’s being actively commented on attracts other readers to join the conversation and adds value for both your brand and audience. 15. Traffic from Social Media Do you know the percentage of traffic to your website that is coming from social media? If you’re investing in social media marketing, you want to make sure that your social media campaigns are actually helping to grow your website traffic over time. You can check the amount of traffic coming from social media with tools such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, or HubSpot. Focus on the Right KPIs Ultimately, if you don’t pay attention to KPIs, your content is unlikely to reach its full potential, which means you’re missing out on valuable traffic, conversions, and sales. There are many ways to measure the effectiveness of a content marketing campaign. However, content marketing success can’t be measured in one metric. To truly understand the impact of your content marketing efforts, you need to identify which metrics are most applicable to your own marketing campaigns and business goals. Using a wide range of KPIs will give you a better picture of how users respond to and interact with your content and how it is contributing to you reaching your content goals. The metrics outlined here will all help you determine the quality and relevance of your content, but you must decide which KPIs are important to your unique marketing goals in a given period and then react to the data accordingly. By focusing on the right KPIs and reaching the correct conclusions, you can adjust your content strategy to match what your audience expects and needs from your business. This will ultimately make your content more successful in the long run. Want to hire freelance writers? Create your free Constant Content account today.

Explore the Local Group of Galaxies

Explore the Local Group of Galaxies Our planet orbits a star inhabiting an immense spiral galaxy called the Milky Way. We can see the Milky Way as part of our night sky. It looks like a faint band of light running through the sky. From our vantage point, its tough to tell that were actually inside a galaxy, and that conundrum had astronomers puzzled until the early years of the 20th Century. In the 1920s, astronomers discussed strange spiral nebulae they were seeing in photographic plates. Theyd been known to exist since at least the mid 1800s, when Lord Rosse (William Parsons) began finding these objects through his telescope. By the early 20th century, some scientists held the view that these spirals are simply part of our own galaxy. Others maintained that they are individual galaxies outside the Milky Way. When Edwin P. Hubble observed a variable star in a distant spiral nebula and measured its distance, he discovered its galaxy was not part of our own. It was a momentous finding and led to the discovery of other galaxies in our nearby neighborhood, including the members of the Local Group. An artists concept of what our galaxy looks like from outside. Note the bar across the center and the two main arms, plus smaller ones. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESO/R. Hurt The Milky Way is one of about fifty galaxies in the group. Its not the largest spiral; that would be the Andromeda Galaxy. There are also many smaller ones, including oddly shaped  Large Magellanic Cloud and its sibling the Small Magellanic Cloud, along with some dwarfs in elliptical shapes. The Local Group members are bound together by their mutual gravitational attraction and they stick together quite well. Most galaxies in the universe are  accelerating away from us, driven by the action of dark energy, but  the Milky Way and the rest of the Local Group family are close enough together that they stick together through the force of gravity. A graphical representation of the Local Group of galaxies, including our own. It contains at least 54 individual members. Antonio Ciccolella, CC BY-SA 4.0 Local Group Stats Each galaxy in the Local Group has its own size, shape, and defining characteristics. The galaxies in the Local group take up a region of space about 10 million light-years across. And, the group is actually part of an even larger group of galaxies known as the Local Supercluster. It contains many other groups of galaxies, including the Virgo Cluster, which lies about 65 million light-years away. The Major Players of the Local Group There are two galaxies that dominate the local group: our host galaxy, the Milky Way, and the Andromeda galaxy. It lies some two and a half million light-years away from us. Both are barred spiral galaxies and almost all of the other galaxies in the local group are bound gravitationally to one or the other, with a few exceptions. Andromeda and the Milky Way are the two largest members of the local group. In the distant future, they will be colliding. This artists concept shows that collision from the point of view of a planet in the Milky Way. Credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger Milky Way Satellites The galaxies that are bound to the Milky Way galaxy include a number of dwarf galaxies, which are smaller stellar cities that have spherical or irregular shapes. They include: Sagittarius Dwarf GalaxyLarge and Small Magellanic CloudsCanis Major DwarfUrsa Minor DwarfDraco DwarfCarina DwarfSextans DwarfSculptor DwarfFornax DwarfLeo ILeo IIUrsa Major I DwarfUrsa Major II Dwarf Andromeda Satellites The galaxies that are bound to the Andromeda galaxy are: M32M110NGC 147NGC 185Andromeda IAndromeda IIAndromeda IIIAndromeda IVAndromeda VAndromeda VIAndromeda VIIAndromeda VIIIAndromeda IXAndromeda XAndromeda XIAndromeda XIIAndromeda XIIIAndromeda XIVAndromeda XVAndromeda XVIAndromeda XVIIAndromeda XVIIIAndromeda XIXAndromeda XXTriangulum Galaxy (third-largest galaxy in the local group)Pisces Dwarf (unclear if it is a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy or the Triangulum Galaxy) Other Galaxies in the Local Group There some oddball galaxies in the Local Group that may not be gravitationally bound to either the Andromeda or the Milky Way galaxies. Astronomers generally lump them together as part of the neighborhood, although they are not official members of the Local Group.   The galaxies NGC 3109, Sextans A and the Antlia Dwarf all appear to be gravitationally interacting but are otherwise unbound to any other galaxies. This member of the Local Group is called NGC 3109, as seen by the Galaxy Explorer spacecraft. It may be interacting with another nearby galaxy. NASA/GALEX   There are other nearby galaxies that do not seem to be interacting with any of the above groups of galaxies. They include some nearby dwarfs and irregulars. Others are being cannibalized by the Milky Way in an ongoing cycle of growth that all galaxies experience.   Galactic Mergers Galaxies in close proximity to each other can interact in colossal  mergers if conditions are right. Their gravitational pull on each other leads to a close interaction or an actual merger. Some galaxies mentioned here have and will continue to change over time precisely because they are locked in gravitational dances with each other. As they interact they can rip each other apart. This action - the dance of the galaxies -   significantly alters their shapes. In some cases, the collisions end up with one galaxy absorbing another. In fact, the Milky Way is in the process of cannibalizing a number of dwarf galaxies.   A group of interacting galaxies as seen by Hubble Space Telescope. NASA/ESA/STScI The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will continue to eat up other galaxies as time goes by. This appears to be what has happened to create most (if not all) of the galaxies we see today. In the distant past, smaller ones merged to become larger ones. Large spirals then merge and create ellipticals. Its a sequence that has been observed throughout the evolution of the universe. Will Mergers in the Local Group Affect Earth? Certainly the ongoing mergers will continue to reshape the Local Group galaxies, changing their shapes and sizes. The ongoing evolution of galaixes will almost certainly affect the Milky Way, even as it goes about gobbling up smaller galaxies. For example, theres some evidence the Magellanic Clouds might merge with the Milky Way. And, in the distant future  Andromeda and the Milky Way will collide to create a large elliptical galaxy that astronomers have nicknamed Milkdromeda. This collision will commence in a few billion years and radically alter the shapes of both galaxies as the gravitational dance commences. Fast Facts: The Local Group The Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies.The Local Group has at least 54 members.The largest member of the Local Group is the Andromeda Galaxy. Sources Frommert, Hartmut, and Christine Kronberg. â€Å"The Local Group of Galaxies.†Ã‚  Messiers Telescopes, www.messier.seds.org/more/local.html.NASA, NASA, imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/local_group_info.html.â€Å"The Universe within 5 Million Light YearsThe Local Group of Galaxies.†Ã‚  The Hertzsprung Russell Diagram, www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/localgr.html. Edited by Carolyn Collins Petersen.

European Union Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

European Union Law - Essay Example The condition that needed to be satisfied for direct effect were also discussed which were that the provision must be clear and precise; it must be unconditional; and its operations must not be dependent upon further action by national or EC authorities. However, these requirements have been done away with by virtue of expiry of time and action by state. Direct effect in respect of Van Gend was allowed in respect of vertical relationship. The question of direct effect of Directive having direct effect was problematic as Directives were designed so as to be implemented and brought into effect by member states within a stipulated period of time. Thus it had been thought Directive could not have direct effect as the condition in Van Gend of further implementing measures could not be satisfied. In Case 41/74 Van Duyn Home Office , the court held that a directive could be relied upon an individual, even though it had not been introduced by the national law. Thus where the Member State is at fault, by failing to transpose the Directive in national law or has done so inaccurately, the individual is allowed to claim against the state the rights which would have been provided, had the Directive been (correctly) implemented. This has been carefully thought of, as allowing vertical effect is appropriate because it is the fault of the Member State which has failed to implement the measure and not the fault of any individua.l {Case 152/84 Marshall v. Southampton & Southwest Hampshire Area Health Authority (Teaching)} . This rule had been criticized for inequality, as an action could only be brought against the state. (Advocate General’s opinion in Case C—91/92 Faccini Dori v. Recreb srl) however the same has not been followed by the Courts and the Courts have confirmed that the Directives can have direct effect in vertical situation between an individual and the state, moreover ECJ has extended the principle of Direct effect by al lowing incidental horizontal direct effect to directives in a triangular situation as in case 194/94 CIA Security International V Signalson , case 441/93 Panagis Pafitis and Unilever Italia V Central Food SpA In light of the question the answer is straightforward and clear that the Directive 2000/78 may not of itself impose obligations on an individual and hence cannot have horizontal direct effect and therefore not be used by Alex, the justification for this provided by the Courts and takes its roots from the Art 189 of the EEC Treaty the binding nature of a directive, which constitutes the basis for the possibility of relying on the directive before a national court, exists only in relation to â€Å"each Member State to which it is addressed†. It follows that a directive may not of itself impose obligations on an individual and that a provision of a directive may not be relied upon as such against such a person’. However, an action against the member state may be bro ught. The action would state that Utopia has not implemented the Directive or has implemented it incorrectly, even after the expiry of the time limit that had been laid down and provided for by the directive and therefore the member state has breach its