When it comes to measuring the impact of content, you might think of KPIs like “sitewide conversion rate”, or picture an upward graph that shows an increase in traffic. But are those metrics really meaningful? In this piece, I’ll argue that, no, they’re not. Instead, let’s focus on getting you actionable insights that can help your content flourish, by measuring its impact in a meaningful way. The problem with sitewide conversion ratesUnless your website is a one-pager, the likelihood is that not all of your pages have the same intent. So why do we still measure conversion rates across an entire site? The quick and honest answer here is that we do this because it’s easy and because that’s the way it’s always been done. But in reality, measuring your conversion rate across an entire site doesn’t give you any actionable insight - even when used in conjunction with volume of traffic. It’s an oversimplification. Using a sitewide conversion rate neglects to consider pages where the intent isn’t to buy something. Think about your blog pages, customer services or FAQ pages. A growth in traffic to these sections won’t directly lead to an increase in sales. But what it will do is drop your sitewide conversion rate. That’s not a bad thing, it just means that using sitewide conversion rates on their own isn’t the best way of measuring performance here. The answer instead, is to make sure you can report on the intent of your pages to be able to understand what’s performing well and what’s not in their own right. How can you do this? Well… we separate the pages in our reports based on their intent. Separate pages based on their intent for reportingSeparating out pages based on their intent for reporting might sound like a pain, but there are ways you can automate this. The biggest trick you can use is the URL structure. If you have a neat hierarchy, then this can work wonders to help you to group your pages in a way that makes sense to you. Once they’re set up, you’ll be ready to report on your performance in a flash next time! Here’s how you can do this in Google Analytics, Data Studio and in Excel/Google Sheets. How to create segments in Universal Google AnalyticsCreating custom segments in Universal Google Analytics allows you to pull out your data in a way that makes sense to you. It also allows you to quickly pull these segments into other reports, saving you countless hours. What about GA4? “Segments” aren’t available in standard reports in GA4. An alternative called “Comparisons” are, but they can’t be saved once you exit the report. The key mechanics of how Comparisons work is similar to Segments, but can only be used as a quick review rather than an in-depth report. For in-depth reports that use Segments in GA4, you’ll need to visit “Explore” from the left hand tab and set up a new report. If you haven’t used segments yet in Universal Analytics, you’ll find these by clicking on the blue circle of “All Users”. You’ll also see a button for “Choose segment from list” when looking at virtually any report in Google Analytics. In Universal Analytics, you’ll see a list of segments that have already been created for you. But for now, these aren’t the ones we want to use. We want to create our own almighty segments. So go ahead and click the big red button of “+ New Segment”. Now you’ll need to give your segment a name that will help you find it again later. Here you can segment your data in pretty much any way you can think of. But for the purposes of today, we’re looking to create a segment to work out your conversion rate based on the intent of the page they landed on. For that, we need to head over to the “Advanced” section under “Conditions”. This is the place where the magic happens. You can first choose whether you want to filter based on sessions or users. As we want to find sessions that started on a particular section of your site, you’ll want to keep this filter to “Sessions” and “Include”. Next, you need to think about what section of the site you want to look at. One of the easiest ones you can start with is blog traffic, especially if you have /blog/, /news/ or similar as the defining hierarchy in your URLs. If you have both sections, then you can lump these together by using the “OR” function of the filter. This will then show you all of the data based on landing pages that contained either the /blog/ or /news/ in the hierarchy. One tip: be careful which match condition you use. If you choose “exact match”, then this data might not include ALL of your data, as it won’t include any page landings where parameters were appended. Equally, if you have a hierarchy where the URL you’re looking to match is also used in other pages, then you might have to add exclusions to your filter. When setting up your segment, always double check your data against your expected raw data in Google Analytics to check for accuracy. Small differences in the way you’ve set up your segments can impact the reliability of your data as you could either under- or over-estimate the volume of traffic, conversions or goals by assuming that your segment is giving you an accurate view. So, manually checking the raw data output against your logic can help to find any holes (or you could even create counter-segments using the reverse logic to check that you’ve covered 100% of your raw data). When you save your segment, you’ll be able to review your subset of data in seconds, and pull them into other external reports. Here’s an example of what you’ll typically find when you’re looking at a conversion rate for all users, alongside your segments for commercial pages and blog pages.Your ‘true’ conversion rate for the pages that are designed to convert is much higher than your sitewide conversion rate. You’ll also see that your blog traffic (that might not be designed to convert) has a lower conversion rate - which has impacted your sitewide conversion rate, skewing your outlook on how they’re actually performing. How to create segments in GA4To use segments in GA4, you’ll need to visit the “Explore” section. Here, you’ll be able to create your own custom reports and delve deeper into your segmented data. If you’re new to GA4, it’s worth reading Google’s guide to Explorations. In Explore, segments can be found when setting up your report — you can even add a separate comparative segment to benchmark your data against. To add a new segment, click on the “Segments” section shown below on the left. You’ll then be given options to “Include” and “Exclude” your dimensions based on metric values. As the naming conventions of dimensions in GA4 are different to Universal, you’ll need to include sessions where the “Page location” (URL to me and you) contains “/blog/”. You can add “Or” statements here too if needed. Once you’ve set up your report, with Explore, you can customize the metrics to view in your reports and choose how to visualize it, unlike Universal Analytics. The world is your oyster to create custom content-based reports here! How to create Data Studio filtersI love using Google Data Studio. I think it’s an underused tool for content management. Sure, it’s used a lot for top-level reporting, but I’m talking about the real juicy, actionable reports. When it comes to making deep-diving reports, using Data Studio saves time and allows you to bring together data from different sources like Google Sheets, Search Console, and Google Analytics. When setting up your data sources from Google Analytics, you’ll be given the option of adding a Google Analytics segment (you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom of your data tab). Here you can import any segment you’ve already made. I’ve imported one of my brand’s Google Analytics segments:Staysure blog. As well as being able to import segments, you can also create your own filters when you click on “Add a filter”. Doing this prompts this box: Here you can give your filter a name. This isn’t saved back to Google Analytics, and will only ever be found in the Google Data Studio report that you’re working on, so if you want to work on something particularly complex that you want to reuse, it’s worth adding your conditions as a segment in GA. Above, I’ve replicated the segment in GA to show you what it would look like if I only wanted to create that filter in Data Studio. Another benefit of using Data Studio for reporting rather than Google Analytics is that you can layer your filters and blend data together to build in-depth reports that you can jump into without having to dig through data time and time again. So, if I wanted to find out what percentage of organic landings my page contributed to, that answer’s pretty hard to find in GA without writing down numbers somewhere else, or scrolling through a full dataset. Instead, in Data Studio, you can use the organic segment from GA and add on a custom filter to look at just the page you want to review. To get your magic number, blend the data to pull through:
To make life easier, rename the fields by clicking on the “ABC” or “AUT” box next to the field name so that it’s something different… Once you’ve blended your data, you’ll need to create a new field. To do this, click on the Metric title that’s used for your new blended data chart - this then expands to show you data from table 1, table 2 and a new option at the bottom with a plus mark and “Create Field”. Click this to see this pop up: Here you can create your own formulas based off of your datasets. So this is where we do SUM(my chosen page entrances)/ SUM(all organic landings). It’s important to add the “SUM” when adding calculations to blended datasets to amalgamate the data. Finish by naming your field and boom. You now know - for any date range you’ve chosen, what proportion of organic traffic that page accounts for. If you want to get really fancy, you can even add a comparison date range to see how this percentage changes over time. Creating segments in Google Sheets/ExcelIf you want to go old-school, you can even filter pages in Google Sheets, or Excel. Without manually going through each of your data points, you can create a new column and use a nested “if” statement mixed with a “regexmatch” statement. This formula has been used on some dummy data to show how you can speed up the categorization of pages based on URL mapping: =if(REGEXMATCH(A2,"travel-insurance/"),"commercial",if(regexmatch(A2,"news|blog"),"blog",if(regexmatch(A2,"/customer-services/"),"customer services","other"))) You can then use pivot tables to compile your data into segments. Here, I’ve created a new pivot table using the above data, using the “Group” as the rows, and “Traffic” as the values. I’ve then changed the traffic values to show as a percentage of the column instead of as a sum. This now shows me, in a quick snapshot, how much traffic is attributed to each page type. Using this method can help to segment your data and see how your pages perform based on their intent. Add metrics like conversion rates, phone calls and softer metrics to really understand what makes these pages tick. What to do if your URLs aren’t clear when intent mappingIf the structure of your site doesn’t make it easy for you to map your intent easily, then you might need to create a master sheet of intent. This can then be referred to via a VLookup in sheets, or to be used as a blended dataset in Google Data Studio against your other data. If you want to get really fancy, you can tag your content data in Google Analytics by using a data import into a custom dimension. But you’ll still need to do the hard work in mapping your intent yourself. Introduction to attribution modelingNow you know how to review the impact of your content based on its intent, it’s time to make the story a bit more complicated. Although measures of success with informational intent pages are seen as smaller wins, these pages can also help attribute to sales — eventually. Or, sessions to commercial pages that didn’t convert on a first hit might eventually lead to a sale a while later. By only reviewing direct conversions in Google Analytics (which is the native metric that’s used), we run the risk of missing opportunities and not seeing the bigger picture of how people use our sites. This could lead to making decisions like culling content that’s actually helpful. We know that people don’t live in a linear world. We don’t see a product we love and buy it immediately. (Okay, sure, I will put my hand up and admit that SOMETIMES, that’s how the world works.) But most of the time, we hem and haw over decisions, shop around, look at various sites on our mobiles, searching via Google, social and asking our friends and family for input. We swap devices before we decide what to buy, or we might even walk into a real life shop and talk to someone about it. To measure this kind of behavior is called multi-channel attribution modeling. It’s an understanding that people don’t simply visit and then buy in a linear way. Their decisions are multifaceted and that means our analytics should reflect that, and attribute leads or sales accordingly. There’s a great introduction to multi-channel attribution modeling by Avinash Kaushik if you fancy wandering down a rabbit hole of discovery there. You’ll find loads of information on how to use attribution modeling in Google Analytics on a channel basis, but what you often won’t find is how you can do this on a landing page basis. A search for “attribution modelling” “google analytics” gave me only 17,300 results on Google, suggesting it’s a pretty niche area in itself. Yet adding “landing page” in there, delivered only 2,790 results. So, not a lot of people are talking about this super powerful report. The reason why they aren’t talking about it isn’t because it’s a secret. It’s because it’s really hard to find. Assisted conversions by landing pageTo get to your assisted conversions by landing page report in Google Analytics, you’ll need to go to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions. Here, you’ll see a report that shows all of your assisted conversions, based on all of your goals. Before we get too distracted like a kid in Disney World, let’s set this report up properly with the intention of finding out assisted conversions by landing page. 1. Change the conversions this report sees as a goal from “all” to sales, leads, etc. — whatever you deem as a conversion and are actively tracking. If you don’t change this setting, you’ll also be viewing all of your micro conversions that you’ve set as goals like video views or time on site. 2. Change your lookback window to something meaningful for your business. You can set this at any number of days up to 90. 3. The report you’ll see will automatically be set to channel groupings. The suggested options for the primary dimension are all focused on channel breakdowns like Source/Medium. To change this, go to “other” and select “landing page URL”. What does the assisted conversion report by landing page show me?Now you’ve got your data, it’s time to learn what you’re looking at.
How can I use the assisted conversion by landing page report?You can use the assisted conversion report by landing page to:
In summary:We’ve learnt that:
I really hope you’ve found this useful and you’re now armed to make your own intent-based reports using whatever toolset you feel comfortable with. via Blogger How to Measure the Impact of Content Based on Intent Relevance continues to be a hot topic in search, especially since John Mueller broke the internet last year by saying that the “number of links doesn't matter at all”, and that relevant content trumps the quantity of content. I head up the team at JBH the Digital PR Agency, and whilst growing the team and working with a huge range of brands over the last four years, I've realized that we wear many, many different hats. For some of our clients, we are their link building agency. We achieve specific links that adhere to specific criteria to support SEO objectives. For other clients, we’re there to help build their brand, create thought leaders, and develop beautiful, shareable content. For those clients, SEO is secondary. And for other brands, we’re somewhere in the middle. What has become overwhelmingly clear is that the relevance of the links we build sits under each of these hats, and it’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time working on at JBH, in order to improve our delivery all around. Who cares about relevance anyway?If you’ve ever had your content outranked by a tiny, hyper-niche site, then you’ll definitely care about relevance. Even Google prioritizes relevance when deciding where to rank pages. The good news is that we can learn from this, and apply certain processes to our own activity. In this post, you’ll see how the team here at JBH bakes the principles of topical relevance into our content, outreach, and link building strategies. I ran a (very scientific) poll on Twitter earlier in the year — presenting my network with four different options, and asking them to select which one they cared most about when it comes to linked coverage. And the results were super interesting
Turns out we ALL care about relevance — more than the topic being newsworthy, and interestingly, more than keywords! It was a trick question, really, as these are the four factors that we benchmark our content and ideas against. Nonetheless, it was quite telling that keywords were (ironically) bottom of the rankings. What does relevance really mean in the context of digital PR?Relevance means different things to different people. So, I decided to create a framework through which to run every single idea — with the aim of ensuring said idea sits somewhere on the spectrum of relevance for our clients. Above, you’ll see the graphic we created to check our ideas against what we believe to be the four key pillars of relevance. As long as our ideas fit into one of the quarters, and as close to the middle as possible, we know we’re on the right track. The key pillars of the JBH Relevance Spectrum1. Audience -- would my client or brand's audience be interested in this content? 2. Authority -- is my client or brand an authority on the subject? Could they be interviewed about it? 3. Keywords -- does it contain keywords that we want to rank for, and do we have a page on the site that makes sense to link to? 4. Newsworthiness -- will journalists care about what we are saying? What are we adding to the conversation? Relevant content drives links to key commercial pagesWhen done right, digital PR work that focuses on relevance can deliver so much more than just links — and brands are catching on to its commercial impact. In the last 12 months, I've been inundated with requests from brands looking for links to their commercial pages, compared to links from larger creative content campaigns. The digital PR industry has come full circle, and we’re going back to the basics of content marketing. But don’t get me wrong, building links to commercial content is really hard. Now, we dig deep into the business, the sector, and the website itself to understand how to develop our link acquisition strategy to get the best results for the brand. Instead of having a link-first mindset, we challenged ourselves to have a research-first mindset. Relevance sits at the heart of this effort, and the impact of this work drives true commercial value — but how do we make this work for brands in different industries and sectors? Step 1: We ask the right questionsFrom the second we sign a contract with a new brand, we’re on a journey of discovery. We need to know about the business, their goals, and what success looks like for them through the medium of digital PR. We stop being link builders and become intrinsically involved with the business we’re representing. Step 2: We give ourselves clear boundaries before tackling ideationIdeation can sometimes be a free-for-all, but setting boundaries around what topics and themes we can ideate around can be so helpful in guiding the way to a truly relevant idea that can be angled towards a prioritized landing page. Step 3: We forget formats and let the idea guide us to a creative solutionOur creative solutions are always backed by data, but we let the idea guide us as to how the data will be presented. We never have a “type” of campaign in mind when we approach ideation. Step 4: We use the relevance spectrum to stress test our ideasBefore sharing ideas with the client or brand, we’ll stress-test our ideas against the relevance spectrum to ensure we’re content that our ideas truly match the client and how they want to be presented. Case study: How this process drove traffic and increased visibility for a private medical center in the UKBy following the framework outlined above, we were able to increase visibility for a healthcare brand in a very competitive market by over 300%. Here’s how we hit all of the key elements of the relevance spectrum, plus the impact and outcomes of following this approach: Authority — is my client or brand an authority on the subject? Could they be interviewed about it?We met with the founders of the facility to discuss their key campaign objectives. Much like our Twitter poll, relevance was top priority — along with showcasing the expertise of the team and their innovative approach to recovery. We left the meeting understanding what they were willing to talk about, in addition to the topics they were not so comfortable with — helping us to keep our ideas within their boundaries. Audience — would my client or brand's audience be interested in this content?We also spoke with their admissions team, who were able to tell us more about the most common or frequent questions they are asked by service users. We then used this insight to help us develop campaigns or pitch ideas that answered said queries. In addition to this, we looked more broadly at the publications the service users and their families were likely to read, and analyzed topics that might fit those outlets. Keywords — does it contain keywords that we want to rank for, and do we have a page on the site that makes sense to link to?We then met with their SEO team, who were able to give us an onsite content roadmap, target keywords, and a prioritized list of landing pages mapped to those keywords, as well as a timeline for those pages to be published, so we could plan our digital PR stories in advance. They also gave us information on the competition, including how aggressive they were being with link acquisition across the board. This helped us with benchmarking, providing us with a really solid base for our activity. Newsworthiness — will journalists care about what we are saying? What are we adding to the conversation?With all of this information at our disposal, we were in a great place to start thinking about campaign ideas, but we needed to absorb plenty of information about the sector first so we understood what we were dealing with. We set up media alerts for key phrases, and brand alerts for the competition, so we could see exactly what was being published. Looking closely at the competition, we learned what was working well for them — and crucially, what wasn't working quite so well. We set up RSS feeds to deliver news relating to the priority keywords and read it each day, helping us become attuned to the newsworthy topics relating to addiction recovery. From this, we watched out for which journalists were covering topically relevant stories, and added them to our prospecting list. We then set to work coming up with ideas that aligned with all of the above information. The impact — high authority links to commercial pagesBy following this approach, we found that we were able to secure highly relevant links and coverage — all while remaining in sync with the SEO team working on the site. As the content we produced was so relevant to the brand, it made sense for the journalists to link to key service pages. This is how we achieved the following commercial gains as a result of pitching topically relevant content for the brand:
This five-step checklist ensures relevance is prioritized in every digital PR campaignIn order to make this work cross-industry, we’ve developed a five-point checklist to ensure that relevance is prioritized at every stage. Depending on the brand and the sector, we’ll follow some or all of the points below to ensure that we’re considering the relevance of our digital PR campaign ideas above all else. 1. Research the industry in which your brand operates
2. Understand the business you’ve been tasked to build links to
3. Understand the website you’ve been tasked to build links to
4. Analyze the competition
5. Keywords and landing pages
This framework can be followed to achieve results for brands in most sectors — but the setup is keyIt is so easy to get relevance wrong in the context of digital PR. Branded campaigns aren’t needed in order to be relevant. We now need to look more closely at target audiences and produce content that appeals both to them AND the publications that they read. By stepping away from the link-first mindset and applying some research-led common sense we can produce more relevant campaigns that achieve measurable results against SEO metrics. via Blogger The Four Pillars of Relevancy: How Digital PR Campaigns Can Lead to Gains in Every Sector |
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April 2023
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