Evaluating Page Performance is Key to Future Content Success

March 5, 2015

Evaluating Page Performance is Key to Future Content Success
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Evaluate your page performanceEvaluation is an integral part of any strategic marketing plan. When it comes to content creation, it’s important to evaluate how well (or not so well) your blog posts performed so you can learn and apply that knowledge when writing for the web in the future.  One way to measure blog post performance is to look at how many views your articles received over a certain period of time.
We recently rounded up our best performing posts from last summer based on views in 2014 and analyzed the top 5 to determine what we did well. We wanted to share our success with you and give some ideas to incorporate into your own blogging so you can make the most of your efforts.

Top Performing 2014 Summer Blog Posts

1. Google Analytics: Key Indicators for Measuring Website Success

  • Views in 2014: 673
  • Published: June 24, 2014

What We Did Well

  • Focused on a hot industry topic. (As brands become more aware of their website as an important asset to their overall business strategy, they pay attention to its performance in terms of how many visitors they receive and how long people stick around on the website. This type of data can be tracked using Google Analytics, so it’s important that business owners understand what that data really means.)
  • Answered a popular question we hear from our clients.
  • Used attractive visuals.
  • Provided definitions of key terms.
  • Helped readers put their own website performance in perspective by sharing data averages.
  • Offered a resource at the end of the post to help readers further their education on the topic.

2. 3 Popular Types of Email Newsletters

  • Views in 2014: 377
  • Published: May 29th, 2014

What We Did Well

  • Focused on a single topic.
  • Kept the content short and sweet. (Word Count: 450)
  • Formated the article in a visually balanced way.
  • Educated readers about the differences between newsletter styles.
  • Offered concrete advice on formatting newsletters and how frequently they should be sent.
  • Placed a relevant call-to-action at the end of the article.

3. Current Logo Design Trends

  • Views in 2014: 316
  • Published: July 17, 2014

What We Did Well

  • Focused on a single topic related to our business.
  • Showed examples of each design trend.
  • Provided definitions to complement the visuals.
  • Used a parallel, consistent structure to make the post easy to read.
  • Credited the logo designers.
  • Paired the information in the article with a related call-to-action at the end of the post.

4. What NOT To Do in Email Newsletters

  • Views in 2014: 168
  • Published: July 29th, 2014

What We Did Well

  • Wrote about a topic that’s important to our readers. (One of our best performing blog posts of all time is titled E-blast, Don’t E-bomb: The Dos and Don’ts of Email Marketing. Since we knew our readers really enjoyed that post, we decided to write more content about email marketing, sharing more advice about other things to avoid.)
  • Numbered each piece of advice to organize information into separate sections.
  • Included a “takeaway” with each point so readers knew “what to do” in addition to learning “what NOT to do.”
  • Linked to another one of our blog posts within the content.

5. 9 Reasons Health Care Businesses Should Do Email Marketing

  • Views in 2014: 166
  • Published: June 3, 2014

What We Did Well

  • Directed the blog post at a very specific target audience. (If you try to talk to everybody, you’ll end up reaching nobody at all. Know your audience.)
  • Focused on a single topic.
  • Used a number in the title to attract readers to the post. (Readers like knowing exactly what to expect from an article just by reading the title in a search engine, in a marketing email, or in a social media post.)
  • Provided research to strengthen our reasoning/arguments.
  • Wrote only a paragraph or two about each point to stay concise.

Light Bulb Moment: What We Can Learn From Past PerformanceLight bult moment

One interesting thing about these top performing blog posts from the summer is that they were all published to the MayeCreate Marketing Blog during week days. Typically, we schedule three blog posts to publish every week, one of which goes live on the weekend (Saturday). Perhaps during the summer months our blog subscribers are more likely to engage with articles they’re notified about during the regular work week as opposed to the weekends (after all, who wouldn’t want to be enjoying the outdoors on a nice summer day?) These findings can help us prepare our blog posting schedule for the summer and optimize our page performance.

Being conscious of your blog readers’ habits is important to the success of your articles. Upon reviewing and analyzing your own page performance, look for patterns (such as the one we found) and determine how you can alter your content development process to get the best return on your investment.

Areas for Improvement

  • Link to another resource in every post. As writers, we sometimes get so wrapped up in our own ideas that we forget to think about how what we’re currently writing is related to another topic we’ve already published an article about. Take the time to locate keywords within your new blog post that relate to a previous post and add a link. This will help keep visitors on your site longer and also benefit them by providing additional resources.
  • Make sure the links open in a new window. It’s great to direct readers to other valuable resources on the web, but that doesn’t mean you should direct them completely off of your own website. If readers don’t have an easy way to navigate back to the original article they were reading on your site, they might not come back to it at all.

New to Blogging? Let us help you get started!

Download our free Introduction to Business Blogging e-book for guidance and to learn more about the marketing benefits blogging can bring to your company.

Who Manifested This Madness?

Monica Maye Pitts

This fabulous human, that's who.

Monica Maye Pitts

Monica is the creative force and founder of MayeCreate. She has a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture with an emphasis in Economics, Education and Plant Science from the University of Missouri. Monica possesses a rare combination of design savvy and technological know-how. Her clients know this quite well. Her passion for making friends and helping businesses grow gives her the skills she needs to make sure that each client, or friend, gets the attention and service he or she deserves.

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