The key to good content marketing is visibility. If your content is on page 3 of a Google search, it has poor visibility. This is why so many marketers focus on search engine optimization (SEO).
As search engines get more sophisticated, good visibility means more than just having the right keywords. Search engines increasingly reward sites that engage their target audience.
Since it isn’t possible to directly gauge the degree to which the audience is engaged, search engines rely on a variety of metrics. Two of the better metrics for judging audience engagement are bounce rate and click through rate (CTR).
Understanding these metrics allows you to better improve your SEO content tools.
Bounce Rate and CTR Defined
Bounce rate is effectively a negative metric. The bounce rate of a website is the percentage of site visitors that never click any links on the site. This indicates the percentage of people that simply weren’t interested enough by the landing page to further explore.
CTR is a positive metric that indicates the percentage of people who clicked on a link that ended at a location where you can purchase something. This represents how well your marketing engaged someone on the website.
The Value of Incorporating These Metrics
Among your SEO content tools, you should have Google Analytics. You can use this web page to check the bounce rate of your website.
It is a common mistake among content marketers to believe that time on website is a good indicator of engagement, when actually bounce rate is a better indicator. By tracking your bounce rate, you can take proactive steps to decrease it or identify changes in your website that increase it.
Similarly, while decreased bounce rate is indicative of a more engaged audience, it doesn’t assure that web page visitors are actually looking at products.
To improve your marketing message, you want to take positive steps to increase the CTR of your web site.
By focusing on both CTR and bounce rate, you are treating visitors to your website as both customers and as an audience, which increases the overall value of your marketing.
