The key to
Internet Marketing
is creating compelling content, which sounds easy enough. However, it can become difficult to consistantly think of new ideas for your business blog. In today's post we will cover quick and easy ways to brainstorm new content ideas by reviewing your website analytics.
1. Organic Search Referrers - Take a look at the top fifty referring keywords for your website - what do these keywords tell you about your content? Here are two areas to focus on in your analysis.
The Extra Long Tail - Say for example your website sells small electrical supplies. Upon viewing your referring keywords list you see the phrase "how to install a circuit breaker" is a common referring keyword, but not something that you actively optimize or create content around. Rather than ignoring this anomaly, think about it as an opportunity. You know your audience is interested in "how to" topics related to electrical supplies. Produce a series of "do it yourself" blog posts.
Themes - Are you noticing any themes across the non branded keywords on your referrers list? Is there a subset of phrases that drive a lot of traffic & convert at a decent rate? Make a note of these phrases and create more content around them in the future.
2. Blog Analytics
- Blog analytics provide value - but there can be a lot of data to sort through. Where should you look first if your goal is to determine what to write about next? Here are two questions to ask yourself as you review your blog analytics.
Which topics deliver the greatest number of Page Views? It's very simple - create more content around the keywords and topics that receive the most Page Views. Give your subscribers what they want. Write less on topics you thought were interesting but are not generating page views.
Which topics drive the most comments? Creating an open dialog with your customers and prospects is one goal of blogging . It should be equally important to track which articles are actually generating that two-way conversation. Are there any recurring themes in the articles that are receiving the most comments? Publish more content around these topics and leave an open ended question near the end of your posts to encourage conversation.See the bottom of this post for an example.
3. Reuse & Recycle - Research shows that it takes a critical mass of at least 20 blog posts before you start growing leads from your website. Go back into your blog archives and think about ways to promote what we at HubSpot call " Evergreen " content. Chances are, you wrote some great blog posts early on that did not get the visibility that some of your more recent posts have. Try promoting these older blog posts via Social Media .
Which analytics do you find useful when brainstorming new content ideas for your business blog?
This article was written by Shaun Pinney, a member of our consultant team at HubSpot. Check out Shaun's Bio .
Photo Credit: nDevil
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Scott Dailey 12:07 PM on May 20, 2010
Messages received: stop using Flash-driven Web site layouts, templates, widgets, plugins, et al. Flash Web content, tools and aesthetics are doing nothing more - performing no service to you beyond impressing you and that's a service anyway. And more over, should not be a goal of your Web site initiatives. Kidding aside, I know that's not remotely the point of this post, but the thought just kept repeating in my brain, nagging at me the whole time I read this terrific piece. So yes! Applying this post's great approach to creating optimized content, but maybe consider starting with a Web site that is content-ready, content-friendly, optimization-friendly. So in other words, not Flash.
khush-Adsense Information 2:12 PM on May 20, 2010
Shaun,
Great post!Using Analytics data for topics of your blog posts is very useful and practical.
Sally Anne Dishong 3:15 PM on May 20, 2010
Great article! Analytics are a particular focus for our team right now. When I'm doing research for content marketing plans for clients, web analytics provide great input and directional guidance. After I review the client's information architecture and current web content, I take a look at my competitive keyword research and find a few top referring keywords that are also converting well (assuming conversion tracking is set up!) and where the client seems to have a good chance to move up in the SERPs from page 2 or 3 to page 1. Then we design a content plan for articles, blog posts, Facebook notes, article syndication, news releases and other approaches to get links and drive keyword-targeted traffic to the website using long-tail variations on the original keywords.
I agree that the implementation of the content is critical, too! One client published the articles we created on their website in HTML, but the links were in Javascript, which meant they were not SEO-friendly (which negated much of their value to our project!).
Utah Carpenter 12:02 PM on May 21, 2010
Long tails keywords are a great way to rank high on Google. There are hundreds of different keywords you can use and there is less competition.
Bailey Ing 6:22 PM on May 21, 2010
Thanks for the great article Shaun,
Quite often I only use Google Analytics to look at the vistor numbers and haven't realised the power of drilling into the organic search terms.
I've looked at my own analytics and I can already find some popular search themes as you mentioned.
One thing I would suggest is that you could even take the organic search terms then copy them into Google external keyword tool and the wonder wheel to expand those keywords for more related keywords, thus giving even more ideas for future posts :)
Looking forward to more of your posts!
Rebecca Dutcher 9:05 AM on May 24, 2010
Wonderful insights and ideas. It's so important to encourage clients and companies to continue to evaluate their analytics for more than just traffic counts. Traffic sources and what they are looking at can help drive blog topics, content additions, and even new calls to action on your site.
When we are designing and developing new websites for clients, we always look at the analytics to see what is bringing current traffic, where good things are happening, etc.to ensure we build out and call out those areas of the new site.
More importantly, we review where we are loosing visitors, where they exit the most, and over-hauling those areas on the site to optimize it for conversions.
Thank you for pointing out one of the many ways insights can be gathered from analytics.