Content marketing is one of the more powerful ways of showcasing your business as a subject matter expert. For many small business owners, that means blogging. Many business owners are dutifully blogging weekly, wondering if their efforts are making a difference. So how can you tell if your blogging efforts are working?  Let’s take a look.

Your blogs are showing up in search results

Assuming that your blogging efforts are planned out in an editorial calendar for content marketing where, among other things, you’ve determined which keyword phrases to use in each post, you’ll start to see those blog posts come up for those targeted keyword phrases. Notice the term “keyword phrases“; if you’re a construction company, it’s highly unlikely you’ll come up for the word “construction” no matter how many times you blog about it. When you blog, you want to use long-tail keyword phrases that you’ll more likely rank for over time.

Your site landing pages are increasingly blog posts

A landing page is any web page that a visitor can arrive at or “land” on. Many people believe that website visitors always arrive on their site through their home page, but that’s not true. Search engines treat each page of your site individually, and will often serve up whatever page on your site is most applicable to the search terms being entered. If you look in Google Analytics, you can see what are the top landing pages for your website. As you blog more often (and promote those blog posts on your social channels!) you’ll likely start seeing more of those landing pages are your blog posts. To find out what your top landing pages are, go to Google Analytics and look under Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages. You’ll see something like this:

You’ll notice in the example above, the #1 spot was NOT the home page, but a blog post. #2 is the home page, and #7 is our main blog page; all others are blog posts!

You’ll start to see more traffic to your site

For our clients that blog, we see a steady increase in traffic, especially if they blog more often. What’s more interesting is that we’ll typically see a spike in traffic on the days the blog post publishes, especially if they share the link to the blog on their social channels. You can see when your website traffic spikes in Google Analytics by going to the “Audience Overview” section. See a correlation between spikes and the day you posted? Your efforts are working!

You’re seeing results for the metrics you’ve established

One of the best ways to know if blogging is working for you is to establish and measure metrics for your efforts. These metrics can include:

  • Rankings
  • Traffic
  • Leads
  • Sales
  • Free trials
  • Signups
  • Downloads

If you established a baseline for these before you started blogging, you should be able to see how blogging is impacting that. You may also have visitor engagement metrics established, such as number of pages visited on your site, a contact form filled out, or how many times a blog post was liked and/or shared. All measurable within Google Analytics! If you’re unsure how to establish and measure these metrics, find a small business marketing professional who can help set these up for you.

Here are a few more ways to see if your business blog is working.

Small business content marketing  is a great way to get your business noticed online. Making sure you have a solid plan for blogging, establish baselines, and measure results will help you understand if your blogging efforts are working.

Patty Hughes
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