How to Use Analytics to Identify Underperforming Content

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How to Use Analytics to Identify Underperforming Content

Effectively identifying underperforming content is essential for improving your website’s overall performance and ensuring your efforts align with your SEO and content marketing goals. Analytics tools provide valuable data that can help you pinpoint content that isn’t meeting expectations and guide you in making improvements. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to use analytics to identify underperforming content:

  1. Define What “Underperforming” Means for Your Goals
    • Establish clear performance benchmarks based on your objectives, such as traffic, engagement, or conversion rates.
    • Examples of underperformance may include low pageviews, high bounce rates, poor organic rankings, or low time on page.
  2. Choose the Right Analytics Tools
    • Google Analytics: Tracks traffic, engagement, and user behavior.
    • Google Search Console: Provides insights into impressions, clicks, and keyword rankings.
    • Ahrefs or SEMrush: Offers advanced metrics like backlink analysis and keyword performance.
    • ContentKing or Screaming Frog: Identifies technical SEO issues affecting performance.
  3. Segment Your Content for Better Insights
    • Categorize your content by type (e.g., blogs, product pages, landing pages).
    • Group content by topics, publication dates, or user intent (informational, navigational, transactional).
    • Analyze segments separately to identify patterns in underperformance.
  4. Analyze Traffic Data
    • Use Google Analytics to identify pages with low pageviews or declining traffic trends.
    • Check the “Landing Pages” report to see which pages fail to attract visitors.
    • Compare traffic metrics against historical data to spot downward trends.
  5. Evaluate User Engagement Metrics
    • Review bounce rate to identify pages where users leave without interacting.
    • Examine average session duration and time on page to gauge user interest.
    • Look at exit rates to find pages where users frequently leave your site.
  6. Inspect Organic Search Performance
    • Use Google Search Console to identify pages with low click-through rates (CTR) despite high impressions.
    • Check keyword rankings for underperforming pages and see if they align with your target terms.
    • Identify content that isn’t appearing on the first page of search engine results.
  7. Assess Conversion Data
    • Determine which pages have low conversion rates (e.g., form submissions, purchases).
    • Use Google Analytics Goals or eCommerce tracking to measure conversions.
    • Analyze the user journey to identify drop-off points in conversion funnels.
  8. Check Backlink Profiles
    • Use tools like Ahrefs or Moz to analyze backlinks to your content.
    • Identify pages with few or no backlinks, as this can signal low authority.
    • Compare underperforming content to top-performing pages in terms of link-building efforts.
  9. Examine Social Media Performance
    • Analyze social sharing and engagement metrics for your content.
    • Identify articles or pages with low shares, likes, or comments compared to others.
    • Use tools like BuzzSumo to see how your content performs on social platforms.
  10. Review Technical SEO Issues
    • Use Screaming Frog or Google Search Console to identify technical issues affecting content performance.
    • Check for slow page load times, mobile responsiveness issues, or broken links.
    • Resolve any crawl errors or indexing problems that may hinder visibility.
  11. Analyze Content Quality and Relevance
    • Compare underperforming content against top-performing pieces to identify gaps.
    • Look for outdated information, poor formatting, or lack of depth in your content.
    • Evaluate whether the content matches search intent for its target keywords.
  12. Monitor Engagement Metrics by Source
    • Segment your traffic sources (organic, direct, referral, social) in Google Analytics.
    • Identify whether underperformance is specific to certain channels.
    • Adjust strategies to improve channel-specific engagement.
  13. Use Heatmaps and User Behavior Tools
    • Tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg can provide heatmaps and session recordings.
    • Identify areas of your content where users drop off or fail to engage.
    • Use this data to optimize layout, visuals, and calls to action (CTAs).
  14. Conduct Competitor Analysis
    • Use Ahrefs or SEMrush to compare your content to competitors targeting the same keywords.
    • Identify topics or formats where competitors outperform you.
    • Leverage competitor insights to fill gaps or improve existing content.
  15. Look at Seasonal Trends
    • Use historical data to determine if underperformance is tied to seasonal fluctuations.
    • Identify evergreen content that may need updates to stay relevant year-round.
    • Plan content updates or promotions based on seasonality.
  16. Identify Content with Low Internal Linking
    • Use tools like Screaming Frog to find pages with few internal links.
    • Improve internal linking to boost visibility and distribute link equity to underperforming pages.
  17. Prioritize Content for Optimization
    • Rank underperforming content by potential impact (e.g., traffic, conversions, or brand visibility).
    • Focus on pages with high impressions but low CTR or those targeting valuable keywords.
    • Optimize pages likely to yield the highest ROI.
  18. Develop an Action Plan
    • Create a checklist to address common issues like outdated content, weak CTAs, or keyword gaps.
    • Update titles, meta descriptions, and headers to improve relevance and CTR.
    • Add multimedia elements like images, videos, or infographics to enhance user experience.
  19. Monitor Post-Optimization Performance
    • Track the performance of updated content over time.
    • Use analytics tools to measure changes in traffic, engagement, and rankings.
    • Continue iterating based on results to refine your strategy.
  20. Key Takeaways
    • Consistently review analytics data to catch underperforming content early.
    • Use insights to prioritize optimizations that align with your goals.
    • Make content audits a regular practice to ensure ongoing success.

By leveraging analytics effectively, you can identify underperforming content and take actionable steps to improve its performance, driving more traffic, engagement, and conversions for your website.

Categories: Digital Marketing