You’ve heard about “vanity metrics,” haven’t you?

For example, the number of social media followers you have. But followers don’t do you any good if they don’t convert into leads.

What really matters is if those social media followers are part of your target market.

With content and engagement, you have the same issue. Some metrics are worthwhile. Others aren’t.

Here’s 3 that are:

1. Path Followed After Landing on Your Website

A colleague of mine asked Content Marketing Institute’s newsletter editor what engagement metric they placed the most trust in. It actually didn’t have a specific name.

But, they found the best engagement metric for their purposes was the path the visitor followed after landing on their website.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? That tells you exactly how interested they are, and what they’re interested in on your website.

2. Return Visitor Rate (RVR) 

This one comes from Neil Patel. It’s not actually automatically calculated by Google Analytics. You have to calculate it by hand. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a math whiz to do it.

What is RVR?

It’s the number of visitors that return to your website as a percentage of the total visitors.

In Google Analytics, just go to “Audience –> Behavior –> New Vs. Returning.” Take the number of “Total Sessions,” and divide it by “Returning Visitor.”

What’s a good rate?

Neil Patel says that Contently, a popular and content-heavy website for freelance writers, gets a RVR of about 40%.

That number is likely the best you’re going to see, or very close to it.

If you’re doing 30%, or near that, you’re probably doing pretty well.

On the web, you know how much information’s available. So, to get someone to come back to your website, that means you’ve done quite a bit right.

3. Time on Site by Traffic Source (With a qualifier)

Let’s start with the qualifier here. You have to know the traffic source contains your target market. That gets a little tricky sometimes.

However, if you know the source contains your target market, this is a reliable metric for success. Because, after all, if the time on your site is high (more than just 2 minutes or so), you’re doing an awesome job of engaging your target market.

Good things will follow.

A couple minutes, around 2-3, is okay. 1 minute is average for certain traffic sources, like Google search.

If you exceed any of those, you’re most certainly engaging your market. And, you will get leads.

That’s my opinion on content marketing engagement metrics. Those are much more reliable indicators than what you most commonly hear trumpeted.

What’re your thoughts?

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