The 8 Best Content Marketing Analytics Tools of 2023

The 8 Best Content Marketing Analytics Tools of 2023

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The 8 Best Content Marketing Analytics Tools of 2023
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If you’re nearly like me, you’re obsessed with numbers and data on your content’s performance.

meme on content marketing analytics tools

Krittin Kalra, the Founder of Writecream, uses tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush for content analysis.

At our company, we use a variety of tools and data points to ensure that our website and demand gen content are performing at their best. We also frequently analyze engagement metrics such as time on page, click-through rates, and bounce rates to get a sense of how our audience is interacting with our content.

The length of our optimization process depends on the specific content piece and the amount of feedback we receive. However, on average, we spend about a week gathering data, analyzing our findings, and making any necessary adjustments”, she added.

So yes, content analytics tools are important. And then, if you’ve executed a content marketing strategy yourself, you know just how much work is involved. You have to find the right topics, create content, and track and measure their performance on sometimes several channels. It’s so much work. 😩

Want to ease the pressure? Here are our top analytics, SEO, and feedback tools for analyzing content performance.

(Writer’s note: I separated tools into four categories to make it easier for you to understand what type of analysis you can use them for).

Content Analytics Tools (Category #1)

1. Google Analytics 4

A screenshot of Google Analytics 4 as a content marketing analytics tool

Google Analytics is so much more than a simple analytics tool. It not only allows you to measure conversions on your site but also gives you dynamic insights into how visitors: 

  • arrived on your site
  • interacted with your site

And also how you can keep them coming back.

GA4 provides deep insights into user interaction with our content, helping us refine our user experience. By analyzing engagement patterns, we’ve been able to tailor our content to meet user preferences, resulting in longer time spent on our platform and improved conversion rates.” – Abhishek Shah (Founder of Testlify)

Pros:

  1. GA4 offers improved event tracking with greater flexibility and accuracy – making it easier for you to measure conversions and user actions
  2. GA4 has enhanced cross-device and cross-platform reporting, for you to understand how users engage with your website and app – across various devices
  3. GA4 integrates with other Google products like Google Ads and Google Search Console

Cons:

  1. GA4 uses complex terminology. Here’s a glossary by MonsterInsights containing new GA4 terms you should know, and here’s an article comparing new GA4 metrics to the familiar ones in Universal Analytics.
  2. Its UI is complex, particularly given our long use of Universal Analytics

Price: Free.

2. TinyAnalytics

Screenshot of TinyAnalytics' home page

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TinyAnalytics is a simple analytics tool for analyzing user behavior on your website. Its session recording feature allows you to easily watch how people engage with your site and you can also visualize user behavior using heatmaps.

We have been working with TinyAnalytics for some time now, and we have truly enjoyed the experience. Our goals align, and this is an excellent fit for us. TinyAnalytics has taught us so much. Not only do they have one of the best customer service departments I’ve ever worked with, but they are also able to provide accurate analytics that help us run our business more successfully. They’re doing a fantastic job and we love having them in our corner!” Molly Carroll – Director of Sales, Delve

(Source)

Pros:

  1. Heat mapping is easy to analyze and set up
  2. The mobile device analysis feature provides insights into your website’s mobile experience
  3. It’s GDPR compliant

Cons:

  1. Heat mapping visualization is limited
  2. Contains limited information
  3. UI needs improvement as you can’t zoom in on the dashboard for more detail
  4. Supports only English

Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at £49 a month.

Companies like HABITAT and PETSKY use TinyAnalytics.

3. Fathom Analytics

Screenshot of Fathom Analytics' home page highlighting features that make it a good content marketing analytics tool

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Fathom Analytics is a simple website analytics tool that uses a single line of code and works on any website or CMS. Fathom has a lightweight script that doesn’t slow your website down or affect your SEO. Similar to other content analytics tools, Fathom measures essential metrics such as Page views, bounce rate, and referrers.

Fathom Analytics is a great Google Analytics alternative because it is focused on protecting visitors’ privacy, does not collect any personally identifiable information about your website visitors, and does not bog down loading times, leading to faster websites.” Nathalie Lussier – founder of AccessAlly.com

(Source)

Pros:

  1. Good customer service
  2. GDPR compliant
  3. By-passing Ads helps collect data easily
  4. Data is gathered anonymously

Cons:

  1. Features are limited when compared with GA4
  2. The UI is not as intuitive as other analytics tools, hence navigating and accessing certain features is difficult.

Price: 30-day free trial available. Paid plans start at $14/month.

Companies like IBM, GitHub, and Buffer, use Fathom Analytics.

4. Plausible Analytics

Screenshot of Plausible Analytics' home page for a post highlighting features that make it a good content marketing analytics tool

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Plausible is another lightweight content marketing analytics tool that allows provides you with essential insights into your website’s content. It’s pretty simple in the sense that you get all the information you need on one page, without needing to navigate through different menus or build custom reports and dashboards.

Plausible is a fast, lightweight, privacy-first, and GDPR-compliant analytics platform that is better than GA4. It’s easy to integrate and powerful once it’s running.” – Alex L., 5-star review on G2

Pros:

  1. Easy integration
  2. The dashboard is easy to use
  3. It is GDPR, CCPA, and ECPR compliant
  4. Cookie-free

Cons:

  1. Currently provides documentation support only
  2. Supports English only

Price: Free trial available. Paid plans start at $9/month for 10,000 pageviews.

Companies like Prezly and Elementary use Plausible Analytics.

SEO Tools (Category #2)

5. Ahrefs

Screenshot of Ahrefs' home page for a post highlighting features that make it a good content marketing analytics tool

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Ahrefs is another popular tool used by marketers to analyze the SEO side of their content performance. For us at Rockee, we use Ahrefs to track ranking progress and discover opportunities using existing data. Asides from content analysis, you can use it to discover content ideas and run content audits to discover ways to improve website performance.

Using Ahrefs’ data to plan our content strategy helped us increase visits to our blog by over 200% compared to the previous year.” – Maile Waite, Head of Content & SEO at CloudApp.

(Source)

Pros:

  1. AhrefsBot is the most active web crawler among all SEO tools
  2. Has advanced filtering options
  3. Constantly renews data
  4. Easy data retrieval

Cons:

  1. Pricing is on the higher end when compared to other SEO tools
  2. UI is complex for beginners to navigate. We recommend studying this beginner’s guide: https://ahrefs.com/seo – to get the hang of it
  3. Some level of technical SEO knowledge is needed to overcome its steep learning curve

Price: Paid plans start at $99/month.

Ahrefs is used by marketers from companies like Adobe, Zoom, and LinkedIn.

6. Semrush

Screenshot of Semrush' home page for a post highlighting features that make it a good content marketing analytics tool

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Semrush is another well-known content analytics tool for monitoring content performance and it possesses some powerful content marketing features. It helps you analyze website traffic, uncover keywords, track your position on the SERPs, and conduct competitor analysis.

Semrush is like a keyword research tool, Google Trends, Moz, Hootsuite and SimilarWeb in one.” – Mario León Rojas, Performance Marketing Specialist at Banco del Sol.

(Source)

Pros:

  1. It has one of the largest keyword databases
  2. Has extensive tools and features like traffic analytics and content marketing tools.
  3. Its usage allowance is quite generous when compared with other SEO tools

Cons:

  1. Also a bit expensive, when compared to other SEO tools.
  2. It takes a while for new users to understand how it works. Beginners can watch tutorial videos on Semrush’s youtube channel and take courses on Semrush Academy to get familiar with the tool. 
  3. Price: Limited free plan available. Paid plans start at $99.95 per month.

Brands like Tesla, IBM, and DECATHLON use Semrush.

A Problem With Content Analytics and SEO Tools: Time and Context

Analyzing content performance with analytics and SEO tools takes time, and Michael Alexis, the CEO of Swag, agrees with this.

The process normally takes several weeks or months depending on the size of the project. The hardest thing about this process is finding a balance between what works best for our company and what resonates with our audience. It can be challenging to understand exactly what will work without soliciting customer feedback directly to get an outside perspective.”

After analyzing content performance, you’ll have to optimize it, and Leszek Dudkiewicz, the Head of Marketing at Passport-Photo Online, mentions that it isn’t an easy task: 

The amount of time it takes to improve your content hinges on the number and quality of the issues that need addressing. However, one thing is certain – this is not a task that can be accomplished overnight. In my experience, undertaking a thorough optimization of content can take several weeks, if not months. It requires a commitment to a sustained effort, but the results can be well worth the investment”.

Krittin Kalra, the CEO of WriteCream, mentioned that balancing content optimization with content creation is quite difficult, because of how long it takes: 

The hardest thing about our optimization process is balancing the need to improve our content with the need to consistently produce new content. It can be a challenge to devote the necessary time and resources to optimizing existing content while also creating fresh, engaging content that keeps our audience coming back for more”.

One important word repeated itself…Time.

Doing any type of content analysis and optimization is difficult and time-intensive. And chances are, some changes you’d want to implement may not be necessary.

For example: To you, a low engagement rate may mean your website has a slow load time, but readers may be leaving early because they found the introduction boring. It’s either you ask, or continually guess why.

Qualitative insight tools will give important answers and save you time from guessing if your content resonates with your target readers by collecting feedback from them.

Below are two tools you can use to collect feedback from readers.

The Solution: Qualitative Insight Tools (Category #3)

7. Rockee

Screenshot of Rockee' home page for a post highlighting features that make it a good qualitative content marketing analytics tool

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Rockee’s a content feedback platform that helps you create better content using audience feedback. As a qualitative insight tool, it removes the guesswork from analytics data and tells you exactly what readers truly think about your content.

You can collect feedback from readers using the following:

Thomas, an HR company, uses Rockee Trust Badges and scores to immediately let visitors know how great content is.

Screenshot of a post on Thomas' blog showing Rockee' trust badges.

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And also includes a content ratings widget at the end of posts for readers to tell what they liked about the content.

Screenshot from a blog showing Rockee' content ratings widget for readers to rate the post

(Source)

We’ve had Rockee on our website for several months now, and we’ve got huge amount of content on the website. Matt and I began working together really to answer that kind of ever-present digital marketing conundrum, which is: how is our content performing? There are a number of tools out there that will give you an overall score, but for me, context is key. And that context is, how does our content perform with our target personas and future buyers? So getting that insight is of real value, and Rockee allowed us to see that”. – Nick Liddle (Digital Marketing Lead @ Thomas.co)

Pros:

  1. Readers use it to leave feedback on what they liked/disliked about the content
  2. GDPR and privacy friendly – doesn’t collect user identification data
  3. Easy to setup – collect insights in minutes
  4. Customizing a widget is easy, and it’s very lightweight to load on a website
  5. You can use custom landing pages to collect feedback for email and non-website content

Cons:

  1. To get statistical insights you need good site traffic, min of 10k visitors a month. Not suited for smaller users
  2. We’re a start-up – so it’s relatively light on features. We’re constantly adding new features, with help from our users. Got something in mind? Email matt@rockee.io

Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at £39/month.

Companies like iManage, CIPHER, and Thomas, use Rockee.

8. Hotjar

Screenshot of Hotjar' home page for a post highlighting features that make it a good qualitative content marketing analytics tool

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Hotjar is a website analytics tool that enables you monitor your website’s performance. It lets you visualize how visitors engage with your site using heatmaps, recordings, and feedback. Visitors can tap the widget at the side to give feedback and narrate what their experience was like.  

“Hotjar is a critical tool for us to understand our users and identify any pain points where they might be getting stuck.” – Mike Fiorillo, Growth Product Manager at Invision

(Source)

Pros:

  1. It has good behavior analysis features
  2. It’s easy to install and set up 
  3. Heatmaps can show you where visitors click and scroll on your site

Cons:

  1. Pricing increases dramatically upon usage
  2. The widget adversely affects a page’s loading speed
  3. Limited customization for surveys and feedback
  4. Limited integration with other marketing and analytics tools

Price: Free plan available. Paid plan starts at $32/month.

Companies like Unbounce, Miro, and Adobe use Hotjar.

Summary: Qualitative Insights are Important

Medium-size companies – with website traffic of over 10k visitors a month – need better insights as to what the data means, so a qualitative data tool like Rockee is needed to close the gap.

With Rockee, content teams understand if content resonated by collecting feedback in the form of content ratings and customized blog survey questions, which looking at numbers alone, can often lead to guesswork.

Small businesses can use Rockee’s free plan alongside other free tools on this list to better understand content performance.

Take a demo by rating this content below, and find out how Rockee works by signing up for a free trial.

FAQs

What is content analytics?

Content analytics is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to gain insights into how content is performing, how it’s being consumed, and its impact on business goals.

What are content analytics tools?

Content analytics tools are software designed to help businesses and content creators analyze and interpret data related to their content.

Which tool can be used to measure content effectiveness?

There are many tools you can use to measure the effectiveness of content, but some helpful tools to use are Google Analytics, Rockee, Hotjar, Semrush, and Ahrefs.

Wisdom Dabit

Wisdom Dabit

Wisdom Dabit is a freelance B2B SaaS writer who’s passionate about creating actionable and data-driven content. He enjoys writing about marketing, eCommerce, and of course, SaaS.

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    Rockee BETA Launch

    Rockee BETA Launch

    What is Rockee?

    Rockee is a B2B content measurement and feedback platform. It’s been built around a common problem we have in B2B marketing, in that we make a lot of content – but struggle to prove the value of it.

    Analytics leads us to guesswork. SEO takes a long time for traction and lead-gen metrics only tell a very small part of story.

    Rockee collects data from the people who matter most – your audience. Our BETA is an on-site widget you can use on any content, be it blogs, videos, e-books, infographics or even gated content. For more info, check out the video below:

    The BETA program

      • Rockee BETA is completely free
      • BETA users – will get a 50% lifetime discount on any future package.
      • BETA testing is limited to 15 spaces overall – with 4 spaces already taken
      • Ongoing consultancy from the Rockee team – working with you to measure your content performance. Combining Rockee qualitative insights with existing measures used (i.e. analytics, marketing automation, CRM data). We will help you build a content marketing ROI framework for future use. All for free.
      • Managed account setup – the Rockee team will help set up your account. We’ll get collection widgets in place and customise your dashboard reporting to suit your business requirements.

    If you’re a B2B business, who are heavily invested in content creation and distribution – we’d love to hear from you.

    Contact matt@rockee.io to find out more about the BETA programme and how it could work for your business.

    Confessions of a Content Marketer

    Confessions of a Content Marketer

    This anonymous confession from one content marketer was delivered to Rockee HQ in a manilla envelope. Alongside the confession was a note that said:

    I wish I was brave enough to put my name to this, but I still make a living creating absurdly bad content for some of the world’s biggest brands. I hope one day we’ll live in a world where we can talk freely about how shit most content is without fear of reprisals. And, maybe then, we can start making it better.

    Until then, I remain Anonymous Content Creator.

    Confessions of a content marketer

    Confession no 1

    First confession – I hate the word content. It might be useful for some people as a catch all, but it strips whatever the ‘content’ is of any value. You might as well swap it for the word stuff. Or, preferably, call the stuff what it is – a blog, a film, an article, eBook anyone? Don’t get me started on eBooks. Anyway if Vikki Ross, Bob Hoffman, and Dave Trott all agree on this one, there’s probably something in it. Having said all of that, I’ll be using the word ‘content’ (under duress) for the rest of this.

    Confession no 2

    Second confession – I’m no more convinced about the term content marketing. Most of the time, we’re just talking about marketing. The word content is pretty much redundant. When we do marketing, we need some ‘stuff’ to do it with. But, this isn’t just about trashing content and content marketing. Although there probably is a bit more to come. It is, however, about looking at a rather inconvenient truth for content marketers and creators.

    Confession no 3 – the long one

    How many of you recognise this scenario? You create content. You research and write things like videos, articles, blogs, eBooks etc for commercial purposes. You might be quite good at it. You take a brief. You do some research. You write something that you think will be helpful to your audience. You get a colleague, boss, client, village elder to review/approve it. You send it out into the world. And then you move on.

    You might, if you’re lucky, hear about the number of leads it’s generated a little further down the line. Someone might talk to you about increased dwell time or some other spurious metric…But, for the most part, your content goes off into the ether and you don’t hear any more about it. And, in short, you don’t know if your content’s any good. And, by good, I mean it does what you intended it to do for the audience you intended it for.

    From confessions to questions

    So, is it just me? How common is this? I’m really interested to know who’s making really good content and how they know it’s good. What kind of metrics do you use? How do you collect, and respond, to feedback? How do you learn what’s gone well? How do you learn from what hasn’t?

    I suspect most content marketers don’t have those answers. And that might be part of the reason there’s such a lot of shit content out there. I’ve created loads of it (what number confession are we on now?) But shit content is not a new phenomenon. Remember when Doug Kessler called out the deluge of crap in content marketing. The “me-too blog posts”.

    The “Three-sentence ideas pumped up into 36-page eBooks”. And the “Microsites full of the obvious disguised as the profound”. Things haven’t changed. The research shows what Doug predicted: content is becoming less effective. People don’t trust it, in fact 57% of content buyers receive from vendors is described as ‘useless’ in a Forrester report. 

    Torturing analogies

    At the moment, content marketing is like sitting an exam and never getting the result. We don’t know if we’re any good at it. Let’s torture another analogy. If you had bad breath, you’d want someone to tell you, right? Might be a little awkward, but at least you wouldn’t be wandering round offending friends, family, and innocent bystanders with your noxious oral health problem.

    Similarly, if you’re pumping shit content out into the world, wouldn’t it help if someone told you it stank before too many people had seen (smelt?) it?

    Good people make shit content

    So, we’ve trashed content. And content marketing. Used the word crap and shit quite a lot. And covered stinky breath. Can we get to a positive and less excretory point? Most of the people I know who create content want to do a good job. They’re always looking for ways to improve their content. They look for, follow and share advice. They do their research. Adopt new tools. Take feedback on board.

    They just don’t usually get feedback from the right people – their audience. If they had that feedback, they’d do something with it. They learn from it. They’d respond to it. They then make better content.

    So, content marketers, does any of this ring true? And is this blog just adding to the tide of crap? What do you think? Give me some feedback.

    How to measure content ROI – what does content performance look like?

    How to measure content ROI – what does content performance look like?

    The B2B content performance conundrum

    Measuring and understanding content performance is a challenge most B2B marketers are asking themselves this year. Let us set the scene, the content marketing machine shows no sign of slowing – growing to a $60 billion+ industry, according to Research Dive. The global pandemic sent that growth into over-drive as marketing budgets moved away from traditional tactics like offline and events – into digital and content.

    Content marketers as a result of this are facing new challenges. Research shows we’re being asked to prioritise two things:

    1. Get more leads

    2. Improve content quality.

    No pressure, yeah?

    Another consideration in this mix is our audience. Now more than ever they are being totally saturated with content and some of it is great!  However, some of it is… well, less than ideal as a lot content resorts to click-bait gimmicks to drive web traffic (we’ll revisit this ‘metric’)

    While we all went into a content creation frenzy for our audiences – we forgot to notice that vendor created content isn’t what it used to be. In fact, according to Trust Radius audiences rank vendor created content as one of the least trusted sources they go to for information.

    This is a major problem. For all the SEO optimised copy, forms-filled or comments on social media – we’re failing to ask the people that matter, our audience what do they think about our content?

    What is good content performance?

    The age-old question isn’t it? Depending on where you go and who you speak to – you will find a wide range of thoughts. These tend to be influenced by the background of that creator. Whether it’s an SEO leaning, an analytics preference or how many leads we can attribute to an asset.

    Arguably – the last one is a funny one, in that we measure forms-filled on a gated landing page but – we’re really just assessing how good the copy was to advertise the asset, as opposed to the asset itself. We are missing the point there, in that we can’t make better content based on numbers alone.

    How do we measure content performance now?

    The industry authority on content is arguably the Content Marketing Institute have produced this helpful graphic to show all the ways we can measure content:Common content marketing goals and metrics

    Equally, there are several excellent articles to be read from the liked of Smart Insights and OptInMonster. These all follow a similar formula, but the core values tend to be:

    • Awareness – Web traffic, bounce rates, visit dwell time & user flows etc.
    • Engagement – Blog and social media comments, likes etc.
    • Lead generation – Forms completed, and emails sign ups.
    • Sales – Arguably Tenuous links to how many ‘sales’ can be attributed to content on the journey from attribution data.

    You will spot a common theme here and that it’s nearly all quantitative data. Which leaves huge amounts of room for speculation on what ‘valuable content’ looks like. It’s incredibly unstructured and unhelpful for content creators to work with.

    Metric chasing

    Was it the low bounce rate? The number of subscribers acquired? Or the keyword ranking of the asset – that makes it good content? These are all valuable metrics for sure – but something crucial is missing. We are missing context.

    None of these metrics tell us whether the content helped our audience, assisted in solving a problem or inspired a user to request a demo or better yet actually ring an inbound team (does this happen still?).

    You know, real actual, living, breathing context behind the content. Marketing has missed a trick that software engineers have nailed for years, in that they combine quantitative metrics with the context from qualitative data to shape, mould and hone their craft.

    Measuring the real value of your content

    There is a solution, and it’s staring us right in the face. Ask the people that matter – your audience. Using Rockee you can collect content marketing ratings and reviews platform on all your assets. The concept is simple, once a user has read your content, they are given the option to leave a rating (1-5) and to leave a review of how they found the asset.

    Whether it’s a gated hero asset or something as simple as a blog. In just seconds you can get real user feedback. This gives you clear insight if you’re hitting the mark with your target audience.

    All this data sits in a dashboard which allows users to segment and measure content performance by content name, asset type, stage of the journey and campaign. Giving you real-time results as they come in.

    What about the problem of waning trust in vendor content?

    Here’s where fortune will favour the brave. E-commerce had this problem over a decade ago with a boom in selling online – but then it started suffering from those with less than honourable intentions, or a bad service.

    So, what did the best ones do? They collected user reviews and published trust badges across their website. Bezos become a billionaire off the back of it (or is it trillionaire these days, if that’s a thing?)

    B2C has done it so well, customer proof is now ingrained in every purchase decision we make. Whether we’re buying a holiday, booking a table at a restaurant or shopping for Air Jordan’s (I tried to sound cool here).

    The process goes like this – we read a review. We validate the experience. We want to learn and draw comfort from the wisdom of the crowd.

    Opportunity knocks

    For us as B2B marketers, there is a huge opportunity for the best content creators, who put real craft and pride in their work to stand out. Rockee is not for those churning out endless white-papers or regurgitated research reports, with a click-bait hook to encourage a download. We care about true content performance and ROI.

    It’s a way for the best creators to keep making the great content, iterate when it could be improved. With the added bonus of using ratings and reviews trust badges to show the world you’re the best at what you do.

    This is a chance to celebrate the content makers and creators who make content that truly rocks.

    It’s time for the very best in B2B to stand out.