Industry: Healthcare
Content: Daily blog posts
Highlights: Site visitors stay on the site longer to read content
You create blog content because you know it’s a best practice and you know competitors have their own blogs. Survey data recently released by Eloqua Community found 83 percent of marketers say they have corporate blogs and 39 percent create fresh content for them frequently.
Content analytics data from one Brafton client shows why this practice has become standard practice and how it pays off – it makes websites stickier to keep qualified readers on the page.
Content makes pages more popular
After publishing content to the company’s corporate blog on a daily basis, the business started to notice a few things:
1. It was receiving more website visitors
2. Around 20 percent of all traffic was going to its blog content
3. More website visitors (30 percent) were coming to the site to read blog posts
The company’s blog had become one of the most popular landing pages on the site, second only to its homepage.
In fact, data showed the company’s blog had become one of the most popular landing pages on the site, second only to its homepage. This was impressive, but most marketers understand popularity isn’t everything in SEO. Once you begin bringing in more visitors, you run the risk of falling behind on other key metrics. Bounce rates might rise, exit rates could increase and time on site dwindles. Like it or not, casting a wider net generally means bringing in people who may not be as qualified as others.
So it’s even more remarkable to see when websites continue to pull in solid results even as their readerships grow.
Blog content gives readers a reason to stick around
The client’s blog posts seemed to provide benefits all around, catching internet users’ eyes and also compelling visitors to dig deeper in the site’s content. It wasn’t losing any traction with visitors once they landed on the page. Bounce rates were actually lower for blog readers, down about 4 percent on average.
Visitors who navigated to the site to read blog content were spending more time on the page than non-blog readers, in most cases staying on the site over a minute longer. Plus, they clicked through to more pages on the site. This is a great metric because it means those people are interested in learning more about products and services or the brand itself. It signals the company has more opportunities to convert them once they’ve arrived.
It’s these kind of results that prove why high-quality editorial content is central to web marketing success. Customers have always expected to be courted with a positive experience, but they now want to be empowered with knowledge. Businesses that offer education and proprietary insights will attract prospects that are just starting to explore their options and provide convincing evidence to those ready to make a final purchase decision.
