More than 1,000,000 page views means 2018 has been a record blogging year for Hallam. Here are our top 10 blog posts, and the method we used to select them.
Blogging is a key element in many businesses’ content marketing strategy. Fresh, relevant, useful blog content is a key element for powering rankings in the search engines, acting as the keystone of a business’ social media strategy,
The year end is a great time to step back and reflect on the content you’ve generated over the year, identify what worked well (and what didn’t work so well,) measure the impact the content has had on your marketing objectives, and begin the process of developing your content for the coming year.
Here are the 10 key metrics we use to measure our best performing blog posts:
- Number of times the blog post has been read (page views)
- Traffic from the search engines, with the blog post acting as a landing page
- Conversions generated by the blog posts, for example newsletter signups, enquires, or sales
- Website and brand engagement: Page views per visit, bounce rate, comments
- Shares, likes and comments on social networks
- Mentions and inbound links from other high quality websites
- Engagement on external platforms, like YouTube
- Engagement with your email newsletter readers
- Best fresh content: newly written posts, topical and fresh for your readers
- Best evergreen content: long lasting, useful content that does not go out of date
Based on these criteria, here are Team Hallam’s top blog posts for 2018:
How to make your website GDPR compliant
GDPR was one of the hottest marketing topics of 2018, and this practical and topical GDPR checklist was our best performing content of the year.
In terms of our top 10 key metrics, it was clear this post resonated with our digital marketing community readers. It’s a good example of generating topical content of immediate interest and value to your target market.
It outperformed all our other blog posts with the highest number of page views, drove the most traffic from the search engines, generated inbound links as well as comments from our readers, and was shared across the social networks.
Using Google Analytics event tracking
Originally written in 2014 by Pete Keyworth, this Google Analytics guide has been periodically updated and refreshed and remains one of our most popular pieces of content. It is an excellent example of Evergreen Content that provides our readers with a practical steps to take to record interactions on your website that aren’t tracked as standard within Google Analytics.
How to run a successful Facebook competition
Another example of Evergreen Content, this was our top performing post that was all new and refreshed for 2018.
If you would like to learn more about Facebook competitions and how to stop yourself from being in the firing line, then here is your step-by-step guide to running a promotion on your Facebook Business Page.
Social media glossary: an A-Z of social media
For mobile users of our website, one of the most popular pieces of content this year was our social media glossary.
Another piece of Evergreen content that drives visitors to our website, one good learning for us is the nature of the content mobile users are searching for, and information like a glossary meets their specific requirements.
301 redirects: the what, why and how
Expertise, authority and trust are an essential part of your blogging strategy.
As search engine optimisation experts, this top performing post by Ed Ryan provides a brand new expert overview of how to use 301 Redirects to tell the search engines that “this page has moved, please find latest version here.”
Nottingham Digital Summit roundup
We welcomed more than 600 delegates to our Nottingham Digital Summit in 2018 and raised more than £15,000 for our charity of the year, Framework. Be sure put the date in your diary for 3 July 2019 for our next Summit.
This event generated a huge amount of valuable content for our website, ranging from speaker slide decks to our own expert analysis and overview of the presentations.
It is a good example of how a campaign can generate a wide range of highly engaging content. There is an extensive collection of rich content arising from the Summit on our site, and this content generated record levels of engagement as measured by page views, click throughs from our email newsletter, and time spent on our site.
8 useful tools for SEO beginners
Hallam content is regularly featured on other high quality websites, including the industry leading publication Search Engine Roundtable Daily Search Forum Recap.
Our most popular piece of content included in Barry Schwart’s round up was Elliot Haines beginner’s guide to the best SEO tools which drove hundreds of visitors to our website from the Search Engine Roundtable SEO community.
The essential SEO checklist
Continuing with our SEO theme, one of the most popular blog post with our email newsletter subscribers this year was Eleanor Reynold’s search engine optimisation checklist post.
We measure the click rates from our email newsletter through to our blog content, and this provides us with invaluable information as to the nature of the content our readers are interested in.
Our exceptionally popular blog author: Jonathan Ellins
More than 120,000 users read the posts written by our Head of Insights, Jonny Ellins. Team Hallam generates a Blog Author league table, and Jonny’s expert posts on Google Analytics and Google Ads reliably rank as some of our top performing content.
Jonny’s authoritative content is another good example of Evergreen content that generates traffic reliably for our website.
Human interest stories are still highly popular: Susan Hallam awarded MBE
We live and work in a digital age, but our marketing teams must never lose site of the fact that ultimately it is people who do business with other people.
The stories about the people who work at Team Hallam generate the highest social media engagement in terms of sharing, commenting and engaging. From announcing new members of the team, to team members winning awards and accolades, it is the posts about our people who get the greatest traction on social media.
Do you have a blogging strategy in place? Get in touch today if you want to learn how to use blogging for SEO purposes.
If you need help with your content marketing.
don’t hesitate to contact us.
