The Content Performance Matrix: This Simple Diagram Shows What to do Next with Your Content Strategy

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Some of our content marketing gets real results.

Some of our content marketing …not so much.

This is obvious to anyone who has published anything anywhere. So naturally, marketing blogs are filled with advice on how to create high-performing content and how to measure performance.

But it’s less obvious that content performs in two different ways. Some content is good at winning clicks and?attracting visitors. Some content is better at holding attention and?engaging visitors.

If we put the two levels of performance (high/low) together with the two types of performance (traffic/engagement) …a matrix appears.

This content performance matrix shows the four outcomes from everything you’ve published. Not just winners and losers, but the ways in which they are winning or losing. Some content is strong in one way but weak in the other.

The insights can be powerful

• High traffic, high engagement…Pursue
• These are the outperformers. You want to repeat these successes.
• Low traffic, high engagement…Promote
• These ones that people love, but almost no one sees them.
• High traffic, low engagement …Polish
• These bring loads of visitors who do nothing for your business.
• Low traffic, low engagement…Pass
• These had basically no impact whatsoever. Crickets.

Let’s look closely at each of these quadrants from our 2×2 performance matrix. We’ll learn how to find each and what to do with them, from insight to action.

Pursue: Your top performers

They say that everything in marketing is either a donkey or a unicorn. These are your unicorns. They are getting 10x results in both regards: traffic and engagement.

How to find your high traffic, high engagement content

Within a single report with a few customizations, they’ll jump out at you.

This is the Behavior > Site Content > All Pages report. Filter by blog post (it’s easy because they’re all in a common directory) and in the comparison view. We are comparing their bounce rate, which is a common engagement metric.

Are you using GA4 yet?

It’s the new version of Google Analytics and it’s …different. But the insights are the same. To find your top performers, customize the Engagement > Pages and screens report. Switch the primary dimension to “Page path + query string” (the GA4 term for URLs) and add “Engagement rate” to the report metrics.

Actually, engagement rate is a better metric than bounce rate. The?bounce rate metric has issues. But in GA4, an engaged visitor spent 10+ seconds on the page OR viewed more than one page OR triggered a conversion event.

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