When making any piece of content, it’s easy to dream about tens of thousands views, and social media shares spreading like wildfire. In reality, however, the results are often much less impressive. Yet, that doesn’t make them unsuccessful.
A key skill for any SEO agency to learn is to set realistic expectations for content. After all, high, unattainable goals will make every effort look disappointing, even when it’s actually no small feat or accomplishment. Want to know how successful your content can be? Here are 4 realistic benchmarks to consider.
A Share Of The Pie
When trying to get any piece of content to succeed, there’s only so much room on the internet. Once you focus on the relevant websites and platforms, you’re actually dealing with a very small corner of space. As such, it’s next to impossible to do better than this, and little content – if any – hits every intended platform.
This same logic applies to keyword analysis and PPC as well. Even if you’re the number one position, you’re still competing for the same piece of the pie. Being number one doesn’t guarantee 100% of the traffic. Even if it did, you still have to consider your conversion rate and other useful factors.
The Right Figures
Another common mistake here, at least for many beginner SEOs, is not accounting for overlap. A given search term might have 600,000 monthly searches, but you also have to consider how many of these are unique, rather than the same person coming back within a month? You also have to keep in mind that people will still visit more than one sight.
So, while the top 3 results might get around 300,000 hits each, that doesn’t mean there are 900,000 unique visitors searching for this topic.
Niche-Specific
Furthermore, it always helps to have a better understanding of your niche. When you’re trying to create content that appeals to a very specific cause, you should know how small your niche really is.
Looking at Moz’s recent study of placements per vertical, it’s clear content can get, on average, anywhere between 24 to 195 placements per niche – depending on which niche that is, of course. This may actually shock many SEO’s, as niches like “fashion” only score around 24 shares. There are numerous reasons why this might be the case, not least of all the fact that fashion itself breaks down into numerous sub-niches. What strongly appeals to one platform won’t appeal to another.
However, knowing these basic figures before you go in is a great way to set more realistic targets. Try looking at your leading competitors and seeing what they’re best offerings are able to achieve. This should set a realistic high-end benchmark.
Demographics
Similar to niches, you also have to consider your demographics. What someone shares and how often they share things varies depending on user age and other demographic factors. Looking at fashion as an example, again, there’s a very clear argument here: platforms tailored to men’s lifestyle won’t readily share content about female fashion trends. The same can also be said for their readers.
This is why it’s vital to target content to the right audience. Of course, some industries actively seek a number of demographics. In these cases, can you make content that targets them all at once? Probably not. Yet, while you should always focus on your main audience, don’t forget about content for other demographics. They’re still vital and, if other competitors are ignoring them, they may actually be more open to your brand.