Blogs are considered highly relevant in online marketing. Fixed evaluation criteria enable their measurability and facilitate their selection for blog marketing campaigns.
1 Topic relevance and informative value of blogs
First and foremost, a blog has to suit the planned campaign, i.e., there has to be a certain relevance between the blog post and the target page that is to be linked. It would be a bit of a stretch to publish a product test about vegan sports shoes on a typical food blog. If, however, a text about vegan sports shoes appears on a blog about vegan and sustainable food, this makes more sense and the context is clear, both for the reader and in terms of Google’s rating.
The informative value of an article is also important. A good blog post should offer more than just advertising for a product. Does it provide the reader with background knowledge? Does it possibly even provide concrete instructions and help? Most readers prefer blogs that offer just that.
2 Current relevance
In addition to the value of the information and the relevance of the topic, how up-to-date the content is also plays a decisive role in evaluating blog posts. Blog articles are rarely rewritten or supplemented with new insights and current information. In such a case, the blog post not only quickly loses relevance, but also its added value. That’s why blog articles that are regularly updated are of higher importance and are also rated better in Google’s ranking.
3 Regularity of posts
Once a blog has attracted a regular readership, it’s important to maintain their interest. This requires new contributions to be posted with a certain regularity. If the period between individual blog posts is too long, many readers stop following them. Google’s rating also plays a major role here. If a blog is to become part of a marketing campaign, the latest contributions must be fairly recent. The publication dates should be carefully considered when making the selection.
4 Engagement rate
Another important rating factor for blogs is theengagement rate. Are theposts being liked, shared and/or commented on in social networks? In this case, the content is valuable and is met with great interest.
Blogs are also ideal for push communication, and the contributions can be perfectly integrated into the content plan for your own social networks.
5 Design and clarity
Not only does the content have to be right, but also the design of the blog. Many readers feel much more attracted to a clean structure and clear navigation than huge amounts of text. Too many banners and AdSense ads also put readers off. Suitable images support the text and give the article a final touch. They also convey a sense of the blog being a ‘magazine’, which is familiar and appreciated by readers because it reminds them of print media.
Many blog articles don’t even consider SEO: no keyword research takes place, nor is the content coordinated with other content formats. This often results in parallel ‘content islands’ instead of holistic content marketing that follows a clearly defined strategy. The way articles are written should also be included in the evaluation. If SEO is considered when evaluating blogs, there are other helpful tools that are briefly explained below.
Sistrix
The visibility index is a decisive quality criterion to measure the visibility and success of blogs/websites. The value is a key indicator for a website’s visibility in Google search results and is derived from the website’s ranking and other relevant values.
SEMrush
SEMrush indicates how many visitors per month access this page via the top 20 Google search results. The value changes fortnightly and is determined statistically on the basis of publicly available data (the value is calculated on the basis of various factors and may differ from actual values).
MOZ Domain Authority
The Domain Authority is a value from moz.com. It is determined from over 40 factors and refers to the entire domain. The Domain Authority helps to assess the strength of incoming links.
However, a high value does not also guarantee high Google rankings. It is rather an approximation for backlinks with which good rankings can probably be achieved.
Trust Flow
Trust Flow is a key figure that indicates the quality of the link profile of the linking page and how trustworthy it is considered to be.
The trustworthiness of a backlink is determined by examining its proximity to trustworthy websites. The more closely the linking page is linked to trustworthy websites, the higher the Trust Flow value.
Citation Flow
The Citation Flow is determined by the number of URLs that refer to a backlink and indicates how influential and strong the linking page is. When building backlinks, not only the number of backlinks is important, but also their quality and trustworthiness.
Final thoughts
It’s not enough to request a blog article and then hope for its success. Such projects have to be carried out strategically and using the evaluation criteria mentioned above. As an example, if you want a subpage to gain visibility, it makes sense to book high-quality articles. If the goal is to create a natural backlink profile and to get content online, it is a colourful mix that matters. In this case, many small to medium blog articles peppered with strong links can be booked.
Use these valuable tools or get advice on their use from blog marketing experts in the field.
