Ranging from brief social posts to deep-dive digital guides, I’ve written thousands of pieces of content for SaaS companies, small businesses, government offices, major nonprofits, and my own websites.<\/p>\n\n
These pieces of content were tracked and analyzed to gauge their success, but all using unique measuring sticks. How? Using a tailored content scoring process.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n With your own tailored content scorecard, you can create a data-driven process for measuring your individual content marketing success. I\u2019ve gathered examples from my own websites and brands across industries, plus tips to help you create a powerful content scoring system.<\/p>\n I even have a metric that one entrepreneur says can impact conversions by 50% \u2014 measured using a free tool. Excited? Let’s get scoring!<\/p>\n Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n What is content scoring?<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n Content scoring is the process of measuring the success of your content marketing. Metrics such as views, engagement, shares, and backlinks are tracked to analyze content quality and performance.<\/p>\n The resulting scorecard helps steer future content creation.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Let’s zoom in on the three big benefits of content scoring, starting with the term every marketer loves to hate: single source of truth.<\/em><\/p>\n 93% of marketers<\/a> with a single source of truth for data report that it’s beneficial for their organization, but only 65% of marketers actually have one.<\/p>\n Lack of communication and alignment between departments is a top concern of marketers, per our 2024 State of Marketing survey<\/a>. A scoring system unifies teams and facilities better communication, while also acting as a roadmap for populating your editorial calendar<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pro tip<\/strong>: Both your sales and marketing teams must be involved in the creation of the scoring system to maximize its potential.<\/p>\n I\u2018m not an expert in social listening and TikTok content performance.<\/p>\n Guess what? I use Later to help me with that, which means I don\u2019t need to be. The tools you use to score your content will leverage incredible amounts of expertise and put data-driven insights at your fingertips.<\/p>\n While you can use generic tools such as ChatGPT (and I’ll share a prompt in a minute), a huge benefit of the content scoring process is choosing specialized tools that deepen your understanding of your content.<\/p>\n Return on investment is always a priority for marketing teams and organizations as a whole. But then, why does so much data fall through the cracks?<\/p>\n The numbers matter<\/strong>: Over half<\/a> of marketing decisions are influenced by marketing analytics.<\/p>\n Yet data’s falling through the cracks. 87% of marketers<\/a> reported that data was their company\u2019s most underutilized asset.<\/p>\n Given that 50% of marketers<\/a> plan on increasing their content marketing investment in 2025, marketing teams need to quantify content’s performance and prove ROI with as much detail as possible.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Let\u2018s walk through the steps to score your content. After explaining each step, I\u2019m going to show you how this looks using the example of a blog post from my website, Walk The Camino Portugu\u00e9s<\/a>.<\/p>\n There\u2018s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to content scoring. It\u2019s important for you to find a system that works, and you’ll \u2014 wait for it \u2014 actually use it (happily, I hope). Use this as your starting point.<\/p>\n Not all content can be scored the same way. Social media content is different from email, which has different metrics from website content. Start this process by choosing which content you’re going to be scoring. Options include:<\/p>\n Social media posts. As an example, I\u2018m going to be analyzing blog content for my travel site. Let\u2019s look at which metrics belong on the scorecard.<\/p>\n You should consider key metrics related to content quality<\/strong> AND content performance<\/strong>. There are many numbers that you can choose from, and they don’t all need to be included on every scorecard (your marketing team will give you an ear full if you try).<\/p>\n Choose what matters most to your target audience<\/strong> and your business objectives<\/strong>. Here are some suggestions \u2014 notice that these include both positive and<\/em> negative metrics (more on this in a minute).<\/p>\n Video percentage watched. What I’m measuring<\/strong>: The metrics that matter most to me with my new travel website are SEO score, website traffic, readability, and Pinterest saves. Given that this is a new website, I\u2018ll track SEO score and readability upfront and I\u2019ll measure traffic and saves over a period of six months.<\/p>\n The numbers you\u2018ll get from tools aren\u2019t all the same. Some tools will score content by assigning an objective number, while others will gather analytical data.<\/p>\n For example, SurferSEO might assign a blog post an optimization score of 72. This number reflects how my content performed against platform or industry benchmarks. An engagement tool, on the other hand, may share that content’s engagement rate is up 5%.<\/p>\n The 72 and 5%, while both important, aren\u2018t directly comparable. It\u2019s like comparing apples and oranges \u2014 keep this in mind as you parse your data.<\/p>\n Consider these tools to score your content:<\/p>\n Google Search Console<\/a><\/strong> (GSC): search visibility. <\/p>\n Google Analytics 4<\/a><\/strong> (GA4): website traffic. <\/p>\n Hemingway App<\/a><\/strong>: content readability. <\/p>\n SurferSEO<\/a><\/strong>: website optimization. <\/p>\n SharedCount<\/a><\/strong>: social shares. <\/p>\n ChatGPT<\/a><\/strong>: content analysis. <\/p>\n Later<\/a><\/strong>: social analytics. <\/p>\n Semrush<\/a><\/strong>: readability. <\/p>\n It\u2018s worth noting that some insights won\u2019t be discoverable using a content scoring method. Some extremely valuable insights can only be gathered through manual review of top-performing content and looking for trends. This is ideally done over a period with significant data, such as a year-end review.<\/p>\n My scorecard<\/strong>: I’ll be using GA4, SurferSEO, the Hemingway App, and SharedCount to create my content scoring model.<\/p>\n Once you\u2018ve established your scoring criteria, you need to store all of your scored content in one place for easy review. This can be done in a spreadsheet, Notion, within a tool\u2019s analytics interface \u2014 I share options for this below.<\/p>\n For those who’d like to create their own scorecard for their unique scoring system, you can input data into a simple table.<\/p>\n Note<\/strong>: The numbers you\u2018ve collected all have different values. For example, a blog post\u2019s SEO score of 78 isn’t directly comparable to getting 245 social shares.<\/p>\n Some marketers will resolve this by ranking all of their data points on a scale of 10, then adding these up at the end. I\u2018ll show you a screenshot of this type of table created with ChatGPT in a minute.<\/p>\n Personally, I\u2019m choosing to just list the original numbers and evaluate them individually, as I think it dilutes the data too much to convert everything to a 1-10 scale.<\/p>\n I’ve done this below with my website data:<\/p>\n Article<\/strong><\/p>\n SEO Score<\/strong><\/p>\n Readability<\/strong><\/p>\n Search Ranking<\/strong>*<\/p>\n Shares<\/strong>*<\/p>\n Planning guide<\/a><\/p>\n 92<\/p>\n Grade 6<\/p>\n 3<\/p>\n 147<\/p>\n Scallop shell explained<\/a><\/p>\n 84<\/p>\n Grade 8<\/p>\n 8<\/p>\n 38<\/p>\n Luggage transfer<\/a><\/p>\n 98<\/p>\n Grade 7<\/p>\n 6<\/p>\n 12<\/p>\n *This is a new website, and there’s no data for these points yet, so these values are used as fillers.<\/p>\n Use the insights from your content scoring strategy to help you create high-quality content. When you have more than 12 months of data, you can look at seasonal trends and use these insights to guide the creation of your marketing calendar<\/a> for the year (free template here<\/a>).<\/p>\n As a content manager<\/a> for businesses, these insights guide 80% of my content creation for the year.<\/p>\n Looking at my own scorecard, I know that I need to improve the readability of all of my pieces (see more on this in best practices). The data on rankings and traffic will prioritize which pieces need to be updated first.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Let’s look at some of the best practices for your content scoring process.<\/p>\n Jake Ward<\/a>, founder of Kleo<\/a>, suggests that you engage with your silent<\/em> data in addition to the typical (loud) data points. Listening to the loud and<\/em> silent data in your business can look like:<\/p>\n Engagement + disengagement. \u201cDon’t just focus on the obvious metrics like clicks or open rates, but also on the data that isn\u2019t making noise,\u201d Jake shared.<\/p>\n Key metrics for judging a new<\/em> brand are sometimes different from those you’d use for an established<\/em> brand. Established websites can see results for some key metrics much faster, like:<\/p>\n Search rankings. A new website might need to wait months before it sees these numbers start to build momentum. As a result, I’d pay more attention to metrics, like:<\/p>\n Time on page. One of these metrics is much more important than most people (even marketers) realize \u2014 readability.<\/p>\n Alex Hormozi, founder of Acquisition<\/a>, shared the power of improving readability in one of his \u201cMozi Money Minute\u201d email blasts. He recommends simplifying your language to the third-grade level (age 8 or 9) using the Hemingway App<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI once ran all my emails and web pages through this process and got a permanent 50% boost,\u201d Hormozi shared with his email subscribers. “There are very few things that always<\/em> work. But, this tactic is about as close as it gets.”<\/p>\n I\u2018d never used the Hemingway App before, and I thought my article\u2019s content score would be fine. I was surprised to discover that my article was given a grade 6 readability score and would require edits to 84 sentences to maximize the readability per Hormozi\u2019s advice.<\/p>\n\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Having content that performs well should do more than just cause high-fives in the marketing department \u2014 it should also be leveraged as social proof<\/a>. I spend a lot of time reviewing marketing materials online and I find that this is overlooked on 90% of websites.<\/p>\n Here’s an example of how Forbes leverages their positive metrics by publicly sharing article views:<\/p>\n\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Why does it matter? Engagement begets more engagement. Tap into this self-fulfilling prophecy by displaying positive metrics on your website. Here are some ways to feature your positive metrics:<\/p>\n Webpage backlinks<\/strong>: \u201cAs featured in\u201d section <\/p>\n Blog post views<\/strong>: Share total number of views (tutorial<\/a>) <\/p>\n Blog engagement<\/strong>: Display comment count <\/p>\n Product downloads<\/strong>: Share the number of lifetime purchases or downloads <\/p>\n Page shares<\/strong>: Display shared count (Social Warfare Pro<\/a> plugin) <\/p>\n Video views<\/strong>: Pin high-performing videos (TikTok tutorial<\/a>, Instagram tutorial<\/a>) <\/p>\n Social followers<\/strong>: \u201cJoin X followers\u201d website widget <\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n I shared a lot of individual tools above, and I know that the number of options can be overwhelming for beginners. To help simplify it, I’m going to highlight a few powerful tools below that can solve most content scoring needs.<\/p>\n Important note<\/strong>: While I don’t spend time on them, Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console are non-negotiable tracking tools that every website must have set up.<\/p>\n Price<\/strong>: Free, with one paid tool featured below (Social Warfare Pro, $29 per year).<\/p>\n With a few standard plugins, WordPress users can customize their dashboard to include a number of important scoring metrics. This enables you to analyze your website content right within your site dashboard, without throwing a dozen more steps into your workflow<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here, you can see five powerful metrics at a glance right within the \u201cposts\u201d page of my WordPress dashboard:<\/p>\n\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Here’s a key for the boxed icons above:<\/p>\n Stats<\/strong>: Jetpack (free). <\/p>\n Comments<\/strong>: WordPress (free). <\/p>\n Social shares<\/strong>: Social Warfare Pro (paid). <\/p>\n Traffic light<\/strong>: SEO score by Yoast (free). <\/p>\n Feather<\/strong>: Readability score by Yoast (free). <\/p>\n Your entire team will already have access to the website, which avoids extra costs of having to pay for \u201cseats\u201d on subscription-based platforms.<\/p>\n You can even sort content based on certain metrics, like shares or comments. You can see how that looks here on my main site, where I’ve sorted my blog posts in order of most comments to fewest comments:<\/p>\n\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n WordPress does have limitations, though. Data can’t be separated and analyzed by date, which can make finding specific relevant information difficult. Google Analytics is much more powerful for those advanced features but is overwhelming for beginners looking for at-a-glance data.<\/p>\n Price<\/strong>: Free plan, then $139.95 per month.<\/p>\n This is another tool that focuses on written website content, like articles, landing pages, product listings, etc. SEO Writing Assistant has a document-like interface where you can write content from scratch or paste in existing text. This tool has a scoring system that evaluates your content’s:<\/p>\n Readability (free). Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n It gathers data for those four metrics and assigns a single score to your website content. This allows content assets to be easily compared and ranked.<\/p>\n I don\u2018t rely on this tool for my own content or my clients\u2019 content, but I do think it\u2018s a great resource for people with straightward needs who aren\u2019t brand loyal to other more specific tools.<\/p>\n Price<\/strong>: Free plan, then $16.67 per month when billed annually.<\/p>\n While the first two tools focused on owned content on your own website, Later analyzes social media content. This is an incredibly robust social scheduling platform that pulls huge amounts of data for you to sift through and analyze your content’s performance.<\/p>\n I\u2018ve been using Later for years, but I can\u2019t share analytics screenshots without revealing private client information. Instead, here\u2018s a summary of the analytics capabilities as described on Later\u2019s website:<\/p>\n\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n A few features I love:<\/p>\n Content sorting based on whichever metric you value most. I’ve worked on teams that use other scheduling tools \u2014 sometimes very pricey ones \u2014 but Later is my preferred platform. It has an enjoyable interface and puts a ton of analytics data at your fingertips (without being overwhelming).<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Would I rely on ChatGPT for my entire content scoring process? No, I personally would choose tools that are specialized and store my data for me in a more convenient way.<\/p>\n But maybe you\u2018ll find ChatGPT to be a fast and convenient way to evaluate your content. Note that ChatGPT can\u2019t scrape content from social media, so it’s best used on your own website or XLS files.<\/p>\n Here’s a prompt for scoring website content:<\/p>\n You’re a content marketer trying to score the below [blog URLs\/pages\/product listings] based on readability, SEO, and ability to retain readers. Please generate a score on a scale of 1-10 for each of the above key metrics, then evaluate and score each piece of content below. Provide your data in a table.<\/em><\/p>\n\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n AI content<\/a> can be valuable for your brand, but it needs to be leveraged carefully. Here are a few insightful statistics from our State of Marketing<\/a> trends report:<\/p>\n Only 6% of marketers report using AI to produce entire pieces of content<\/strong> for them. When you’re ranking AI-generated content, assess it upfront for inaccuracies<\/strong> and plagiarism<\/strong>. When you’re gauging its performance, assess time spent on page, bounce rate, and conversion rate. Let content intelligence<\/a> be your GPS.<\/p>\n If you’re going to choose AI tools, go for reputable tools that prioritize high-quality content<\/a>, like the HubSpot AI Content Writer<\/a> tool.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n There are mountains of data available on content performance. Need to know what the average X (previously Twitter) engagement rate for the finance sector is? Three percent<\/a>. But, finding and leveraging that data for every single platform and industry would be tedious at best and impossible at worst.<\/p>\n Some software, like SEO Writing Assistant by Semrush, will use their own proprietary scoring system to combine several scoring factors into one number. No single software provides a complete picture, though.<\/p>\n How you’ll get the most value from content scoring<\/strong>: Identifying above or below-average content performance can only come from having month-over-month, year-over-year analytics and comparing your own datasets.<\/p>\n
\n Why is content scoring important?<\/a>
\n How to Score Content<\/a>
\n Content Scoring Best Practices<\/a>
\n Content Scoring Tools<\/a>
\n ChatGPT For Scoring<\/a>
\n What’s a good content score?<\/a> <\/p>\nWhat is content scoring?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Why is content scoring important?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nContent scoring helps create a s<\/strong>ingle source of truth.<\/strong>
\n<\/h3>\nContent scoring helps you leverage expertise.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Content scoring helps you prove ROI.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
How to Score Content<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Step 1: Choose which content you’ll score.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n Email marketing.
\n Landing pages.
\n Product pages.
\n Blog posts.
\n Videos. <\/p>\nStep 2: Choose your metrics.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n Reader satisfaction.
\n Impressions\/views.
\n Optimization score.
\n Follows\/unfollows.
\n Video view rate.
\n Time on page.
\n Conversions.
\n Bounce rate.
\n Scroll depth.
\n Readability.
\n Comments.
\n Backlinks.
\n Exit rate.
\n Shares.
\n Clicks.
\n Saves. <\/p>\nStep 3: Choose tools to score content.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\nStep 4: <\/strong>Create a scorecard<\/strong>.<\/strong>
\n<\/h3>\nStep 5: Use to inform content strategy.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Content Scoring Best Practices<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Find the silent data.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n Purchases + abandoned carts.
\n Clicks + hovers. <\/p>\nChoose metrics intentionally (new brand vs. established).<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n Social shares.
\n Backlinks. <\/p>\n
\n Readability.
\n Comments. <\/p>\nDon’t ignore readability.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Leverage those positive metrics.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Content Scoring Tools<\/strong><\/h2>\n
WordPress<\/strong><\/h3>\n
SEO Writing Assistant by Semrush<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n SEO (free).
\n Originality (paid).
\n Tone of voice (paid). <\/p>\nLater<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n Finding your audience’s most active times online.
\n Social listening. <\/p>\nChatGPT For Scoring<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Scoring AI-generated content.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n 95% of marketers who are using generative AI to write copy have to edit the text<\/strong>, with 44% saying they make significant edits.
\n 60% of marketers fear the concern that AI can harm their brand\u2019s reputation<\/strong> through plagiarism or bias. <\/p>\nWhat’s a good content score?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
My Scoring Example<\/strong><\/h3>\n