Content has become one of the most efficient ways to drive traffic to your website. But, to measure how effective your content is at achieving the goals you’ve set, you’ll need to invest in some content analytics tools. These can help you with your strategy and correct course as you go.
Now, it can be tricky to decide which content analytics tools to invest in. And that’s where we can help.
In this post, we’ve listed 8 of the best content analytics tools out there.
Let’s dive in.
Top content analytics tools
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an easy-to-use and free content analytics tool that lets you analyze your website and visitors so you can improve your marketing strategy as you go.
It gives you valuable information about key metrics such as total users, active users, bounce rate, page views, engagement rate, and more. You can also monitor where your traffic is coming from.
Google Analytics can also give you keyword information and lets you track social media activity, spot trends, and integrates other data sources to assist you in making well-informed business decisions.
Once the data is collected, Google Analytics converts it into easy-to-read reports.
Here’s a short tutorial for beginners
Our team uses Google Analytics, in the screenshot below there is a graph showing what is the main source of traffic on our website. Most of the traffic on our website is through organic search.
Here is another example of one of the features of Google Analytics. It shows number of returning visitors and new visitors. In addition, Google Analytics also gives us information on sessions, new sessions, and average session duration.
To give you an idea of how demographics work on Google Analytics. Here’s a screenshot showing the age and gender of the visitors on our website.
Integration
Google Analytics offers integration with other tools such as Google Ads, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Google Data Studio, Google Search Console, Google Search Ads 360, Google Optimize 360, Google Display & Video 360, Google Ad Manager, and Google AdSense.
Google Analytics pros and cons
Pros
Some useful features of Google Analytics include:
- Data visualization and monitoring tools
- Data collection application program interfaces
- Data filtering, manipulation, and funnel analysis
Cons
- User experience could be improved
- Sometimes the platform takes long a time to process the required data
Pricing
The free/standard version of Google Analytics is great for most businesses.
But a paid version also exists—Analytics 360. You’ll have to contact Google support about the pricing. A few sources have mentioned that it costs upwards of $10,000 per month.
App rating on Capterra
4.7/5
Read more: Vimeo vs YouTube for Businesses
2. Hotjar
Hotjar is a conversion rate optimization and behavior analytics software. It’s pretty widely used and combines traditional analytics with website visitor behavior data.
Here’s a brief introduction to Hotjar
Heatmap is Hotjar’s best feature and the analysis provides useful information, alerting you to areas in your content that need to be reviewed. It also gives you a snapshot of how visitors are spending their time on your website and exactly where the engagement drops.
Hotjar pros and cons
Pros
- Heatmap analysis
- Virtual session recording
- Conversion funnel statistics, and more
- Unlike other content analytics tools, Hotjar is designed in a way that it can be used with Google Analytics
Furthermore, this tool produces real-time videos that demonstrate how visitors navigate and click across websites, allowing you to see what information is attracting users’ attention.
Cons
- Users face pop-ups while measuring bounce rate
- There is no way to label the recordings or group them so it gets confusing
Pricing
Hotjar’s free plan offers 2,000 daily pageviews. While the Business version starts at $99 per month. Hotjar offers 2 kind of services.
Ask: mainly focused on feedback and surveys.
and Observe: mainly focused on heatmaps and recordings.
App rating on Capterra
4.7/5
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most feature-rich SEO analysis tools. It has a lot to offer when it comes to researching your website’s metrics or those of your competitors. Ahrefs has a reputation for being a gold mine of information and data that can help you rank higher in search engines.
With Ahrefs, you can discover which keywords will propel you to the top of the search results and which ones you should avoid. This analytical tool collects keywords from 171 regions, which is great if you’re looking to broaden your business reach.
Here is a screenshot of some of the features of Ahrefs from our website. Ahrefs not only provides value and information on organic keywords and organic traffic but also tells you where does your website stand on the overall Ahrefs ranking.
To make it more clear, Ahrefs shows you the progress of different metrics in the form of graphs.
Lets take this example of progress of ‘organic traffic’ from our website. There are different time stamps including Jan 2020, Jan 2021 and Jan 2022. You can see the performance during a certain time period by changing the date.
Ahrefs pros and cons
Pros
- Ahrefs offers a huge backlinks database
- Offers keyword research and ranks keywords
- You have a wide range of features
- Reliable website audit
Cons
- It is costly, especially for beginners
- Some users have faced problems while researching keywords
Pricing
Ahrefs offers Lite, Standard Advanced, and Agency ranging from $99 to $999. You can sign up for a $7 trial period before deciding which option is ideal for your company.
App rating on Capterra
4.7/5
4. SEMrush
SEMrush is a well-known SEO tool that focuses on keyword research, organic and paid search, competitive analysis, and optimizing Google Ad campaigns. Simply type a URL or phrase into the search bar to get information about a website.
You can even examine real-time keyword statistics, including keywords that are utilized in paid ads.
The best thing you can do with this tool is compare your website’s performance to that of your competitors. You can look at their traffic sources, marketing strategies, and customers to understand who they are and what they do to attract them.
SEMrush pros and cons
Pros
- Allows Keyword research
- Offers competitor analysis
- Easy rant tracking
- Great for social media management
- Has tools for content creation, distribution, optimization and monitoring
Cons
- There’s so much going on that it gets confusing
- The dashboard takes time to load
Pricing
Now, let’s talk about the price. You can use SEMrush with limited functionality for free. With this plan, users can make up to 10 requests every day, for example searching a keyword or viewing a full report).
To get full access to the platform, you’ll need to sign up for a paid plan (Pro, Guru, and Business) starting at $119.95 per month.
App rating on Capterra
4.7/5
Also read: Best AI Video Editors That Will Make Your Job Easier
5. Cyfe
Cyfe is a compact dashboard that allows you to track data from a variety of websites and apps, including Google AdWords, MailChimp, Salesforce, PayPal, and WordPress. The dashboard contains 40 widgets for different sources and platforms.
Here is a short tutorial explaining Cyfe’s dashboard feature.
Cyfe pros and cons
Pros
- Lets you make custom dashboard and widgets
- Offers tracking for live video stream views
- Correlates social media growth with content engagement
- Give you daily reports on website statistics
- Evaluates social media activity, and more.
- The mashup widget lets you compare your website to others and helps identify correlations for in-depth content analysis.
Cons
- Lack of integration with other tools that are used to measure other metrics
- Standard reporting views and other data metrics are limited
Pricing
Cyfe offers both free and paid plans. The free plan, which limits the number of dashboards you can access, is enough for most firms.
But if you want full access to all features, the premium option of $89 per month is affordable compared to other Analytics Tools.
App rating on Capterra
4.6/5
6. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a content analytics platform that includes social media analytics as well as other features such as brand monitoring, social listening, and competitor analysis.
Below is a short tutorial on Buzzsumo.
Video analytics on Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo has a cool feature called the YouTube Analyzer. You can use that to gain some insights for your YouTube channel. This feature can help you find new topics, analyze your competitors, find YouTubers to collaborate with, and more.
Buzzsumo pros and cons
Pros
- Provides an analysis of trends in real-time by topic
- Location-based trend filtering
- Compares content engagement between domains
- Helps you find influencers in your niche
- Lets you personalize your feed
- Shows you backlinks from any web page
Cons
- The monthly limit is restrictive
- Needs a lot of effort to get desired results
- Costly—especially for small businesses
Pricing
Buzzsumo offers a free plan with limited features and four paid plans. The price ranges from $99 to $399+.
App rating on Capterra
4.5/5
7. Quintly
Quintly is an enterprise-level content analytics tool. It tracks your social media engagement across all major platforms, and gives you the information you need to evaluate your content marketing strategies.
It digs deep into all of your accounts to find metrics that are important to your teams and goals. You can also categorize and share reports with relevant teams to ensure that everyone has access to the data they need.
Let’s watch a video and find out how Quintly works.
Quintly pros and cons
Pros
- Combine and automate the distribution of shareable and flexible dashboards by mixing and matching dozens of customized KPIs.
- Compare numerous pages with each other or against pre-set benchmarks
- Set up and track social KPIs from an extensive glossary of 350 metrics
Cons
- Lacks deep analysis
- Costly
- Sometimes, it is not reliable to measure individual posts
Pricing
The trial-based plan of Quintly includes all features for free for 14 days. Paid plans have customized pricing starting at $449, depending on the features you avail.
App rating on Capterra
4.4/5
8. Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a behavioral analytics tool that can help you understand how your customers react to and interact with your content. Understanding it can also help you get an idea of what users value most and how to keep them coming back for more.
Kissmetrics helps with tracking individual visits to your website and allows you to get to know them on a personal level to better understand their behavior.
The email automation software is a great feature and lets you design tailored campaigns based on data.
Here’s an in-depth demo of Kissmetrics explaining its features.
Kissmetrics pros and cons
Pros
- Customers’ journey tracking across numerous devices
- Data visualization
- Examine conversion metrics such as bounce rate and time spent on site
- User-friendly interface
- Email automation
Cons
- Initial setup and UI can be a little overwhelming
- Limited dashboard features
Pricing
Kissmetrics offers 3 different paid plans: $299, $499, or a bespoke fee that is based on your custom plan.
App rating on Capterra
4.3/5
9. Clicky
Clicky is a web analytics tool that allows you to track user behavior on a website, evaluate traffic in real-time, and respond to it. Clicky is similar to Google Analytics but with a more user-friendly interface.
Customers of Clicky have access to Twitter integration. Which makes it simple to keep track of any Twitter activity, such as mentions of a website, an account, or even a URL.
You can also get unlimited access to the history of tweets, which includes user activity reports, links, and hashtags.
Video analytics
Another great thing about Clicky is that you get media/video analytics, too. Their API lets users track interactions with HTML5 and Flash video players. This means you can find out when users play, pause, seek or finish your video!
Read more: Tubebuddy vs. vidIQ: A Comparison
Clicky pros and cons
Pros
- It lets you examine heatmaps in real-time mode. This shows you how visitors interact with your content, such as how long they remain on a page, where they are, what actions they take, and so on
- Heatmaps can be created not only for a group of users but also for each individual visitor
- Offers one of the best customer support
Cons
- UI is outdated and users may face problems while navigating
- Some reports are only available for a limited time
Pricing
It’s free to use for monitoring one website with roughly 3,000 daily visitors. However, you’ll need to increase your subscription to track several websites or a website with more traffic, which starts at $9.99 per month.
App rating on Capterra
4/5
That’s a wrap
To remain competitive and relevant in the market, you need to take advantage of the analytics tool. We hope this list has given you a good idea of the resources available to help you in your decision-making.
