Content Clusters: How to Measure in Google Analytics 4

TL;DR: Get to Know Google Analytics 4 Content Grouping Feature and Learn how to find out which pages on your site are driving traffic to your site.

Content groupings are a powerful tool for understanding the user experience of your site. They help you see how different topics and themes impact your users’ engagement, and what content they respond to most. 

 But because these insights are hard to find in Google Analytics (and aren’t directly connected to pageviews or any other standard report), content clusters often remain undiscovered. 

 This post will walk you through 4 ways to measure content clusters in Google Analytics and uncover the hidden insights they reveal. Read on to learn how you can boost your website visitor engagement with content clusters.

‍

What are Content Clusters?

Content clusters are groups of similar or related pieces of content, on many websites and CMS's that are published in categories or topics. At SaturnOne we have content clusters, topics, like “Content Marketing”, “Customer Journey”, and “Marketing Attribution”. A real estate website might have clusters like “for sale”, “for rent”, or “Sellers”. . They are helpful for understanding how different topics and themes impact your users’ engagement on your site. A form of segmentation of visitors.

 Content clusters let you see how different topics and themes impact your users’ engagement on your site. What topics are resonating most with your audience…not just specific pages. 

 They let you see how different topics and themes impact your users’ engagement on your site. Content clusters can be different from content types, video, articles, how-tos, case studies … though you might also want to cluster these in your analytics also if you have enough variation. 

‍

Why Should You Measure Content Clusters?

Find Your Most Relevant Content 

Content clusters let you see which topics are most relevant to your users. This can help you prioritize the topics you cover on your site, and let you identify which topics to focus on in the future. This knowledge will help you save money and get better results in content creation, social engagement, and content promotion via ads. It can even influence your positioning.

Bonus: Use Content Group Attribution

Combine content groups with attribution to supercharge your marketing to grow faster. See how to do this with SaturnOne with our ebook. This is almost impossible with Google Analytics.

 Improve User Engagement 

Content clusters can help you understand which topics or themes resonate best with your audience. This can help you better tailor your content to your visitors and improve user engagement on your site. 

 Better Understand Which Pages Drive the Most Engagement 

Content clusters also let you see which pages on your site drive the most engagement. This lets you see which pages are the most relevant to your visitors and can help you better understand which pages to focus on in the future. 

 Identify High-Performing Pages 

Last but not least, content clusters let you identify which pages on your site are most engaging. This can help you identify which pages are most relevant to your users and let you focus on improving these pages in the future.

‍

Measure in Google Analytics 

How to Look Deeper in Google Analytics

What’s great about Google Analytics is that it has a feature called Content Groupings designed to enable you to group your content which also allows you to analyze performance in both you and your users perspective about your website.This makes it a perfect tool for capturing and analyzing topic clusters!

But first you need to do a bit of planning and organizing beforehand. You can create a spreadsheet that groups all of your content by topic.  

You may categorize them according to sub-topic 1, sub-topic 2, etc.,) rather than looking at all of your content and seeing what topics they form.  

This will allow you to be more forward looking in your strategy rather than what you’ve done in the past.

There’ll be a lot of copying and pasting in the steps ahead, so keep this spreadsheet handy. You’ll have a spreadsheet that breaks out each URL with a topic. To start:

1st Step: Configure Content Grouping Settings

First, log-in to your Google Analytics property, and go to the Admin area. Select the view that you wish to create your groupings under, and then select Content Groupings. Click the red button that says +New Content Grouping.

Then, name the new grouping “Topic Clusters” or something similar.  Next, you’ll need to identify how you wish to group your content.

You’ll then have three options:

1. Group By Tracking Code
2. Group Using Extraction
3. Group Using Rule Definitions

Most likely, the third option, Group Using Rule Definitions, will be your best choice, as you’ll have a higher level of control by using this option. But, if you have already planned out your URL structure from mapping topics to category or topic-based folders, then using Group Using Extraction might be a convenient choice. 

2nd Step: Create a Definition to Group Each Cluster

There’ll be a lot of copy and paste to do in this section.

You’ll need to create a rule for each one to be able to define a cluster.  Let’s say you have a cluster for “Lead Generation” . The name of the definition would become “Lead Generation” and you would then make a rule for each URL page included in that cluster.

3rd Step: Analyze Your Data

After you have defined all topic clusters and fully configured your content groupings, Google Analytics will start to provide data for these groupings from that day onwards. 

So it’s only natural that you set these up as soon as possible as you’ll not be able to see data by topic cluster prior to the setup date.

You can wait about a week so that enough data can be viewed. 

To see a list of URLs, navigate to any content report like All Pages or Landing Pages. 

So that you can see your topic clusters and change the view, click the “Content Grouping” option at the top of your report, and select your topic cluster grouping.  

4th Step: Create Audiences For Deeper Analysis and Remarketing

If you want to know how your topic clusters influence your visitors' entire journey on your website, you can easily do so by creating a custom segment.

At the top of any report, click +Add Segment  and then navigate to Sequences, and choose your desired topic cluster as the first step. If you only want to segment visitors who started on a topic cluster page, change the Sequence Start option to “Any user interaction.”

Benefits of Analyzing Your Clusters

By analyzing the results of your efforts, you can demonstrate the impact you’re having on company goals, and justify further investment into the endeavor.

If you want a more convenient, easier setup and faster viewing of your content marketing stats without the hassles of configuring and coding, SaturnOne offers a quicker and easier approach to analytics. Not to mention a lot cheaper too! Get a demo or FREE consultation with our experts at SaturnOne Analytics today. 

‍

References:

1.Universal Analytics view-related features in Google Analytics 4 properties: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10845666?hl=en&ref_topic=10737980

2.”How to Measure the Performance of Topic Clusters” :https://www.pepperlandmarketing.com/blog/how-to-measure-the-performance-of-topic-clusters

 3 .About Content Grouping - Analytics Help - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2853423?hl=en

 4.Consult with our experts at SaturnOne: https://www.saturnone.io/pricing

‍