What is Content Scoring? [+ Tools to Rate the Effectiveness of your Content]

Content Marketing is undoubtedly one of the most effective strategies for attracting and reaching out to consumers. 

There are many benefits to it, but that doesn’t mean that just any material will be helpful or relevant to your audience.

So, in practice, how can you evaluate what works and what is not so efficient? Content scoring was created to do precisely that.

If your team can, for example, score leads by measuring how likely a user is to finish a purchase, why not do the same with your content?

The gains in productivity can be immense. 

The challenge of defining a score for your content, however, is not so simple. You need to evaluate many factors to develop objective criteria.

For this reason, we will cover the following topics in this article about content scoring and content scoring tools:

What is Content Scoring?

Content scoring is a way to evaluate the performance and potential of the content produced by your team. 

It becomes possible to understand, for example, what is the most appropriate material for the stage of the buyer’s journey in which the user finds itself.

It is a method to track what can be more efficient for your strategies to generate the expected results.

By creating a series of criteria, you can understand what the most suitable type of content is for each stage of the sales funnel.

The goal is to offer more information and insights to direct your content production. 

In the long run, your team will begin to identify the best formats and strategies to communicate with your audience.

With the adopted criteria, it will also be possible to identify which features are more likely to generate the expected impact on your audience.

Especially if your company has been making decisions based on guesses, the production of content can be significantly improved. The objective is to make your materials more precise.

What is the Importance of this Concept?

One of the great benefits of Digital Marketing is the power to measure every aspect of your strategic planning. 

This way, you and your team also have more control over your resources.

Content scoring, therefore, was created to offer this same precision to the challenge of creating content.

Just as A/B tests are used to identify what is best for paid media ads, content scoring directs your content strategies.

Not convinced? 

We have listed below the main benefits of this measurement technique. Check it out!

It provides insights for your strategies

Adopting content scoring will allow your team to produce content focused on your strategy.

Texts, videos, infographics, ebooks or whatever material you choose should focus on what really matters. 

Without basing your decisions on guesses, your post can be optimized to strengthen SEO or impact the user.

It allows for the creation of increasingly better content

With so much competition for users’ attention, it is crucial to differentiate yourself from other brands with quality content.

The more information you have about what works and what doesn’t, the better the quality of the material produced. 

Over time, you will understand how to create content with higher content scoring and, of course, quality.

It strengthens your authority in the industry

When your content regularly reaches a high-quality level, the tendency is that more users will be impacted by it. 

This way, your brand’s authority in your industry is strengthened.

The user begins to trust your content more, and its quality attracts them. The result is increased customer loyalty.

How to Measure Content Scores Efficiently?

As we explained in the previous topics, content scoring can boost your team’s content production. 

Now, let’s find out how to measure the quality of the materials delivered on your pages!

1. Know your audience

As basic as it may seem, content scoring will only make sense if the needs and profiles of your audience are considered.

So, it is essential to understand what your persona is looking for to direct content production. 

After all, besides the quality of what is produced, it is necessary to think about the reader’s interests and the relevance of the material.

2. Define a team

It is also necessary to define who on your team is responsible for creating and monitoring everything related to content scoring. 

Those are the professionals who will, for example, define the criteria for determining the quality and efficiency of content.

3. Establish the criteria

Next, it is time to establish the criteria for your content scoring. 

At this stage, remember, it is also important to define different metrics for each format.

For example, for a blog post, it may be interesting to evaluate the average time spent on the page or the scroll percentage. 

Videos can be assessed according to total views, while the success of an ebook can be measured by the total number of downloads.

Also, you should have in mind a value or total score, which will be the combination of these different criteria that you have established. 

So, a score of 10 (if that is the highest) will occur when all the requirements reach their highest values.

In this context, a blog post that scores a 10 will be one that gets above-average page time and beats your established share goals, for example.

4. Analyze the content

After the above steps are complete, it’s time to analyze and monitor your content. 

This work must be performed with a certain periodicity to find the necessary improvements and prevent your content from staying with a low content score for too long, for example.

5. Create quality content

Finally, it is essential to use content scoring as a basis for improving your team’s production capacity. 

Evaluate the reports and metrics generated by your analysis and use them to define the improvements needed for the following series of content.

After all, there is no point in coming up with a content score and not using it as a learning tool.

What Content Scoring Tools Should be Used?

With Digital Transformation, the good news is that measurement work can become even more efficient with the help of some content scoring tools. Let’s take a look.

Moz

Staying updated on your site’s performance is also fundamental, and that’s what Moz offers.

The paid solution carries out regular scans to evaluate the performance of your pages. The tool helps you find aspects that can be fixed and improved upon — from duplicate content to formatting errors or slow loading.

SEMrush

When we talk about content auditing for your SEO strategy, SEMrush is one of the most common tools.

It can also be quite helpful for your content scoring work.

After all, the tool supports your business in keyword usage, backlinks and even competitor analysis, presenting clues of what is working and possible mistakes.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a SaaS that, among many other features, offers the possibility to perform an audit on your pages regularly.

Everything that is part of your domain is analyzed, avoiding harmful backlinks affecting the quality of the content. 

Even the posts that did not receive links are evaluated, ensuring that your strategy is on the right track.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another platform that should be explored to improve your content scoring.

With numerous tools and reports available, it is much easier to find errors on your pages and correct them.

From tips to improve SEO to fixing HTML errors, everything is designed to enhance the quality of your content.

Google Analytics

During the audit work, Google Analytics can make the task even simpler and more precise. 

This is because content scoring also needs to assess issues such as bounce rate, average time spent on your pages, and metrics that will contribute to the understanding of whether each content is, in fact, achieving a satisfactory performance.

Wrap Up

To continue improving your work and ensuring that the content offered by your company is attractive to your audience, content scoring tools can be an excellent ally.

By defining the most appropriate criteria and creating a ranking, you and your team can act more strategically when it comes to making decisions and, thus, obtaining good results.

In addition to the quality of the content produced by your Digital Marketing team, you should improve your content strategy constantly, seeking to identify gaps in your knowledge.

Want to know how to do that? 

Check out our Content Marketing maturity assessment and find out where your organization is succeeding and where there is room for improvement in this context!