How will you measure success?
Today we have access to more data than ever. Determining which data points are most important to measure success can feel overwhelming. Often having the ability to sift through and dive deep on any and all data can lead to data paralysis. Don’t worry, there is a simpler way. To confidently answer “how will you measure success?”, it’s important to first understand your "why" — the purpose behind your content program.
“Data paralysis occurs when we have so much information at our fingertips that decision-making slows or stops entirely. Instead of moving forward, we get stuck in an endless analysis loop, fearing that any action might be premature or incomplete.”
Having a clear and present “why” helped ground our strategy and led to a meaningful goal and key performance indicators (KPIs) that demonstrate success for the Mitch Daniels School of Business Graduate Programs Blog.
In one year*, the Daniels School marketing and communications team launched and optimized the Graduate Programs Blog using this framework and achieved:
460+ total ranking keywords
105 ranking blog posts
92% of keywords were non-branded
4,742+ pageviews
70% of pageviews from new users
*January 2024-December 2024
2025 North Central Indiana ADDY Bronze Award Winner
What is your “Why”?
There are two essential questions to uncover your “why”: Why does the content program benefit the business? Why does the content program benefit the audience?
For the Daniels School, both perspectives shaped a clear hypothesis.
Business Why
The Graduate Programs Blog filled a gap in the prospective graduate student journey. When I joined the team three years ago, our strategy favored outbound tactics: sponsored content, digital ads and email marketing. Inbound tactics like search engine optimization (SEO) were underutilized.
Adding SEO to our strategy ensures our content is discoverable, sustainable, and cost-effective. Creating an owned content platform makes our website a destination for our audience. Owned content programs provide more security. At any point in time external platforms like Meta, LinkedIn, X could go away, taking your discoverability with it. Often to even get discovered on these external platforms brands have to pay-to-play. SEO lends itself to being a low-cost tactic. Aside from employee related costs, SEO relies on the value of your content for visibility and reach.
Audience “Why”
Through persona research and development, we’ve arrived at a place of deep understanding of the motivations, challenges, objections, interests and questions of prospective graduate students. Many of the concerns and thoughts that go into making a decision didn’t have to do with any specific graduate program. Rather, barriers to entry, career outcomes, finances and funding, unique student experiences, work-life-balance, etc. Previously, our website primarily was focused on product information, the graduate programs we offer. The Graduate Programs Blog allowed us to address student needs more holistically. It’s a wonderful companion to our core website that prioritizes personas first and links to program details only when relevant.
Example persona for the Master of Accounting program.
Hypothesis
By combining both "whys," we formed a clear hypothesis:
The Daniels School of Business will increase website traffic from prospective graduate students through search with educational, persona-based content.
Choosing the Appropriate Metrics
Once you have a hypothesis, it becomes easier to define a measurable goal and supporting KPIs. In our case the main goal or action we want the audience to take is visiting our website following a Google search. To determine if we’re achieving this goal we’ve chosen to monitor the number of pageviews from organic search. Since our audience is prospective graduate students, a bonus metric to keep track of is new users. This tactic is most effective when it consistently attracts more new users than returning ones, signaling expanded reach of our target audience.
Goal: Increase website traffic from search.
Primary Metric: Pageviews from organic search
Bonus Metric: New users (to measure reach to new audiences)
Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
KPIs gauge progress toward your goal. Tracking them helps identify issues and opportunities early, providing chances to pivot when something is off or optimizing when quick win is apparent. The KPIs we used were focused on our SEO strategy to increase visibility to reach our audience.
# of total ranking keywords (bonus: # of ranking keywords in the top 10 position)
# of non-branded, ranking keywords
# of ranking blog posts
1. Total Ranking Keywords (bonus: Keywords in the Top 10 positions)
SEO is a long-term strategy. Tracking total ranking keywords helps assess growth and identify the search trends of your audience. While you may occasionally lose some rankings or positions, what matters most is whether your trend line is moving up. Over time, this helps you align content with audience needs at different decision stages of the customer journey.
SEMRush Organic Keyword growth and placement.
2. Non-Branded Ranking Keywords
At a renowned institution like Purdue, branded search traffic is expected and likely drives website traffic from individuals already familiar with the University. The biggest opportunity for SEO growth and obtaining new website visitors comes from non-branded keywords—long-tail keywords and queries that are aligned with your persona. By addressing topics relevant to prospective graduate students, even those unfamiliar with our programs, we provide value and earn trust early.
3. Number of Ranking Blog Posts
Ranking for hundreds of keywords is great, but not if they’re only linked to a handful of posts. Tracking the number of blog posts earning rankings shows whether your creation efforts are working - is the content we’re publishing performing as we intended. When a single blog post ranks for multiple keywords, specifically ones that are different (but hopefully related) you can take two courses of action. First, there may be a benefit to expanding the existing blog post to better address the related keywords. Or your strategy may benefit from creating new posts for each grouping of related keywords to further expand your content volume. Either way, you’re continuing to provide your audience with the information they need, as indicated by their search behavior.
Keep It Simple
It’s tempting to dig into dozens of data points—and we often do. But without a defined purpose, even rich data can be misleading. There are many other metrics not noted in this article that help uncover insight and ultimately that’s what data is here to do. Without that north star it can be confusing and overwhelming to align your work with outcomes, create consistency in reporting and avoid data paralysis.
Also, goals and metrics can evolve. Content programs and tactics like SEO are long-term strategies and as they mature, new hypotheses will emerge, leading to different goals and KPIs. For example, now that the Graduate Programs Blog has increased traffic, our next focus is lead generation. Our next phase will focus on how we can guide a new website visitor to converting via a request for information form or downloading a resource.
Goals and KPIs may also need to be reviewed as technology changes. I’d be remiss not to address how artificial intelligence (AI) is effecting search behavior and SEO tactics. Moving forward, metrics like keyword or blog post position in the search engine results page (SERP) top 10 will have to consider or include features like Google’s AI Overview.
Again, a sound framework—built on purpose, goals, and KPIs turns data into insight, activity into progress and foreshadows what comes next for continuous improvement and scale