Content Grouping

What is Content Grouping

Content Grouping is a feature available in Google Analytics 4, and more generally a concept in marketing analytics, that allows you to organize and analyze related content on your website in groups.

Specifically, GA4 enables you to group individual pages that share common themes or purposes, providing a more meaningful way to analyze which theme or topic is performing best in term of user engagment, acquisition or retention.

This approach is particularly useful for websites with large amounts of content, such as e-commerce sites, news portals, or educational platforms.

How to group content

There are several ways to implement Content Grouping, depending on your website structure and analytics platform. Here are some common methods:

1. URL-based Grouping:

Group content based on URL patterns. For example:

• Blog posts: /blog/*
• Product pages: /products/*
• Category pages: /category/*

2. Page Title Grouping:

Use consistent naming conventions in page titles to group content. For instance:

• "Product: [Product Name]" for all product pages
• "Category: [Category Name]" for category pages

3. Custom Variable Grouping:

Use custom variables or data attributes to define groups. This method is useful when URL or title patterns are inconsistent.

4. Directory-based Grouping:

Group content based on your website's directory structure. This works well for sites with a logical folder hierarchy.

5. Tracking Code Grouping:

Modify your tracking code to send group information with each page view. This method offers the most flexibility but requires more technical implementation.

The choice of method depends on your website structure, technical capabilities, and specific analysis needs. Many websites use a combination of these methods for comprehensive grouping.

How to set up Content Grouping in GA4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) handles Content Grouping differently from previous versions. Here's how to set it up:

1. Create a Custom Definition:

   • Go to Admin > Custom Definitions
   • Click "Create Custom Dimensions"
   • Name your dimension (e.g., "Content Group")
   • Choose the scope (usually "Event")
   • Set the user property or parameter

2. Implement in Your Code:

Use the gtag.js or Google Tag Manager to send the content group information with each page view. For example:

1   gtag('event', 'page_view', {
2     'content_group': 'Blog Posts'
3   });

3. Create a Custom Report:

• Go to Explore > New Exploration
• Add your custom dimension as a dimension
• Add relevant metrics (e.g., views, engaged sessions)

How to use Rows to analyze Content Grouping

While GA4 provides native tools for Content Grouping analysis, Rows offers a more flexible and customizable approach, thanks to its powered-up spreadsheet features.

Rows is easiest way to access, transform and share your business data. It works 100% as a spreadsheet, but lets you bring live data from 50+ sources directly into your spreadsheet, thanks to built-in GA4 integration.

Rows has a specific template that allows for Content Grouping analysis, Google Analytics 4 Content Group Report. The template uses the above-mentioned 'URL-based Grouping', that filters pages performance data based on keywords present in the URL.

To make the best of this template, all you need to do is:

1. Click on Use template
2. Follow the instruction to connect your GA4 account, via OAuth

3. Use the Setup Table to choose keywords to define group 1 and 2

4. The Summary stat table will summarize the main KPIs over the two groups, and

5. Top pages Group 1 and 2 tables will instead showcase the 10 best performing pages in the two groups

Rows comes also with 100+ templates specifically designed for marketing analytics, to offer you a head start on several analytics goals, including:

• Google Analytics 4 User Report
• Google Analytics 4 Retention Report
• Google Analytics 4 Traffic Acquisition Report
• Google Analytics 4 User Acquisition Report
• Google Analytics 4 Journey Report
• Google Analytics 4 Demographics Report
• Website Analytics Dashboard
• Google Analytics 4 Event Conversions Report
• Google Analytics 4 Content Group Report

Why to use Content Grouping

Content Grouping helps your content marketing team along three main directions:

1. Informed Content Strategy:

Content Grouping provides crucial insights that guide future content creation and optimization efforts. By aggregating data on similar content pieces, you can identify trends and patterns in user engagement across different content types.

For instance, you might discover that in-depth articles on a specific theme consistently outperform shorter news updates in terms of conversions and social shares. This insight could lead you to allocate more resources to creating comprehensive, authoritative content.

Similarly, you might find that certain product categories on an e-commerce site have higher conversion rates, informing decisions on which types of products to feature more prominently or expand upon.

2. Better ROI Measurement:

Content Grouping allows for a more nuanced assessment of the performance of different combination of content types and topics, helping allocate resources more effectively. This is particularly valuable for businesses with diverse content offerings. For example:

• A media company could compare the performance of news articles, opinion pieces, and multimedia content. If video content shows higher engagement and ad revenue despite higher production costs, this data could justify increased investment in video production.

• An e-commerce site might discover that detailed buying guides drive more conversions than product pages alone. This insight could lead to reallocating budget from product photography to creating more comprehensive buyer resources.

• A B2B company might find that case studies result in more qualified leads than general blog posts. This could inform a shift in content strategy towards producing more client success stories.

By understanding which content groups deliver the best return on investment, businesses can optimize their content creation and marketing budgets, focusing on what truly drives results.

3. Simplified Reporting and Decision Making:

Content Grouping helps creating simpler, more readable and less cluttered reports by highlighting content categories instead of numerous individual pages. This simplification has several advantages:

• It makes it easier to recognize trends and take actions

When data is grouped logically, it's easier to spot trends and anomalies. For instance, you might quickly notice that your "How-To" content group consistently outperforms your "News" group in terms of average time on page and thus take actions accordingly.

• It improves Communication

Simplified reports are easier to share with stakeholders who may not be deeply involved in day-to-day content operations. This can lead to better-informed decision-making at all levels of the organization.

• It scales better

As your content library grows, individual page analysis becomes increasingly unwieldy. Content Grouping allows your analytics to scale with your content production.