State of Content Marketing 2021

The State
of Content
Marketing
2020 Global
Report
The State of Content Marketing. Global Report
2021
Table
of Contents
2020
About SEMrush ......................................................................................................................................................................... 03 Non-Shared Articles by Length .............................................................................................. 26
About This Report ...................................................................................................................................................... 04 Headline Type: Impact on Performance ............................................. 27
Data Collection Tools and Toolkits ..................................... 05 H1 Length: Impact on Performance ...................................................................... 28
2020 Key Takeaways and Trends .................................................. 06 Distribution of Heading Depth by Performance 29 .....
Content Marketing Trends ........................................................................................... 08 Number of Lists: Impact on Performance ................................... 30

Top 20 Hashtags Used Number of Images: Impact on Performance ................... 31
with #сontentmarketing ......................................................................................................................................... 10 Number of Videos: Impact on Performance ..................... 32
Top 20 Topics Discussed Key Takeaways ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 33
with #сontentmarketing ......................................................................................................................................... 11 Content Marketing Survey .................................................................................................. 35
The Usage of Links and Visual Content in Tweets 12 .... Use of Content Marketing ............................................................................................................................ 37
Top 20 Content Marketing Strategy and Budget ............................................................................................................................................................. 38
Influencers on Twitter ........................................................................................................................................................ 13 Content Marketing Team ................................................................................................................................... 43
Top 20 Google Search Queries Content Creation and Distribution ........................................................................... 46
Related to Content Marketing ..................................................................................................... 14 Content Measurement ................................................................................................................................................. 49
Top 20 Questions about Content Key Takeaways ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 52
Marketing Asked on Google ................................................................................................................. 15 Top Required Content Marketing Skills 54 .........
Key Takeaways ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 16 Top Required Skills for a Content Marketer ....................... 55
Most Expensive Keywords ................................................................................................. 18 Top 10 Skills Required
20 Most Expensive Keywords in the Content Marketing Industry ............................................................................ 56
in the Content Marketing Industry ............................................................................ 20 Top 5 Soft Skills Required
Key Takeaways ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 21 in the Content Marketing Industry ............................................................................... 57
Anatomy of Performing Content .......................................................... 22 Key Takeaways ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 58
Content Length: Impact on Performance ................................... 25 Methodology ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 59
2021
About
SEMrush
2020
SEMrush is an online visibility As of November 2020, we have:
management and content marketing
SaaS platform of choice for more 6 million users
than 6,000,000 marketing
professionals around the world. 20 billion keywords
SEMrush lets businesses analyze 828 million domains

massive amounts of data and gain
insights for their campaigns across 33.8 million mobile domains
all marketing channels.
500 TB of raw data
45+ powerful tools and data for
190 countries and regions help 190 regions and countries
SEMrush users break down their
competitors’ marketing strategies, 32.5 trillion backlinks
spot opportunities for growth, build
brand reputation, and create and 1.4 billion referring domains
distribute engaging content without
extra effort. 17.3 billion URLs crawled per day
03
2021
About
This Report
2020
The State of Content Marketing Report designers, data analysts and product
by SEMrush is an annual report designed owners worked hard to collect, process,
to equip content professionals with the interpret, and present information on the
data essential to their strategies. main content marketing trends of the year.
Each year, we are looking for ways to We hope that this report will give you a
supplement and improve our report. summary of the results of 2020, and let
In 2020, more than 50 people from you explore the best industry practices
4 development teams, 3 marketing teams, and empower your content marketing
an internal education team, as well as strategy.
To reach our goal, we analyzed

600 000+ tweets,
hundreds of thousands
of search queries,
1,200,000+ blog posts
and surveyed
1,500+ marketers across the globe.
04
2021
Data Collection
Tools and Toolkits
2020
SEMrush is a trusted data provider whose data on search
volume, website traffic, and digital trends is used
by the biggest media outlets around the world.
To create the present report, we leveraged data from the following SEMrush tools:
Content Marketing Keyword Magic

Platform Tool
a unique set of tools covering the whole an easy-to-use keyword research tool
content marketing workflow, from content that provides all the data you need to
ideation, creation and management to start an effective SEO or PPC campaign.
optimization and performance measurement. Discover the tool
Discover the platform
Traffic Social Media

Analytics Tracker
a quick way to get information about any an advanced solution for social media
website’s traffic channels, geographic analytics and competitive research.
distribution, visitor behavior, etc. Try it now
Learn more
05
2020 Key
2021
Takeaways
and Trends
2020
The content marketing strategy takes #contentmarketing hashtag (35%);
the lead. ‘content marketing strategy’ is also the
top content marketing related search
Content marketing has already proved query (search volume 9.900); and
to be an extremely effective tool for ‘What is content marketing strategy?’
any purpose, from building brand rounds out the top 3 questions asked
awareness to generating leads and to Google in relation to content
getting conversions. At the same time, marketing. Besides that, ‘content
marketers who create informed and strategy conferences 2020’ turned out
elaborate strategies will surely be to be the most expensive keyword to
more effective and less challenged in bid in the sphere of content marketing.
every aspect of their routine.
Good content is optimized content. .
Almost 84% of our survey respondents
have a content strategy, but just 11% Our recent survey on building an
evaluate it as an excellent one, so it’s effective content marketing funnel
not surprising that the third most (42%) showed that 48% of content
required skill for a content marketer is marketers see creating content
the ability to develop a strategy. that drives traffic as their biggest
challenge, and 83% consider organic
‘Strategy’ remains the most popular traffic the key content efficiency
topic discussed on Twitter with the metric. However, nobody was able
06
2021
2020 Key Takeaways and Trends
to reveal the magic formula that than half of the posts with a
will catapult a website to the top of complex structure (h2+h3+h4) are
search rankings just yet. high-performing. Posts containing
2020
at least 1 list per every 500 words
The chase for the perfect optimization of plain text get 70% more traffic
tactic continues and #seo is the than posts without lists.
hashtag used in 62% of the tweets we
analyzed; it’s also the topic discussed Swiss-army marketers are always
in 18.32% of these tweets. in demand.
Detailed answers bring better What should the ideal content

results. marketer be an expert in? For our
survey respondents from all over
When people look for something on the world the answer is a bit longer
the web, they want clarity, relevance, than just ‘content’ and ‘marketing’.
and detail in one place. Longreads Despite the fact that 52% mentioned
give them what they want and bring marketing as the key hard skill, 49%
you backlinks, social shares, and of would like their employee to be
course traffic. familiar with social media and 44%
need SEO at a minimum.
7000+ word articles we looked at got
almost 3 times more pageviews and As you might guess, such a
43% more shares than shorter ones professional will be able to leverage
(900–1200 words). the potential of content to its fullest,
but is extremely hard to find.
Clear structure can also help improve
your blog posts’ performance. More
07
Content
Marketing
Trends
2020 2021
2021
Content
Marketing Trends
2020
The first part of our report is
focused on the most popular
2020 Twitter topics and hashtags,
and the questions and keywords
most searched on Google that
align with ‘content marketing’.
This data can help you understand

what problems, tactics and
approaches are being discussed
in the industry, keep up with
emerging trends, and collect ideas
for your content plan and strategy.
To collect this data, we analyzed

hundreds of thousands of 2020
Google search queries related
to content marketing and surfed
through more than 600,000
tweets in English that contained
the #contentmarketing hashtag
and were posted between
January and September 2020. 09
2021
Content Marketing Trends
Top 20 Hashtags Used

with #сontentmarketing
2020
#digitalmarketing 71%
#marketing 64%
#seo 62%
#growthhacking 44%
#smm 40%
#business 37%
#socialmedia 33%
#onlinemarketing 27%
#startup 25%
#analytics 24%
#socialmediamarketing 21%
#marketingstrategy 16%
#content 14%
#bigdata 14%
#sales 14%
#marketingtips 13%
#entrepreneur 12%
#inboundmarketing 12%
#ai 12%
#affiliatemarketing 10%
What we did:
We looked at how often certain hashtags appear alongside #contentmarketing in the most popular
tweets (20+ retweets) that were published between January and September 2020. 10
2021
Top 20 Topics Discussed

with #сontentmarketing
2020
strategy 34%
SEO 18%
social media 10%
tools 4%
trends 3%
AI 3%
content ideas 3%
startup 3%
blogging 2%
ads 2%
What we did:
health 2%
visual content 2% We used a mixture of machine learning and
influencers 1% human expertise to analyze the topics (key
monetization 1% themes) that were discussed in the most
sales 1%
popular tweets (20+ retweets) published
video marketing 1%
between January and September 2020 with
analytics 1%
the #contentmarketing hashtag.
content formats 1%
statistics 1%
travel 1%
11
2021
The Usage of Links and

Visual Content in Tweets
2020
The Usage of Visual Content in the Analyzed Tweets
Image 13% 8% 2% 1%
Summary w/large image
Infographic
Plain text
Video
Gif
22% 54%
The Usage of Links in the Analyzed Tweets

Tweets with links 96%
Tweets without links 4%
What we did:
We checked the most popular tweets ‘Image’ represents the percentage of images in the
(20+ retweets) that were published between tweets containing visuals. ‘Summary w/large image’
January and September 2020 and contained the represents the percentage of tweets with visuals
#contentmarketing hashtag for the presence containing a large image. ‘Infographic’ represents the
of visual content and links. percentage of the tweets containing infographics
from the total number of tweets.
2021
Top 20 Content Marketing

Influencers on Twitter
2020
10 @MartinAButters
1 @NealSchaffer
11 @JonathanAufray
2 @BenKamauDigital 12 @apollineadiju
13 @crestodina
3 @MikeSchiemer
14 @iamjony94
4 @jeffbullas 15 @Nitish_Sharma23
5 @LindaGrass0 16 @lilachbullock
6 @JoePulizzi 17 @Robert_Rose
7 @RebekahRadice 18 @jeffsheehan
8 @BrennerMichael 19 @PamMktgNut
9 @janetmachuka_ 20 @heidicohen
What we did:
We looked at the authors of the most retweeted #contentmarketing hashtag. These authors were
posts (20+ retweets) that were published between ranked based on the number of likes, retweets
January and September 2020 and contained the and top-performing tweets they published.
13
2021
Top 20 Google Search Queries

Related to Content Marketing
2020
keyword keyword
10 content marketing manager 2,400

1 content marketing strategy 9,900
11 seo content marketing 1,900
2 content marketing agency 5,400 12 types of content marketing 1,900
13 content marketing jobs 1,600

3 content marketing examples 5,400
14 content marketing tools 1,600
4 content marketing institute 5,400 15 content strategy example 1,600
5 content marketing definition 3,600 16 content advertising 1,300
6 content marketing plan 3,600 17 content marketing blog 1,300
7 content marketing services 2,900 18 content marketing companies 1,300
8 digital content marketing 2,900 19 content marketing funnel 1,300
9 b2b content marketing 2,400 20 social media content marketing 1,300
What we did:
We calculated the average monthly search volume for the keywords from the Google searches
related to “content marketing” made between January and September 2020.
14
2021
Top 20 Questions about Content

Marketing Asked on Google
2020
question question
10 what does content marketing mean

1 what is content marketing
11 what is visual content marketing
2 why is content marketing important

12 how much do content marketers make
13 how to create content for affiliate marketing

3 what is content marketing strategy
14 what is content syndication in digital marketing
4 how to content marketing 15 what is interactive content marketing
5 how to develop a content marketing strategy 16 what makes good content marketing
6 how to write content marketing 17 how content marketing helps
7 what is content marketing in seo 18 how content marketing is changing the game
8 what is b2b content marketing 19 how to create a content marketing calendar
9 how to measure content marketing success 20 how to get started with content marketing
What we did:
We analyzed the question keywords related to “content marketing” and calculated their average
monthly search volume from January to September 2020 to sort them by popularity.
15
2021
Key
Takeaways
2020
It takes a strong strategy to do content The interest in the topic continues to grow
marketing well. as the search engines are introducing more
and more complicated algorithms designed
Strategy is the most discussed content to select and deliver to the user top quality
marketing related topic on Twitter and content. On the other hand, content
the leading search query by a big margin. creators are putting more and more effort
Moreover, if we look at the top questions into standing out in the sea of information
people ask, we’ll see that they don’t just and catching the attention of the user.
want to know what a content marketing
strategy is but also how to develop one. Businesses are looking for new ways
to promote themselves on social media.
Marketers are looking to gain insights into .
their peers and competitors’ strategies and #smm and #socialmedia are the 5th and
continuously collect ideas for their own. 7th most popular industry hashtags; the
latter is also the 3rd most discussed topic,
The ties between SEO and content are and “social media content marketing” is
getting stronger. . the 20th query by popularity.
On Twitter, “strategy” is closely followed It’s a well-known fact that social media
by SEO. It’s also the 3rd most popular is an essential chance to connect to
hashtag and 11th most popular query. customers. However, social networks
16
2021
Key Takeaways
switch focus to organic reach, which is also the 12th most discussed topic
makes it more difficult for businesses to and “what is visual content marketing”
gain coverage, so they continue to seek is the 11th most popular question
2020
a solution for this problem. people ask about content marketing.
Analytics and technology are getting A good image can tell more than several
serious. pages of text. Images are so powerful
because they deliver the information
#analytics is the 10th most popular quicker and require less time and effort
hashtag, followed by #bigdata in to understand. They encourage sharing
14th place. “How to measure content and are easy to create, so we can expect
marketing success” is 9th in the list of a further rise in visuals in the future.
questions asked in relation to content
marketing. Automation and outsourcing are here.
Monitoring content performance “Tools” is the 4th most discussed topic

beyond Google or social media analytics in the tweets about content marketing
has never been simple. Technology and “content marketing tools” is the
advancements are bringing about new 14th query by popularity. Along with
tools and approaches that feature artificial these, “content marketing agency” is the
intelligence (6th most popular Twitter 2nd most popular query, and “content
topic), NLP, etc. marketing services” is the 7th.
Everybody likes visuals. Following the growing demand, businesses

are going beyond the capabilities of in-
The majority of tweets we analyzed house teams and leverage a wide range of
contained visuals and 13% of these solutions for content creation, distribution,
contained infographics. “Visual content” and monitoring.
17
Most
Expensive
Keywords
2020 2021
2021
Most Expensive
Keywords
2020
In the second part of our research, we’ll be
looking at the English keywords related to
content marketing that cost the most to bid on
globally in order to understand what topics are
talked about in the industry and what trends or
solutions are out there.
19
2021
20 Most Expensive Keywords in

the Content Marketing Industry
2020
keyword Avg.CPC (USD) keyword Avg.CPC (USD)
content strategy 10 b2b content marketing stats 11.07

1 conferences 2020
20.76
11 saas content marketing agency 10.58

b2b content marketing
2 agency
19.91
12
magic quadrant for content
10.54
marketing platforms
content strategy 13 healthcare content marketing agency 9.77

3 conferences 19.12
14 linkedin content marketing 9.66
enterprise content management

4 account based content marketing 18.27 15 market size 9.07
5 linkedin content marketing strategy 17.00 16 b2b content marketing trends 2020 8.92
6 linkedin content marketing score 12.98 17 b2b content marketing 2020 8.66
7 content marketing analytics tools 12.86 18 b2b content marketing funnel 8.24
8 content marketing for b2b companies 11.55 19 b2b content marketing trends 8.14
keyword research for content

9 b2b content marketing platform 11.33 20 marketing 7.11
What we did:
We found the most expensive keywords to bid on related to the content marketing
industry in English-speaking countries and sorted them by CPC.
20
2021
Key
Takeaways
2020
A CPC as high as $20 tells us that
the content industry is getting a lot of
attention and investment.
Analyzing the keywords at the top

of the list we can assume that
• The pandemic didn’t extinguish

the interest in content strategy
conferences.
• B2B companies are interested in

automating and outsourcing their
content creation.
• There’s a strong demand for solutions

that can streamline keyword research
and analytics.
• The LinkedIn engagement measurement

algorithm (Content Marketing Score)
is making this social network more and
more attractive for content marketers. 21
Anatomy of
Performing
Content
2020 2021
2021
Anatomy of
Performing Content
2020
The content performance
metric you choose to evaluate
the efficiency of your content
depends on its initial goal. In the
fourth part of our research, we
tried to determine the factors that
contribute to the visibility and
engagement rate of articles online.
We analyzed the visits, backlinks and

social shares of 1,200,000+ articles
we picked from domains with a blog
section that had from 30,000 up
to 500,000 sessions and tried to
establish the correlation between
metrics and different elements
such as the texts’ length, headlines,
structure, and the presence of visuals.
These findings can help marketers

understand what content
characteristics will better help
them reach their goals. 23
2021
Anatomy of Performing Content. Key Stats
Longreads no structure at all (no h2) are low-

performing in terms of traffic and
• Long texts (3000–7000 words) get engagement.
2020
twice as many pageviews and 24% • Posts containing at least one list
more shares than articles of average per every 500 words of plain text
length (900–1200 words). get 70% more traffic than posts
• 7000+ word articles are absolute without lists.
leaders in terms of content • 10–13-word headlines drive twice
performance, as they drive almost as much traffic and X1.5 more
4 times more traffic than articles of shares than shorter ones
average length (900–1200 words). (< 7 words).
• Short posts (300–900 words) •
gain 21% less traffic and 75% less Visual content
backlinks than articles of average
length (900–1200 words). • Posts with one image get twice
• Short articles (300–600 words) are as much traffic as posts containing
not shared at all 3 times more often text only. These also get 30% more
than longreads of 7000+ words. shares and 25% more backlinks.
Structure • Posts with 7+ images get X4 more

traffic than articles containing
• More than half of the posts with a just text.
complex structure (h2+h3+h4) are
high-performing in terms of traffic • Posts that don’t contain a video
and engagement. 44% of posts with get 92% less traffic and 24% less
a simple structure (h2+h3) are also shares than posts with at least
high-performing. 39% of texts with one video.
24
2021
Anatomy of Performing Content
Content Length:
Impact on Performance
2020
Avg. Unique Pageviews Shares
300–600 59 300–600 20
601–900 77 601–900 19
901–1200 82 901–1200 21
1201–1500 93 1201–1500 24
1501–2000 100 1501–2000 28
2001–3000 104 2001–3000 24
3001–5000 122 3001–5000 24
5001–7000 188 5001–7000 27
7000+ 302 7000+ 30
Backlinks
300–600 7
601–900 8
What we did:
901–1200 14
1201–1500 18 We looked at the word count of each
1501–2000 12 article and compared it against the
2001–3000 12 average number of unique pageviews,
3001–5000 13 shares on Twitter and Facebook, and
5001–7000 14 the number of backlinks it had.
7000+ 15
2021
Non-Shared Articles
by Length
2020
300–600 59%
601–900 51%
901–1200 44%
1201–1500 42%
1501–2000 41%
2001–3000 40%
3001–5000 34%
5001–7000 27%
7000+ 19%
What we did:
We calculated the percentage of articles of
different length (word count) that had no
shares on Twitter and Facebook.
26
2021
Headline Type:
2020
questions 162 questions 19
guides 190 guides 26
lists 247 lists 25
how-to 206 how-to 23
<other> 137 <other> 21
Backlinks What we did:

We compared headings with different
questions 6
wording (those that offered a question
guides 7
and an answer, guides, top-N lists,
lists 8
How-tos, and more) against the average
how-to 7
monthly number of unique pageviews,
<other> 5
shares on Twitter and Facebook and
backlinks the article had.
27
2021
H1 Length:
2020
<7 102 <7 14
7–9 152 7–9 17
10–13 194 10–13 21
14+ 185 14+ 17

What we did:
<7 5 We compared H1 length against the
7–9 5 average monthly number of unique
10–13 6 pageviews, shares on Twitter and
14+ 6 Facebook, and backlinks the article had.
28
2021
Distribution of Heading
Depth by Performance
2020
Low performance Medium performance
No H2 39% No H2 42%
H2 only 24% H2 only 40%
H2 + H3 19% H2 + H3 37%
H2 + H3 + H4 16% H2 + H3 + H4 27%
High performance What we did:
No H2 19% We looked at the percentage of articles

H2 only 35% with different structures (presence/
H2 + H3 44% absence of H2, H3, H4, etc.) in each
H2 + H3 + H4 56% of the performance groups assigned
based on traffic, social shares, and
backlinks: 20% of highly performing, 20%
of low performing and 20% of average
performing.
29
2021
Number of Lists:
2020
Av. Monthly Unique Pageviews Shares
No lists 118 No lists 16
1 list / 500 words 204 1 list / 500 words 19
2 list / 500 words 187 2 list / 500 words 17
3+ lists / 500 words 189 3+ lists / 500 words 25
No lists 5 We looked at the number of lists per every

1 list / 500 words 7 500 words of plain text (with no bullets)
2 list / 500 words 7 and compared it against the average
3+ lists / 500 words 5 monthly number of unique pageviews,
social shares, and backlinks it had.
30
2021
Number of Images:
2020
No images 65 No images 16
1 124 1 19
2–3 184 2–3 26
4–5 208 4–5 25
6–7 241 6–7 29
7+ 275 7+ 26
No images 8 We looked at the number of images in the

1 12 article and compared it against the average
2–3 7 monthly number of unique pageviews, social
4–5 7 shares, and backlinks it had.
6–7 6
7+ 9
31
2021
Number of Videos:
2020
No videos 131 No videos 21
1 216 1 24
2–3 186 2–3 31
4–5 174 4–5 26
6–7 198 6–7 19
7+ 187 7+ 21
No videos 10 We looked at the number of videos

1 13 in the article and compared it against
2–3 8 the average monthly number of
4–5 9 unique pageviews, social shares, and
6–7 7 backlinks it had.
7+ 8
32
2021
Key
Takeaways
2020
Longreads are the best traffic drivers. 10–13-word headlines drive twice as
much traffic and X1.5 more shares than
Detailed answers are more likely to satisfy shorter ones (< 7 words).
the search intent and solve the problem.
A clear structure makes your content
The correlation we found is simple – the better. .
longer your text is the more pageviews it
will get. Texts of 3000+ words get twice Human attention is limited, so to keep the
as many pageviews as those of 900–1200 reader engaged you have to explain what
words and the numbers grow linearly. topic is considered in each paragraph.
7000+ word articles remain the highest-
performing in all respects, from pageviews More than half of the posts with a
to backlinks and social shares. complex structure (h2+h3+h4) are
high-performing; 44% of posts with
Explanatory headlines look more a simple structure (h2+h3) are also
attractive. high-performing. The majority of texts
with no structure at all (no h2) are
Knowing what the text is about before low-performing.
reading it saves time and increases the
credibility of the source.
33
2021
Key Takeaways
Visuals are great for increasing Lists can increase your number of
engagement. readers.
2020
As we said in Part 1, visuals are perceived A list is one of the best ways to organize
and understood with no effort. They also information. It’s a kind of visualization
arouse an emotional response. That’s without an image. Lists save time on
why they are shared so eagerly. reading and encourage sharing.
Posts with one image get twice as much Headers offering lists get the most
traffic as posts containing text only. pageviews. Such posts outrun articles
These also get 30% more shares and with other headers by 80%.
25% more backlinks.
Posts containing at least one list per
Posts that don’t contain a video get 92% every 500 words of plain text also
less traffic and 24% less shares than get 70% more traffic than articles
posts with at least one video. without lists.
34
Content
2021
Marketing
2020
Survey
2020 2021 35
2021
Content
Marketing Survey
2020
The content marketing industry
is huge and approaches to it may
vary a lot in different countries
and among different professionals.
In the fourth part of our report
we’ll share with you the results of
the survey we offered to 1,500+
marketers from 39 countries.
We asked them to tell us about

the goals they set, the tactics they
used and the results they achieved.
With these facts and statistics

you’ll be able to understand
how well specific approaches
correspond to the different goals,
which distribution channels are
in demand, what metrics give
the most information about your
content performance, how much
companies spend on content
marketing, and more. 36
2021
Survey Results Overview
Use of Content
Marketing
2020
Are you using
content marketing 6%
as an approach in
your company?
Yes
No
94%
37
2021
Strategy
and Budget
2020
Does your company have How would you evaluate
a content marketing the performance of
strategy? your content marketing
strategy in 2020?
16% 30% 6% 2%
84% 51% 11%
Yes Good
No Average
Excellent
Fair
Poor
38
2021
Strategy
and Budget
2020
How would you evaluate How would you rate your
your company’s content content marketing strategy’s
marketing success in 2020 maturity / complexity?
compared with 2019?
21% 7% 1% 22% 6% 6%
50% 21% 46% 20%
More successful Promising

Same Young
Much more successful Advanced
Less successful Mature
Much less successful First steps
39
2021
Strategy
and Budget
2020
What are the most efficient content marketing
tactics implemented by your team in 2020?
Search engine optimization 75%

Updating and repurposing existing content 61%
Publishing more “How to” guides / educational content 45%
Optimizing the customer journey 41%
Creating more video / visual content 41%
Analyzing competitors’ content 37%
Diversification / Using new content types 34%
Collaborating with other teams (Sales, CS, etc.) 32%
Optimizing content for mobile 23%
Testing new distribution channels 21%
Using UGC (User Generated Content) 10%
Other 5%
40
2021
Strategy
and Budget
2020
What priority goals do you plan to achieve
through content marketing in 2021?
Generate more quality leads 79%
Attract more traffic to our website 75%
Improve brand reputation 57%
Improve customer engagement and loyalty 47%
Promote positioning of new products 26%
Increase the number of payments 17%
Other 2%
How much did your company spend

on content marketing in 2020?
$10,000 or less 37%
$10,001 to $25,000 19%
$25,001 to $50,000 8%
$50,001 to $100,000 8%
$100,001 to $500,000 8%
$500,001 to $1M 2%
$1.01M to $5M 1%
More than $5M 1%
I don’t know 15%
2021
Strategy
and Budget
2020
How do you expect
your content
14% 13% 3%
marketing budget
to change in 2021?
Small increase (up to 10%)
Medium increase (11–25%)
Remain unchanged
Large increase (more than 25%)
Decrease 16% 25% 29%
I don’t know
42
2021
Content
Marketing Team
2020
How many people do you have in your content marketing team?
1–3 specialists 76%
21–35 specialists 0.5%
More than 50 specialists 0.5%
Which specialists are working in your content marketing team?

Writer/Content Creator 54%
SEO Content Manager 38%
Social Media Manager 30%
Designer 29%
Content (Marketing) Strategist 27%
Head of Content Marketing 23%
Content (Marketing) Manager 21%
Web Developer 19%
Email Marketing Specialist 17%
Editor 17%
Project/Campaign Manager 13%
Data Scientist 4%
Other 17%
2021
Content
Marketing Team
2020
What are your team’s top content
marketing challenges?
Creating content that generates quality leads 51%

Creating content that attracts more traffic 47%
Proving the ROI of our content 44%
Developing content that resonates with our target audience 43%
Improving the SEO performance of our content 42%
Finding ideas for creating new content 31%
Identifying the most efficient channels for content distribution 25%
Proving the effectiveness of our content marketing strategy 24%
Managing the editorial calendar 22%
Coordinating the workflow 18%
Maintaining a consistent tone of voice through all channels 16%
Hiring highly qualified specialists 16%
Organizing and managing content marketing campaigns 15%
Finding the right content marketing technologies 12%
Other 4%
44
2021
Content
Marketing Team
2020
Which technologies does your team use to
leverage your content marketing efforts?
Website analytics tools 88%

SEO tools 82%
Social media posting 69%
Email marketing software 61%
Content management system (CMS) 52%
Writing / Editing tools 48%
Editorial calendar 42%
Team collaboration and work management 40%
Marketing automation platform 36%
Visual content creation tools 27%
Competitive Intelligence 23%
Integrated content marketing platform 10%
AI / Machine learning 5%
Other 1%
45
2021
Content Creation
and Distribution
2020
What types of content do you produce?
Blog post 92%

Email 66%
Case study 47%
Infographic 45%
Ebook / White paper 37%
Success story 35%
Webinar 33%
Video tutorial 26%
Original study 22%
Interview 21%
Print 17%
Product manual 15%
Quiz / Test 15%
Template 13%
Podcast 13%
Other 5%
46
2021
Content Creation
and Distribution
2020
Which channels are you using for content distribution?
Organic search 89%

Social media 87%
Email marketing 72%
PPC / Paid advertising 47%
External publications 24%
Influencer marketing 16%
Content syndication 15%
Other 1%
What social media is the most effective

for content distribution?
Facebook 36%
LinkedIn 36%
Instagram 9%
Twitter 8%
YouTube 5%
Pinterest 4%
Other 2%
47
2021
Content Creation
and Distribution
2020
Do you outsource content creation?
No 70%
Yes 30%
Which of the following content-related services are you

outsourcing?
Writing 81%
Graphic design 40%
Video design / Animation 40%
SEO Optimization 28%
Editing / Proofreading 23%
Content marketing strategy 10%
Translation 10%
Analytics / Audit 9%
Other 2%
What funnel stages have you created the most content for in 2020?
Top of the funnel 69%
Middle of the funnel 43%
Bottom of the funnel 20%
Retention 18%
2021
Content
Measurement
2020
Do you measure your content marketing strategy success?
Yes 83%
No 17%
What are the key metrics you use to

measure your content success?
Organic traffic 83%

Sessions / Pageviews 70%
Leads 66%
Conversion rate 53%
Time on page 49%
Bounce rate 38%
Social shares 38%
ROI 32%
Backlinks 31%
Comments 19%
Other 3%
49
2021
Content
Measurement
2020
How often do you conduct content audits?
More than three times a year 38%

Twice a year 27%
Once a year 21%
Never 9%
Once every 2–3 years 5%
50
2021
Content
Measurement
2020
Does your company
measure content 39%
marketing ROI?
Yes
No
61%
51
2021
Key
Takeaways
2020
Building a perfect strategy isn’t easy. Businesses expect a lot from their
content.
Almost 84% of our respondents have a
content strategy, but just 11% evaluate it Content marketing goals can be
as an excellent one, although more than easily understood from their metrics.
half believe it’s at least good. These are: generate more quality
leads (79%), attract more traffic to our
46% of the survey participants evaluate website (75%), and improve customer
their strategy as promising and 50% of engagement and
them say that it has been more successful loyalty (47%).
than the one of 2019.
Small teams achieve big goals.
Content should drive traffic and leads.
The vast majority of the companies in
Content efficiency is mostly measured which our respondents work (76%) have
through organic traffic (83%) and small content marketing teams of 1–3
sessions / pageviews (70%). The next people, which usually include a writer
most popular metrics are leads (66%), (54%), an SEO specialist (38%), and a
and conversion rate (53%). content strategist (27%).
SEO (61%), and updating and repurposing 81% of these teams outsource content
existing content (45%) are the most creation, and 40% trust translation or
popular tactics for achieving these goals. design to a third party 52
2021
Key Takeaways
To achieve their content marketing media (87%) and emails (72%).

goals, most companies are ready to However, the majority (89%) rely
spend around $10,000 (37%) and on search as the most effective
2020
sometimes up to $25,000. distribution channel.
The challenges are being addressed

with technology.
The main challenges the content

marketing industry is facing correlate
with its goals: creating content that
generates quality leads (51%), creating
content that attracts more traffic
(47%), and developing content that
resonates with the target audience
(43%). To achieve these, 88% of
marketers polled leverage website
analytics tools, 82% SEO tools , 61%
email marketing software, and 52%
content management systems.
Educating is the key to success.
Most content (69%) is created for the

top of the funnel and the prevailing
content formats are blog posts (92%),
case studies (47%), and success
stories (35%) distributed via social
53
Top Required
2021
Content
2020
Marketing
Skills
2020 2021 54
Top Required Skills
2021
for a Content
Marketer
2020
SEMrush Academy analyzed
around 17,000 Content
Marketing vacancies on the
biggest job search websites
such as Monster, Indeed and
LinkedIn in the UK, Canada, the
USA, Australia and India to find
out which skills employers want
to see in their ideal employees.
The reviewed positions included
Content Writers, Content
Managers, Content Marketers
and Content Specialists.
The resulting list of skills

can help you find the right
candidates for your positions or
highlight your own strengths as
a content marketer.
55
2021
Top Required Skills for a Content Marketer
Top 10 Skills Required in the

Content Marketing Industry
2020
Email marketing
Research 27%
skills Social media
19%
49% Strategy
Metrics
42%
16%
Analytics Blogging
17%
27% Google tools
SEO Editing skills 9%
44% 27%
What we did:
We analyzed the employers’ requirements mentioned in job offers. The percentage shows
the mentions of a particular skill out of the total number of content marketing job offers.
56
2021
Top Required Skills for a Content Marketer
Top 5 Soft Skills Required in the

Content Marketing Industry
2020
18% Leadership
15% Respecting deadlines
11% Problem solving
11% Written communication
2% Self-motivation
What we did:
We compared the number of mentions
of a particular soft skill against the total
number of content marketing job offers.
57
2021
Key
Takeaways
2020
Social media and SEO are the key It’s the third most required (42%)
content marketer skills. skill for a content marketer alongside
analytics (27%), research (19%),
Social media and SEO got 49% and and understanding content metrics
44%, respectively. This perfectly (16%). This study also tells us that
correlates with the results of our an efficient content strategy is
industry trends analysis and Content impossible without data.
Marketing Survey results. As
social media is the leading content Strong leaders are always in
distribution channel and traffic is a demand.
key metric for measuring content’s
performance, it’s reasonable to Among the soft skills essential for a
expect a good content marketer to be great content marketing specialist,
knowledgeable in both areas. employers mentioned leadership
(18%), respect for deadlines (15%)
You’ll have to build an informed and problem solving (11%), which
strategy. . means that most businesses are
looking for specialists who are able
Content marketing strategy to manage an independent team and
dominates all parts of our report. deliver timely results.
58
2021
Methodology
2020
Content Marketing • Top content marketing influencers
Trends on Twitter*
We collected more than 600,000 *To find influencers, we looked at the

tweets in English posted between accounts that published the most
January and September 2020 with the retweeted posts (20+ retweets) with
#contentmarketing hashtag. the #contentmarketing hashtag. We
also took into account the number of
For the final analysis, we picked the likes and the number of publications
tweets retweeted 20+ times and ranked as top-performing tweets.
extracted the following data:
For our Google queries analysis,
• Most popular hashtags used with we picked the keywords in English
#contentmarketing from searches related to content
marketing (as a keyword) worldwide
• Most popular topics discussed in between January and September
the tweets (these were detected by 2020. We then calculated the average
our machine learning algorithm) monthly search volume (worldwide)
for each keyword to make our lists
• Presence/absence and types of of the top search queries and top
visual content questions asked on Google.
59
Methodology
Most Expensive Keywords social media (Twitter + Facebook), and

in the Content Marketing backlinks. We averaged these metrics
Industry to split all articles into highly-performing
(20%), average-performing (60%), and
We compared the costs of advertising low-performing (20%) ones.
on Google across different countries,
states, and regions to find the keywords After that, we tried to establish the
in English with the highest cost per reference values for the most common
click (worldwide). Then we sorted characteristics of the content, specifically:
these keywords to find those related to
content marketing. Length
Headline types (how-tos, lists,
questions, guides/studies, etc.)
H1 length
Anatomy of Performing
Heading depth (H2, H3, H4) of the low-,
Content
average-, and high-performing articles
List presence
We collected 1,200,000 articles’ URLs
Image presence
from domains with a blog section that
Video presence
had from 30,000 up to 500,000 average
monthly unique pageviews calculated For better representation, we split all the
for the article’s whole lifecycle. We also articles in the research by word count:
discarded the articles published later
than June 2020. 300–600 2001–3000
601–900 3001–5000
To evaluate the performance of each 901–1200 5001–7000
article, we considered the traffic (average 1201–1500 7000+
unique pageviews), engagement on 1501–2000
Methodology
Top Required Skills Content Marketing

for a Content Marketer Survey
SEMrush Academy analyzed 17,000+ We asked 1,500+ marketers from

Content Marketing positions on 39 countries, working for marketing
Monster, Indeed and LinkedIn – the agencies, nonprofit B2B and B2C
biggest job search sites that were companies to answer 27 questions
active in September 2020 worldwide. related to content marketing.
61
Methodology
What is your company type? What industry do you work in?
45% B2B company 26% Marketing / Advertising

25% B2C company 17% Information Technology / Software
21% Agency 9% Ecommerce
3% Nonprofit organization 5% Healthcare / Pharmaceuticals
6% Other 5% Industrial and Manufacturing
4% Media and Publishing
What is your company size? 4% Education
3% Finance
39% 1–10 employees 3% Travel and Tourism
23% 11–50 employees 2% Real Estate
20% 51–250 employees 2% Transport
8% 1000+ employees 1% Beauty Products
6% 251–500 employees 1% Food
4% 501–1000 employees 1% Insurance
1% Sports and Recreation
1% Home and garden
1% Electronics
1% Furniture
1% Nonprofit / Government
12% Other
62
Methodology
What is your job title? Country
17% CEO 43% USA

16% Marketing Manager 9% India
8% SEO Specialist 7% Australia
8% CMO/Head of Marketing 6% UK
6% Writer/Content Creator 5% Canada
5% Marketing Consultant 1% Brazil
5% Content (Marketing) Manager 1% Finland
5% Content (Marketing) Strategist 1% France
4% SEO Content Manager 1% Germany
3% Head of Content Marketing 1% Ireland
1% Editor 1% Malaysia
1% Project Manager 1% Mexico
21% Other 1% Netherlands
1% New Zealand
1% Romania
1% Russian Federation
1% Serbia
1% South Africa
1% Spain
1% Sweden
1% Turkey
1% Ukraine
1% Vietnam
12% Other
63
2021
We love your
feedback!
2020
Did you enjoy the report?
We would love to hear your thoughts

about it! If you have any feedback
about our report or have suggestions
about other aspects of content
marketing to analyze next year,
mail us at mail@semrush.com
semrush.com64

State of Content Marketing 2021

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

State of Content Marketing 2021

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The State

Content Marketing Trends ........................................................................................... 08 Number of Lists: Impact on Performance ................................... 30

SEMrush lets businesses analyze 828 million domains

To reach our goal, we analyzed

Content Marketing Keyword Magic

Traffic Social Media

Detailed answers bring better What should the ideal content

This data can help you understand

To collect this data, we analyzed

Top 20 Hashtags Used

Top 20 Topics Discussed

The Usage of Links and

The Usage of Links in the Analyzed Tweets

Top 20 Content Marketing

Top 20 Google Search Queries

10 content marketing manager 2,400

2 content marketing agency 5,400 12 types of content marketing 1,900

13 content marketing jobs 1,600

4 content marketing institute 5,400 15 content strategy example 1,600

5 content marketing definition 3,600 16 content advertising 1,300

6 content marketing plan 3,600 17 content marketing blog 1,300

7 content marketing services 2,900 18 content marketing companies 1,300

8 digital content marketing 2,900 19 content marketing funnel 1,300

9 b2b content marketing 2,400 20 social media content marketing 1,300

Top 20 Questions about Content

10 what does content marketing mean

2 why is content marketing important

13 how to create content for affiliate marketing

4 how to content marketing 15 what is interactive content marketing

6 how to write content marketing 17 how content marketing helps

8 what is b2b content marketing 19 how to create a content marketing calendar

Monitoring content performance “Tools” is the 4th most discussed topic

Everybody likes visuals. Following the growing demand, businesses

20 Most Expensive Keywords in

content strategy 10 b2b content marketing stats 11.07

11 saas content marketing agency 10.58

content strategy 13 healthcare content marketing agency 9.77

enterprise content management

keyword research for content

Analyzing the keywords at the top

• The pandemic didn’t extinguish

• B2B companies are interested in

• There’s a strong demand for solutions

• The LinkedIn engagement measurement

We analyzed the visits, backlinks and

These findings can help marketers

Longreads no structure at all (no h2) are low-

Structure • Posts with 7+ images get X4 more

Backlinks What we did:

Backlinks What we did:

High performance What we did:

No H2 19% We looked at the percentage of articles

Backlinks What we did:

No lists 5 We looked at the number of lists per every

Backlinks What we did:

No images 8 We looked at the number of images in the

Backlinks What we did:

No videos 10 We looked at the number of videos

We asked them to tell us about

With these facts and statistics

84% 51% 11%

50% 21% 46% 20%

More successful Promising