Digital Publishing
1 min read

Why recirculation is a key metric for news publishers in 2018

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Readers have never enjoyed greater access to content and the media industry has never been more competitive. Yet news outlets rely on the big platforms to deliver traffic, at increasing cost to the quality of their news content and bottom line.

If your audience comes from direct sources, rather than through social media, your recirculation rate will be higher.

As a publisher, for your project to survive and thrive you need to create a loyal audience — users hungry for content who satisfy their appetite on your site instead of skipping away for their next bite. The best way to measure your success is with a metric called recirculation.

If you’re unfamiliar with recirculation, this article will guide you through what it is, how to use it to maximize potential, and what it can achieve for your team.

What Is Recirculation?

Recirculation is a straightforward metric. It’s the percentage of users who visit another page of your website after they finish reading their first article. It’s the inverse of Google Analytics’ bounce rate, the percentage of readers who left your website without loading a second page or engaging with anything. And it’s much easier than bounce rate to follow.

With recirculation you can not only examine whether or not an article is performing well on average, but you can also begin to understand which pages your readers are likely to visit next, allowing you to choose — manually or algorithmically — the best links to include on each article page. This can do wonders for your core KPI.

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