Content is involved in any activity on the Internet and directly affects the quality of the site and its promotion. Do you want to improve your results? Then, apply content analysis to your web pages to improve your marketing strategy by highlighting bottlenecks and weaknesses.
Sociology views content analysis as a research method that provides a quantitative display of results. Analysts can gain insights using automated tools and statistics extraction techniques.
Psychology, using content analysis, study the influential effects that texts and graphics have on the audience. This research method is used not only when creating websites but also for other applications and public pages. In addition, content analysis is used for marketing purposes – it improves the quality of information perception by users.
For example, let’s look at the work of the SEO Checker tool by the company Plerdy, which is successfully used for SEO analysis of content. Additionally, you will learn more about quantitative, thematic content analysis and other types of research.
Plerdy SEO content analysis
A special development of Plerdy is the Website SEO Checker. It can be implemented as a plugin for Chrome and as one of the tools found on a web platform. It is used by both beginners and SEO professionals looking to improve their content analysis. Using it makes it easy to get the data you need in real-time. You can learn semantics and internal SEO of your website pages efficiently and effortlessly!
Work principles
The extension is embedded in the browser and works after clicking on the icon in the top menu of Chrome. Is your goal an SEO audit? Analysis of titles, descriptions, style attributes, and other elements is now simple and accessible. If you are interested in content analysis you can use it to learn about:
- The total number of characters and words.
- Percentage and number of unique words.
- The presence of stop words.
- Water percentage.
- Average sentence length.
- Readability of the text (FRES).
You will be able to instantly determine if any keywords are used in full in the text. What is the main emphasis in your content? The list of words is offered as a percentage.
In comparison with a separate service, the plugin has simplified functionality while still collecting useful information.
Analysis example
Let’s consider the features of the plugin based on this site. After entering the URL in the dedicated field, the Website SEO Checker performs a free check. The results of the SEO audit showed no problems. Content analysis revealed that the text contains 5662 characters and 1066 words. The average percentage of unique and stop words is 35% and 33%, respectively. At the same time, everything is in order with the readability of the content; a score of 62 is a good result.
Additionally
The Plerdy Website SEO Checker can be used for more than just a browser extension. Once the tracking code is installed, analysts will gain many additional benefits:
- Website analysis without loading the server.
- The ability to view SEO errors separately in desktop and mobile formats.
- Using filters to sort web pages by error type.
- The ability to compare SEO indicators – “WAS” / “HAS BEEN.”
- Integration of collected results with Google Search Console.
Add the time savings of an SEO site audit, automatic analysis of 100,000+ pages, and micro and macro conversions growth – and you have a universal analysis tool.
Content analysis example
The concept of content analysis involves the study of the text, graphics and other information, taking into account the topics they represent. For example, if you highlight common words and exclude prepositions, articles and introductory constructions, you will get a better idea of the subject of the text. Imagine: in your text, there are 5 top words – wool, dog, cat, haircut, design. Each of these words appear in the text more than 15 times. In this case, the concepts of “wool” and “haircut” are most often used together.
To measure the quantity, we use the already familiar SEO Checker tool from Plerdy. The results will allow you to understand the direction of the text – this is content from a site of a pet grooming studio.
You can then go according to the scheme, or from the opposite direction, to set the term and its synonyms. Next, check the target with the content analysis plugin and get statistics. For example, is the text dedicated to business? Use a set of terms: business, job, profit, sales, enterprise.
If the relevant terms are not found in the content, this text is not about business and development. So you can analyze any content and its thematic focus.
Qualitative content analysis
Quality content analysis is an unobtrusive research method. That is, the verification of information is carried out without the participation of its authors and addressees. Analysis can be conceptual and relational. The first concept involves counting thematic structures within the text (above, we performed a conceptual analysis). The relational analysis involves the search for connections between its parts.
For example, you can evaluate concepts on an emotional scale and predict their impact on a person. If the text talks about a person’s achievements or pleasant events, it will be highly appreciated. On the other hand, if it talks about crimes and violations, the assessment will be negative.
The relational analysis also allows you to figure out the relationship between terms and patterns by counting. This is a good way to analyze political and public speech. It is necessary to concentrate on the visible part of the information without being distracted by hidden meanings, ambiguous meanings or subtext.
Most often, experts use conceptual content analysis to understand trends. For example, by analyzing the comments under forum posts, you will understand the public’s reaction and develop a strategy for improving your content.
Content data analysis
We have already covered content analysis processes, but we have not broken them down into specific stages. There are five of them:
- Content selection. Formulate the subject of your research. For example, in politics, “Caring for children in the election campaign.” Then find the transcript of all of a candidate’s speeches.
- Definition of units and categories. Establish what exactly to look for in the text. Will it be an analysis of words and sentences’ frequency or a study of character characteristics? Continuing to follow the above example, we suggest looking for words: education, medicine, protection, payments, material assistance, consultation, psychologist, police, doctor, teacher.
- Development of coding rules. Conceptual categories should sort the semantic units highlighted in the previous step. For example, the category “Childcare” would include “education, medicine, protection.” The section “Measures to be taken” will include the words “payments, material assistance, consultation,” and the category “Responsible specialists” would contain “psychologist, police, doctor, teacher.”
- Encode the text. You need to count thematic words and indicate their number and percentage of usage in text at this stage. Again, special services and tools will help you with this.
- Analyze the results. Now you can think about what the results mean. For example, if a politician uses the words “protection, police, psychologist, consultation,” he focuses on the legal protection of children but pays little attention to health and education.
In real research, there are many more units, categories, and rules. We just gave an illustrative example: what they can be and on what principle the research works.
Analyze an Article
Simply reading news, scientific, fiction, or any other type of article will not be enough. It is equally important to analyze them – this develops critical thinking skills and highlights the essence of the content. Media content analysis takes place in three stages:
- Summarizing. Read the article without taking notes. Find and explain incomprehensible terms. Also, try writing a 3-4 sentence summary and explaining the content out loud.
- Annotating. Print or photocopy the article. Read it and mark the margins as needed. Highlight the author’s thesis, common concepts, and underdeveloped statements.
- Analysis. Summarize the article first. Next, investigate the author of the material himself. Find out how professional he is in this niche. Next, evaluate the article’s audience, its importance for the subject and society as a whole. Finally, find unresolved questions and show if the author was able to prove the selected thesis.
By following these steps, you will fully study the article you read, break it down brick by brick, and improve your understanding.
Content analysis in research
Content analysis in scientific research allows you to select relevant material for the basis of the work and check the professionalism of competitors. Since the participation of another person is not required here, the researcher’s task is to analyze different sources.
Also, content analysis is a favorite technique for marketing and social research, especially on the Internet. By counting the number of keywords, their use in constructions, and searching for similarities, one can single out society’s attitude towards a certain problem. As a result, you can create a portrait of a potential client or adjust your marketing campaign.
Thematic content analysis
Thematic content analysis is often used in media, sociology, marketing, and psychology. It allows you to highlight topics in demand and establish the relationship between them and the existing patterns. In contrast to qualitative content analysis based on numbers, connections and relationships of topics are traced here.
Often this type of analysis is used for investigative journalism, scientific research, and other important tasks. For example, imagine you are researching ad integrations. You’ve found that speakers and authors often talk about ROI and virality. To fully cover the topic and prepare high-quality analytics, you need to devote time to knowledge sections on this topic.
Content analysis sociology
Sociologists often use content analysis in their research to track changes in society and the emergence of relevant topics. The study documents, films, artwork, public texts and more to form and validate their point of view.
With the help of content analysis, sociologists found that gender stereotypes still operate in society. For example, women are more often portrayed as housewives and objects of sexual desire. To obtain this information, sociologists studied modern advertising campaigns of international brands.
Using additional statistics, sociologists can tell more about any phenomenon and its prospects. For example, they can trace the tendency for something to worsen or improve a situation. They have also found that it is more productive to solve a complex issue. So sociology can study the field of HR, politics, business strategy and other areas of public life that are in demand.
In addition to the frequency of using certain images and words, researchers record the subtext and meaning of the content. All this makes it possible to understand the basic culture and come to truly scientific sociological conclusions.
Content analysis psychology
Psychological analysis of content plays a significant role in research. It allows you to determine the connection between concepts and topics, to identify similar features and trends. In particular, thanks to content analysis, psychologists understand the tendency for certain social groups to display specific disorders, syndromes, and diseases.
Psychologists often identify a connection between a person’s residence and their tendency to display a mental disorder or certain conditions and problems. All of this is thanks to content analysis. However, the research mechanics do not change at the same time – the scheme is identical to other areas of knowledge.
Only keywords, topic sets, and analyzed content differ between the research fields. Moreover, the technique itself is used to process large amounts of data to save time. Therefore, both practicing and theoretical, psychology widely uses content analysis to track changes in consciousness and the prerequisites for them.
Conclusion
Content analysis is an important procedure that allows you to analyze content and highlight completeness and thematic focus. Additionally, it helps to predict the impact of a topic on the audience. This method is used by researchers and specialists who need the information to improve their quality of work.
To simplify the analysis of texts and entire sites, you should use auxiliary applications, tools, and services. With their help, a qualitative analysis takes no more than a minute. Moreover, the data obtained is as accurate as possible and indicates important characteristics of the content.
