Easily see how folks find your site in search and what pages and posts they visit on your site with this new integration from Google.
Why You Need This
Savvy site owners pour over their analytics – like a hawk.
They want clear feedback on what type of content and marketing methods are bringing in the traffic.
But analytics only tell half the story.
How folks are finding you, or not finding you in Google search is just as telling.
That’s where key info from Google Search Console can help.
The Power of Search Console Data
Google Search Console gives you a wealth of data about how Google regards your site.
That data is split into two types:
- Crawl data
- Search data
Crawl data is Google’s way of letting you know about any issues its bots are having with accessing the data on your site.
Search data is Google’s way of informing you about how your content is performing in search, and how to make it better.
The search data is what Google has made a way for you to now integrate into Google Analytics.
More Data in One Place
Bringing Google Search data into your Analytics allows you to see:
- how potential site visitors are finding you in search
- what pages and posts they visit, and in what order
That’s a powerful combination!
This gives you keen insight into how well your SEO is working.
Where to See Your Search Console Data
In Google Analytics, go to Acquisitions.
You’ll see a new tab for Search Console.
The two most important sub tabs are:
- Landing Pages
- Queries
See Search Queries
You may be surprised at what you find in the Queries tab.
Semantic search and AI (artificial intelligence) has made Google smart.
It now thinks more like humans.
That means synonyms may have as much power as a target keyword.
Stop Keyword Stuffing
If you’re overusing a specific keyword or phrase in your posts to get them to rank only for that, you’re missing a whale of a lot of SEO opportunities.
In fact, we covered this topic in depth in the SEO Workshop to help folks bring their SEO out of doing it the 2012 way.
I showed one of my posts that has ranked on the first page of Google for three years and still brings me tons of traffic.
Then we had a look at the Content Analysis Tool in the Yoast SEO plugin.
They thought getting a green dot on a specific keyword or phrase was the way to go.
My post had mostly yellow and red dots.
And yet, there it was on the first page of Google.
It was eye opening to the workshop students, to say the least.
That’s why you definitely need to be looking at your Search Console data.
You’ve got to have that feedback to know how to create your content.
Seeing the actual queries folks typed into Google that brings up your site pages and posts in search will help you define more keywords and phrases to use in the mix of your title and content.
Landing Page Traffic
Once you know the queries, now you’ll want to see what pages/posts folks are visiting from them.
That’s the kind of data you’ll find in the Landing Page sub tab.
See the Flow of Traffic
Google Analytics already has a way for you to see what your top pages are, and then where folks click next on your site, and/or where they jump out.
You’ll find that data in Behavior > Flow.
While a query can’t be directly followed to a page or post, you’ll definitely get a clearer view of the overall patterns from search to pages/posts.
Powerful Data Combination
Seeing what folks type into a Google query and then being able to track traffic all the way through your site will give you a powerful insight into what’s most interesting to folks on your site.
This new integration from Google gives you that data all in one place.
Get Site Security and Performance Data
Having Analytics and Search Console data will also give you insight into the stark difference between human and bot visitors.
This is the same type of data I gather in site audits because it is critically important to know with regard to site security and performance issues.
It’s very likely that the hit count to your site will not match between Analytics and Search Console.
That’s because Search Console also tracks hits for duplicate content (on the non canonical link) as well as some bot crawls.
Analytics tracks in Sessions, which are only counted when the tracking code fires.
If a bot hits the page/post for just a moment, it may not get counted as a Session.
Plus, but Analytics and Search Console try to filter out bot hits. But they each do it differently.
FYI, if you want to see all human and bot hits, check your AWStats. That’s where I look during site audits too.
You may be shocked to discover just how much in system resources bots are chewing up.
You may also be able to find redirect issues with this data too by having a clue how many non-canonical hits you’re getting.
Need Help with Setup?
Having your site hit data in one place is the bomb.
Savvy site owners will be making super use of it.
There are a few steps you’ll need to take to set up this integration.
First, you’ll want to ensure that your site is verified properly in both Google Analytics and Search Console.
In Search Console, that includes every variation of your site’s URL.
That’s especially important if you want to convert your site to HTTPS.
Then you’ll be ready to set up this integration.
Both the DIY SEO course and the Webmaster Training courses have tutorials on how to verify your site properties in Google Analytics and Search Console and on how to set up this new integration for them.
