How to use Google Analytics to Track SEO Success

28/07/2011 in SEO Leave a reply

Track SEO Success with Google Analytics

In my previous article ‘Don’t use Search Engine Ranking to Track SEO Success’ I discussed why we should not be focusing on search engine rankings when we are trying to judge the success of our Search Engine Optimisation. In this article I am going to introduce you to using Google Analytics to track SEO success.

Before we get started, this is what Wikipedia has to say about Google Analytics:

‘Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service currently in use at around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites. Another market share analysis claims that Google Analytics is used at around 49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites (as currently ranked by Alexa).

GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

Integrated with AdWords, users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. These can also be monetized. By using GA, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information to optimise or cull campaigns.

GA’s approach is to show high level dashboard-type data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into the report set. Through the use of GA analysis, poor performing pages can be identified using techniques such as funnel visualization, where visitors came from (referrers), how long they stayed and their geographical position. It also provides more advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.

Users can officially add up to 50 site profiles. Each profile generally corresponds to one website. It is limited to sites which have a traffic of fewer than 5 million pageviews per month (roughly 2 pageviews per second), unless the site is linked to an AdWords campaign.’

Ok, if you don’t already have a Google Analytics account, feel free to go here and sign-up. Don’t worry. The nice people at Google will give it you for free…

In the remainder of this article I am going to share the Google Analytics for this website so you can see for yourself how I track SEO success. I’m assuming that you are able to set up analytics on your website and Google has acknowledged that you have everything set up correctly. If you don’t know how to do this do a search or get in touch and I will help you get set up.

A lot about what I write about here on this blog is in the field of Social Media. Hence, many of the keywords that I have optimised my pages for are related to this field. Here are some of the Keyword Phrases that I am currently interested in and which I need to track SEO success for. Please note these are all highly relevant search terms to my blog and are designed to bring visitors that will be interested in what I am writing about:

My Keyword Phrases include: social media; social media manager; social media for business; social media networking; social media marketing; facebook advertising; syndicate blog posts.

The above will give you an idea of the area of search that I am interested in and for which I need to track SEO success for.

OK, lets take a look at Google Analytics. Don’t be scared by the interface, we are only interested in a few key areas. When you get more familiar you can start adding in new bits as you deem necessary.

After logging in you are presented with the Dashboard:

Google Analytics - Dashboard

We are interested specifically in the Traffic Sources, so click on either of the links that I have highlighted with the Red Arrows on the image above. This allows me to drill down into the report for Traffic Sources:

Traffic Sources

We are interested to see which Search Engines are providing us with traffic. So again we drill deeper into Analytics by clicking the link highlighted in the previous image. This results in the following:

Search Engines - Track SEO Success

As you can see from the above, this is a relatively new blog and I have been focusing all of my SEO on Google. I don’t really bother with the other search engines, but that’s just a personal choice. Either I am lazy or am just playing the percentage game!

Please note that I have highlighted some important filters in green. These are important if you are running paid advertising like Google AdWords. If you are running an AdWords campaign, please make sure that you click the ‘non-paid’ filter so that you can differentiate between organic and paid-for traffic.

By clicking on the individual Search Engines listed, you can see which Keyword Phrases were used to bring traffic to your site from that specific search engine. In the image below I have clicked on the google link and you can see the search terms that brought traffic from Google. The image shows the top ten, but in your account you will be able to see them all:

Keyword Phrases from Google

You will probably have noticed that the Keyword Phrases listed in Google Analytics do not match perfectly with the Keyword Phrases that I have optimised my pages for. That’s ok… The next thing we should do is to scroll to the bottom of the page and use the filters provided.

By typing the Keyword Phrase that you have optimised for in the ‘find keyword: containing’ box and clicking the Go button you will see all the related phrases to your specific Keyword Phrase (See image below). This represents the true value of your optimisation efforts.

Filtering Keywords

When I filter on the Keyword Phrase ‘social media’  I can see that my keyword phrase and a group of  58 variations of the phrase all that have brought 67 visitors to my site because of the optimisation of pages using the phrase ‘social media’. Ranking Reports simply do not deliver this type of information. See image below:

Filter on your Keywords

So, now we know that our optimisation effort is paying off, we need to check that the optimised pages are pulling traffic for our optimised Search Term. Click on Content and view the Overview as shown in the image below:

Content Overview

Click on the link highlighted in the image below to display your entrance keywords.

Entrance Keywords

You will be presented with a list of Keywords for  the page on your site that attracts the most page views. For me this is the Home Page. Obviously, we are interested in results for other pages and these can simply be displayed using the Content drop down highlighted in yellow below:

Keywords on Other Pages

One thing to be aware of here, you will not necessarily see the page listed in the drop down that you are interested in. If this is the case simply type a word that you know is part of the URL of the page you are researching in the search box within the content drop down. Highlighted in Green on the image above.

So, now we can see all the entrance keywords for the specific page that you are researching. At this point we need to ask ourselves the BIG QUESTION:

Are the Keywords displayed in Google Analytics the Keyword you optimised the page for plus variants?

If they are… Thats great! Your SEO is bringing you targeted traffic…

If they are not… Don’t despair! Sometimes you just have to wait a little longer before you start seeing targeted traffic, or perhaps the phrase that you are attempting to use is too competitive. If so, you could consider using a different but related phrase or simply aim to get even more anchor text links pointing into the page. Specific issues require specific attention… Get creative and try a few things.

All this is great, but the true indicatior of SEO success is conversions

In my next article in this series I will be explaining how to set up and track conversion goals.

If you have any thoughts or questions about this article please comment in the box provided below. Or if you prefer contact us via our contact page.

Other Articles in this series:

Don’t use Search Engine Ranking to Track SEO Success
How to use Google Analytics to Track SEO Success
Conversion is the best indicator of SEO Success

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