SEO Keywords with Google Analytics

SEO is one of the most powerful tools a brand can use to get found, and Google Analytics offers some great insights to help you maximize your SEO efforts.

We never tire of pointing the wonderful world of analytics that are offered to webmasters in the backend of Google Analytics. With a simple code, site owners are offered a wealth of insights when it comes to the search engine performance of their sites. Though all this information exists, few people are well versed in all that Analytics has to offer. The result? Missed insights that can be vital to the success of your website on search engines.

While it would not be possible to cover all that Google Analytics has to offer when it comes to insights in a single blog (there are multi-part courses that offer this) we thought we could discuss some of the tools webmasters can use to see how their websites are performing when it comes to keywords and search terms. Are you optimizing for SEO in the right places? Are the keywords you’ve chosen for SEO performing as well as you had hoped? If not, what keywords are the driving factor behind your SEO success?

Below is a set of helpful steps when it comes to both finding and using these insights for your SEO efforts in Google Analytics.

Where can I find these insights?

So, perhaps the most important thing we will need to know when it comes to using these insights is knowing where to find them. On your menu on the lefthand side of Google Analytics is a Traffic Sources tab. Under there you will see Search Engine Optimization and, beneath that, Queries. (NOTE: You will need to have Google Webmasters set up on your site in order to monitor these insights.) In the Queries section is where you will find the bread and butter of SEO keyword lists.

It is here that you will be able to start delving into the world of saved search keywords and see just how you are performing for those keywords you wish to rank for, and those that you did not even realize were a means through which people were finding you.

Isn’t that a treat?

Now that we know where we can find these keywords, it is important to understand what they mean with regards to our SEO, and how we can leverage this information to increase our rankings in search engines.

Analyze and Implement

SEO is an ongoing process. There will always be evolution in our SEO strategies, and this is one area that will show us how we should be evolving our SEO strategies in order to keep up with the market.

Once we arrive at the Queries section under Search Engine Optimization, we can begin to understand how we are being found on search engines. There are three means through which we can organize our search results: Impressions, Clicks, and Average Position. Impressions has to do with the number of times our site (homepage or landing page) has appeared in search results for a given keyword or phrase in a set period of time. Clicks has to do with the number of times people have clicked through to our site as a result of a searched keyword or phrase. Lastly, Average Position ranks our keywords based on, you guessed it, the average position in which our site ranks for a specified keyword or phrase. The table looks like this:

Taking these statistics into account, we can begin to see where we are performing best. Say, for example, you run a restaurant, and you optimized for “southern cuisine” in your initial SEO run. Well, say a few months after your launch, you notice that the majority of your clicks and impressions are coming from searches for “southern barbecue” as opposed to what you had initially optimized for. This will lead you to reevaluate your SEO strategy, and begin optimizing for a new set of keywords where you are seeing your highest return. Upon your next visit, you will see that not only have your impressions and clicks risen, but your average position will have gone up as well, as a result of your re-optimization.

Have you used these insights for your SEO in the back of Google Analytics? How so? What have you found to be the most beneficial way of using them? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!