Google Analytics has recently launched new reports for analysing organic search traffic. Now, you can see Google Analytics data and search engine data side-by-side, in the same report, to get deeper insights into how well organic search traffic from Google performs on your site.
Google Analytics provides four reports related to search traffic: landing pages, countries, devices (desktop, mobile, and tablet), and queries. To check these new reports, link your Search Console property to your Google Analytics property. Log in to Google Analytics, select the Reporting tab, then expand Acquisition followed by Search Console.
Landing Pages
This report shows the top pages from Google’s organic search listings — impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average position are on the left side. Meanwhile, on the right side, you can find these Google Analytics metrics: sessions, bounce rate, pages per session, goals, and transactions.
The report will identify the following:
- Landing pages that rank high and attract visitors organically but have a high bounce rate (Consider optimising those landing pages for better engagement or conversion.)
- Landing pages that have a low bounce rate and high conversion rate but don’t rank well (Consider improving your search optimisation on these pages.)
You can view landing pages by search query.
Countries
This report will let you compare organic traffic from Google search by country. Using the report, check which countries generated the most impressions and clicks, and which generated the most transactions and goals. You can also uncover how well international visitors convert through organic search. Drill down on each country for a list leading landing page data from visitors in a particular country.
Devices
Through this report, you can see the number of impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average position by device type (desktop, mobile, tablet) along with the number of e-commerce transactions and revenue for a particular device. If enabled, you can shift from the “Ecommerce” menu to “Goals” (in the Conversions on the left side menu) to compare organic search metrics with your internal goals.
Nearly 50 percent of traffic for many e-commerce sites now comes from mobile devices. This report will show you if your SEO strategy is working on mobile. You can also use the report to see if your landing pages do better on desktop or mobile. If your traffic converts better on desktop, consider a deeper analysis of your mobile traffic to find areas you need to improve. You can drill down into each device type to view landing page data for a particular device.
Queries
This report gives insights for some of the keywords that drove organic traffic to your site. The report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position for each reported keyword.
Average position is one metric you need to watch over time. If your average position improves, your site will likely gain more impressions and clicks. But if it drops, try to find out why.
You can also use the report alongside AdWords campaigns. If you’re targeting keywords in AdWords which already rank high in organic search, consider pausing those campaigns to check if your traffic still maintains its level. If so, you may be spending too much on traffic that will organically occur. This can enable you to allocate those funds to other keywords.
Clicks vs Sessions
For each of the reports, the number of clicks and sessions may be different. There are two probable reasons why this can happen. It’s either you have custom filters set in Google Analytics or you’ve enabled bot filtering — which both result in lower sessions.
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