Despite Google Analytics offering few built-in reports, its customizable features enable users to customize and create reports easily. In this tutorial, we will explore five distinct SEO reports (Search Engine Optimization), allowing you to optimize your SEO strategies effectively.
Let’s get into it!
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Table of Contents
Here’s what you will learn in this article
- What is Organic Search, and why should you care?
- First things first
- #1. Organic search landing pages
- #2. Devices of organic search traffic
- #3. Search Engines
- #4. Google Search Console Reports
- #5. Behavior Flow of Organic Search Traffic
- Final Words
Video Tutorial
If you prefer video content, here’s a tutorial from my YouTube channel. Some parts of the GA4 interface have changed since this video was published, but the overall idea still remains valid.
What is Organic Search, and why should you care?
If you’re new to digital analytics, you may not know what organic search is and its significance. Organic search refers to website traffic that comes naturally from search engines like Google or Bing without paying for placement through advertising.
Organic search brings highly relevant traffic from users actively seeking out your site. Knowing what leads to organic search sessions and what users do in these sessions can provide genuine insight into areas of your business and site to invest in.
First things first
I will be referencing the Reports section of GA4 throughout this tutorial. Since GA4 is customizable, your property may not look the same as mine, so the location of a report may be elsewhere.
You can also add a report collection to your reports tab—if you don’t have one—by going to the Library and publishing the collection for the referenced reports. I will reference the “Life Cycle” and “User” collections in this article (which will look like this at the time of writing this article).
Go to Reports and click “Library” at the bottom of the panel.
Here, go to the collection where you want to store your new reports—either a published one if you have one or a new unpublished one—and click “Edit collection”.
Now, you can create a new topic (each collection can have up to five topics) called “SEO”. Apply the changes and “save changes to current collection”.
You will add the first four reports from this tutorial to this folder. Keep reading to learn more!
#1. Organic search landing pages
What users see when first landing on your site will greatly impact whether they proceed and, if they do, what actions they take. Understanding the pages users are landing on can tell you where to focus your time and energy.
Go to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens.
In the top right corner, click the pencil icon to customize the report.
Under “Dimensions”, add “Landing page + query string” and remove all the other dimensions.
Under “Metrics,” remove “Views” and add “Sessions” as the first metrics (drag it to the top of the list).
Add a filter: “Session default channel group” contains “Organic Search”.
Save as a new report and name it “Landing pages – organic search”.
Now, head to the library and edit the published collection containing your created SEO topic. Find the report you just made and drag it into the topic.
Select “Save changes to current collection”.
#2. Devices of organic search traffic
Different devices have varying screen sizes and resolutions, so knowing the devices users use most often can help you optimize your site’s layout, design, and functionality.
Head to Reports > User > Tech > Tech details.
In the top right corner, click the pencil icon to customize the report.
Under “Dimensions”, set “Device Category” as the default dimension (or a different device dimension, like “Device Model”).
Add a filter: “Session default channel group” contains “Organic Search”.
Save as a new report called “Tech details – Organic Search”.
Again, head back to the Library and edit the published collection that contains the SEO topic you created. Find the report you just made and drag it into the topic.
Select “Save changes to current collection”.
#3. Search Engines
Knowing the search engines that most often lead users to your site organically can help you to adapt your marketing strategies to optimize for the search engines that yield the highest returns.
I think you’re getting that pattern with these reports. Go to Reports > Life cycle > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
In the top right corner, click the pencil icon to customize the report.
Update the “Dimension” section to remove all but the “Session source” (or custom channel group if you notice that the data is not aggregating in the way that you want).
Filter the report by “Session default channel group” contains “Organic Search”.
Save it as a new report and name it “Search engines”.
Lastly, go to the Library, edit the published collection containing the “SEO” topic and drag the report over.
Save the changes to the current collection.
#4. Google Search Console Reports
There are many benefits of linking Google Search Console with GA4, but one stand out is that you can see what keywords are driving traffic to your site and how your site ranks for specific search queries, allowing you to identify keywords to optimize your content.
Once you have linked the Google Search Console with your GA4 property, you must wait at least 24 hours to start collecting data.
Once you have made the connection, you will find a new library collection available called “Search Console”.
Go to Report > Library > Edit published collection (Life cycle) and Search “Google”. There will be two reports:
- “Google organic search traffic”
- “Queries: organic Google search query”
Move both these reports to the “SEO” topic and “save changes to current collection”.
#5. Behavior Flow of Organic Search Traffic
Knowing how users got to your site is great, but what happens after that? Where do they go? Path exploration can help you explore past the initial landing page.
Go to Explore and click “Path Exploration”.
Click “Start Over” to get a blank report. For the starting point, select “Page path and screen class” and find the page path for your site’s homepage.
We want to only look at data for the segment of users that came from Organic Search, so in the Segments section, click the “+” to create a new segment.
Select “Session segment” and the inclusion will be “Session default channel group” contains “Organic Search”.
Save and name this segment “Organic search visitors”.
This will show you what pages users visited immediately after landing on your site, but you can continue clicking through the steps to follow specific paths past this point.
Note that you cannot add this to the SEO report folder with the previous reports.
5 SEO Reports in Google Analytics 4: Final Words
And there we have it—five simple, customized reports that will allow you to optimize your SEO strategies effectively. Four of the five reports can be created without any additional work outside of the basic GA4 implementation, but one will require linking Google Search Console with GA4.
If you have created SEO reports other than those shown in this article, share the details in the comments below!
