Google Analytics 4 for SEO: How to find key data insights

SEO and Content Marketing Expert at SE Ranking specializing in industry research around SEO and AI trends.
Reviewed by Head of SEO at SE Ranking. Anastasia has extensive experience in website technical and on-page optimization, link building, and content marketing

Key Takeaways

• GA4 offers insights into organic traffic, including which keywords and landing pages bring visitors. You can also track user behavior across different devices and locations, as well as measure individual page performance using metrics like sessions, engagement, time spent, and conversions.
• You can track up to 30 conversion events in your GA4 property to assess whether website traffic brings real value to your business.
• If you want to perform custom analysis and explore complex relationships within your data, you can use the Free Form feature. It’s essentially a blank canvas where you can create custom SEO reports tailored to your specific needs.
• GA4’s Path Exploration feature allows you to visualize customer journeys: check where visitors land, what actions they take, and what pages they move to.
• By integrating GSC with GA4, you can understand which search terms drive traffic from Google.
• You can integrate GA4 with Looker Studio and SEO tools like SE Ranking to collect and visualize business metrics on search engine performance and user behavior for a more comprehensive view.

How to get SEO insights from Google Analytics

If you want to know how to track SEO progress in Google Analytics, let’s go through the most frequently asked questions by SEO specialists and see where to find the reports that answer them in the new interfaces of Google Analytics.

1. How much organic traffic are you getting, and is the volume growing?

As of 2024, organic search continues to be a significant driver of website visits, accounting for approximately 33% of overall traffic across various industries. Google Analytics recognizes the most popular search engines and aggregates traffic from them in the Organic Search traffic channel.

You can view GA4 organic traffic data in the Traffic Acquisition report under the Acquisition section. Select Session default channel grouping to compare the amount of traffic you get from SEO over the rest of the channels. You can also select different time periods and compare them.

The table below displays the direct, organic, paid, referral, and other types of traffic as well as stats on each. You can compare the data by dates and analyze the changes.

2. How much traffic do different search engines bring (Google, Yahoo!, Bing)?

If your website is targeting different markets, you might need to consider alternative search engines that are widely used in specific countries. This can help you see if Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, or any other Google alternative is responsible for driving your traffic.

In the same Traffic Acquisition report, under Acquisition, select Sessions source/medium as the Primary Dimension. Then, type ‘organic’ in the search bar to filter out traffic from other mediums. In the table, you’ll see stats on users, sessions, and conversions coming from different search engines.

3. How to see which queries bring in organic traffic?

With Google Analytics 4, you can gain valuable insights into how users come to your site organically. Yet, the tool doesn’t provide data on organic keywords by default because it aims to protect the privacy of website visitors.

To view and analyze organic keywords that drive traffic and conversions, and to optimize your website accordingly, you need to connect your Google Search Console account to GA4.

Here’s how to do it:

• Go to the Admin in the left panel and select Search Console Links under Product Links in the Property column.
• Then, click Link and choose the account you want to link your property to. Confirm and click Next to choose your site’s web data stream. Review and submit your settings.

This integration feature allows you to see two new reports in your GA4, including:

• Google Organic Search Queries. This report shows search queries and related GSC metrics.
• Google Organic Search Traffic. This report shows landing pages and related GSC metrics.

These reports won’t appear by default in your GA4. To add them, go to the Library and publish the GSC collection of reports. Once you do this, you’ll see the Search Console tab under Retention.

4. How to see organic landing pages?

If you want to analyze the pages where users land after conducting an organic search, Google Analytics offers two straightforward methods:

Method 1: Customized Google Analytics SEO report

First, navigate to Reports > Engagement > Pages & Screens.

Next, customize the report by clicking the Pencil button in the top right corner.

In the Dimensions section, include Landing Page + Query String. For Metrics, consider adding sessions, bounce rate, and conversions.

Since the report now displays data for all types of traffic, you’ll need to apply a filter to focus on organic search traffic only. For this, use the Session Default Channel Grouping dimension and select Organic Search.

Now that the main part of customization is done, save this new report. For this, click Save as a New Report button at the top and give your report a descriptive name (e.g., Landing Pages).

Method 2: Direct Filter on Landing Pages Tab

Go to the Landing Pages tab in Google Analytics.

Apply a filter where Session medium exactly matches Organic.

By following either method, you’ll be able to see the landing pages that attract visitors from organic search.

5. How to check traffic by channels?

GA4 has default channel groups. Channels are predefined sources of website traffic. The default channel group includes traffic sources that GA4 uses to classify the traffic your website gets.

The default group has 18 traffic sources that can be considered in user, session, and event-scope dimensions.

To open Channel Groups, go to the Admin sections and choose Channel Groups under Data Settings.

Here, you’ll see the default group. As of the recent update, you have the option to create custom channel groups.

To check traffic by channel, go to the Traffic Aquisition under the Aquisition report tab and choose Default or Custom channel groups as the primary dimension.

6. How to find your site’s search terms?

Another great way to use Google Analytics for SEO is to monitor keywords people enter in your website’s search field.

GA4 automatically tracks site search activity through an event called view_search_results. You can find it in the Events report under the Engagement section. However, the basic report only shows the number of searches performed, not the actual search terms used.

To gain meaningful insights into user search behavior, you need to create a custom dimension. Here’s how you can do this:

1. Navigate to Reports > Engagement > Events and click the Pencil icon in the top of the screen.

2. Replace the Event Name dimension with a Search Term dimension. Keep essential metrics like Event count, Users, and Event count per user.

3. Save this customized report and name it accordingly (e.g., Site Search Terms).

Then, you will need to make the report accessible to every user of the GA4 property. To do this, go to Library > Life Cycle and add the newly created Site Search report to the Engagement section within this collection.

Once complete, you can find the Site Search report under the Engagement section.

7. Do content distribution and link building bring referral traffic?

Search engines are not the only source of visitors that you can leverage as an SEO specialist. You can generate a substantial volume of traffic by placing links from blogs, social media, review platforms, email campaigns, and forums. All visitors arriving to your site through these links count as referral traffic in Google Analytics.

To see referral traffic in GA4, use the Traffic Acquisition report under Acquisition. Choose the Session source / Medium dimension and type referral in the search box to filter all sources of referral traffic in the table.

8. What countries do your users come from, and how do they engage?

If your website’s language is English, expect a multinational audience. Your product might not be global but perhaps you’re targeting a specific country, state, or even city. By checking where your website visitors are coming from, you’ll find out if your content attracts potential customers or window shoppers who never convert.

In Google Analytics 4, you can find geographical data under the User attributes section in the Demographics Details report. From there, you’ll see statistics by Country, Region, or City.

You can also apply filters to see only organic traffic from different countries. To do this, click Add filter, include Session medium, and select Organic in Dimension values. Then, hit the Apply button.

9. Does website traffic bring real value to my business?

If you need to report on the number of organic visitors who filled out a form on your website, made a purchase, or completed another important action, you should configure Conversions in your analytics properties. Tracking conversions will help you connect your SEO and sales processes.

In GA4, all user interactions are captured as events. Events are any user interaction with your site, and among them, conversions are the most important. Not all events are conversions, but you can choose which ones are for your website.

To do this, select Admin on the left panel and click Events in the Property column.

You can modify one of the existing events and mark the resulting event as a conversion, or create an absolutely new conversion event. Move the toggle to mark particular events as conversions.

10. Can I see the most and least converting pages for different goals?

Once you get a stable flow of organic traffic to your website, you’ll want to know what pages convert well and what pages need improvement. By setting up your goals in Google Analytics, you’ll be able to evaluate conversion rates page-by-page.

11. Can I visualize user journeys on the website?

Google Analytics provides tools that help you visualize your user journeys. You can check where visitors land, what actions they take, and what pages they move to. This will help you identify the most beaten paths that users take through your website and compare them with the user journey that you want them to follow.

12. Can I segment data to get more granular insights?

Sometimes you’ll want to analyze data for a particular group of users or sessions. You can do this in GA4, but make sure to use segmentation wisely.

13. Are there any technical issues with page load or design?

One issue that could stop organic visitors from converting is poor user experience. Low page load speed or design issues on mobile devices can cause your bounce rate to increase.

14. Is our content relevant and good enough for users?

This is a tough question even for Google Analytics. GA4 offers a range of engagement metrics to help you evaluate the quality of your content, but be careful with these metrics because they can easily be misinterpreted.

15. How to check where and what links your visitors click on your website?

Links are another important dimension in Google Analytics 4. By applying them, you can collect data from your site’s outbound links and see if users clicked on them. This will help you understand how users interact with your website and how to build stronger funnels.

16. How to combine GA4 data with other SEO data or business metrics?

GA4 data is essential for informing SEO strategies, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. A comprehensive website performance analysis requires a holistic view, combining search engine performance, user behavior, and broader business metrics.

Approach Google Analytics wisely!

Getting a complete understanding of your online results is hard without knowing how to use GA for SEO reporting. GA can help you evaluate how effective your optimization efforts have been, whether you have a new website or have been in the digital arena for quite some time. It helps you make data-based adjustments that are crucial to your SEO campaigns. Still, you must know which reports to examine and how to interpret data accurately.