So you’ve done your SEO, you’re getting some visits but you’d
like more. Google Analytics can only tell you the keywords and
pages that are being found and not the ones that aren’t.
Fortunately Google Webmaster Tools
(opens new window) can show you the keywords you’re
website is being listed for.
If you don’t have Google Webmaster Tools, signing up is easy –
we’ve put a quick guide together if you’ve already got Google
Analytics: Verifying Google Webmaster Tools
with Google Analytics.
To see the Searches in Google that have shown links to your
pages, log into Webmaster Tools and select the site you’re
interested in. Click on Your site on the web then click on
Search Queries.
This shows you the Queries that users searched for on
Google. Impressions is how often your site was listed by
Google for that Query. Clicks is how many people clicked
on a link to your site from results for a Query. Avg.
position is the average position that your site appeared at in
the Google search results for a Query.
Impressions, Clicks and Avg. position all have Change
beside them. Change is the change over the most recent period from
the previous period. By default the number of days per period is
30. So the change for Impression is the number of impressions in
the last 30 days compared to the 30 days before that.
You can limit the list of Queries to searches on Google for
Pages, Image, Video or Mobile. You can also focus on one of the
local Google search engines you were searched on through the
Countries drop down list.
Clicking on a Query gives you more information. It shows you
which of your pages were linked to from the keyword. It also breaks
down your pages' performance based on their position in the search
results for that Query.
As with comparing data from different types of analytics (such
as Google Analytics with Web Server logs) there will be differences
in the numbers you see between different sources. Google Analytics
may show more or less clicks for a given keyword to a given page.
Don’t get too hung up on the differences, they will drive you
slowly insane.
Now at the moment you’re faced with even more data than you had
when you just had Google Analytics. Data is interesting, but you
need to make some use of it. With the Search Queries
display, you can identify the queries that you would like people to
be clicking to visit your website, that aren’t getting you clicks.
You can see if the problem is you’re just not getting listed often
enough. Maybe your page just isn’t listed high enough up the
listing for you to get clicks. Maybe it’s got a high position
listing, but you’re not getting clicked on.
If you’re not being listed often enough or high enough up the
listings, you may want to check your on-page search engine optimisation or think about some
link building. If there isn’t a lot of competition for the search
term in Google Ad words, you might want to bid on some advertising
for those Queries.
If you’re already listed in a high position for the search term,
you want to try and see why you’re not getting click throughs. Have
you over optimised your page title and description so that they are
excellent for SEO but don’t attract clicks? It could be that the
title and description need basic work because they’ve never been
look at. It could be your competitors’ have more useful or
attractive sounding pages. Maybe one of your competitors is placing
adverts in Google that are taking the traffic from all your hard
SEO effort.
At least now you’ve got a way of seeing if there is a problem
and quantifying it.