It’s been hard not to hear or talk about GA4 over the past year.

It was one of Google’s most talked about updates in the SEO community and beyond – although it wasn’t directly linked to SEO strategy or tactics.

Google Analytics is the popular platform for monitoring, measuring and understanding interactions with our websites. While reports, data types (“not made available to anyone”?), and specific features have changed over the years, usage of the platform has not waned.

Now that Google Analytics’ Universal Analytics has reached its end of life, it’s time to get acquainted with GA4.

Whether you migrated months ago, were automatically migrated from Google, or are starting from scratch, I want to share five key reports you need to know to measure your SEO campaigns and efforts.

traffic detection report

Let’s start with what I think is the most important and relevant report: Traffic Acquisition. The report aims to help website owners understand where visitors are coming from before they land on the website.

So why should this matter for SEO purposes?

The Traffic Acquisition report allows you to measure how your SEO campaigns compare to other channels and as part of an overall integrated marketing effort.

How many visitors come from organic search versus search? How engaged are organic visitors compared to those who come via email? There are so many comparisons and details to look at here.

This is one of the first and most important sources of data to connect many dots between natural and intentional influences you have in attracting audiences to your website’s content.

Screenshot of GA4, June 2023

By default, GA4 uses a data-driven attribution model that includes an algorithm to determine how to give credit to different channels during a user’s journey.

While data-driven attribution could be used in Universal Analytics, in GA4 it is much richer, accounting for more than 50 different touchpoints for accurate attribution.

Metrics that can be viewed in the Traffic Acquisition report include:

• Average engagement.
• conversions.
• Engaged Sessions.
• Activated sessions per user.
• engagement rate.
• number of events.
• events per session.
• sessions.
• total sales.
• User.

Screenshot of GA4, June 2023

Conversion Reports

Conversion reports are important for SEOs as they can track the events that led a visitor to a conversion made on the website.

The report shows what triggered a conversion by tracking conversions by their event name and how you credited the conversion based on your attribution model.

The default report includes conversions, total revenue, and total user metrics.

Screenshot of GA4, June 2023

Setting up conversions in GA4 is different than in Universal Analytics.

In UA, goals were used to show conversions, while GA4 uses events. Upon setup, GA4 has a number of pre-existing events that can be flagged as conversions based on your marketing goals.

Existing events include:

• clicks.
• first visit.
• side view.
• scroll.
• session_start.
• send_form.
• view_search_results.

In most cases, you’ll want to configure your own events to track conversions that better fit your conversion funnel.

For websites that focus on lead generation, form submissions are usually the primary conversions. While GA4 tracks submit_form actions natively, it probably doesn’t provide enough data to provide the value you need.

For example, a lead for a newsletter submission might be somewhere else in the funnel or a secondary goal compared to a contact form submission. We recommend creating a custom event tag using Google Tag Manager.

As mentioned in the Traffic Acquisition Report section, GA4 uses a data-driven attribution model to more accurately attribute conversions to the correct channel as visitors interact with the site across multiple touchpoints.

Google Search Console reports

Google Search Console is one of the prime sources of performance data and information for SEO professionals and just like Universal Analytics, users can integrate GSC with GA4.

Similar to UA, there are two reports in GA4 that link to Search Console:

• Google organic searches: This report allows you to view GSC metrics by search query.
• Google organic search traffic: This report shows landing pages with Search Console and Analytics metrics.

The Search Console reports are unpublished by default. To view the reports, you must add a new Search Console link property through admin settings.

Screenshot of GA4, June 2023

In the Properties section, look for the Search Console Link button.

Screenshots from GA4, June 2023

While the reporting in GA4 cannot fully replace the level of organic reporting in GSC, it makes sense to have the data on one platform.

The biggest benefit is that site owners can see how organic visitors are interacting with the site in relation to specific landing pages.

Screenshot of GA4, June 2023

How does the data provided by the Google Organic Search Traffic Report for Landing Pages compare to the insights provided by the more generic Landing Page Report (which I will discuss in more detail in the next section)?

The Google Search Console report provides a comprehensive understanding of your website’s landing pages and visibility in Google’s search results.

It provides detailed metrics like impressions, clicks, click-through rates, and keywords, which are crucial for driving organic traffic to your landing pages.

In comparison, the landing page reports in GA4 provide a broader perspective by analyzing different traffic sources including organic search, direct traffic and referrals.

While both reports offer valuable insights, the Google Search Console report focuses specifically on landing page visibility and performance in Google’s search results.

It provides detailed data to evaluate organic search traffic and keyword performance.

Screenshot of GA4, June 2023

On the other hand, there are some limitations with Search Console integration with GA4. Unfortunately, GA4 only allows linking a data stream to a search console.

Landing Page Reports

The landing page report helps you understand which pages on your website are getting the most organic traffic.

By analyzing this data, you can identify high-performing pages that are attracting organic visitors and optimize other pages accordingly. You can also evaluate the bounce rate, average time on page, and conversion rate for each landing page to further refine your SEO strategy.

In the GA4 Landing Pages report, site owners can easily toggle secondary dimensions to see how a landing page is performing based on user origin.

In the landing page report, you can easily see how a page drives traffic to users at different stages of the funnel using different secondary dimensions.

For example, adding Session Source/Medium lets you see where a user is currently in their journey, while First User Source/Medium shows how users first interacted with the site.

Diploma

Whether you’re new to Google Analytics and considering GA4 your first foray into the Google Analytics ecosystem, or you’ve migrated and are finding your way, it’s important to find your way around and know where to prioritize time and focus .

Whether we like the new features, complain about what’s not in GA4, or just need some time to adjust, it’s there and we’ll certainly adapt to it and find new and deeper ways find to use our website data.

As always, please remember that data is data, whether it’s from Universal Analytics, GA4, or any other measurement platform. What matters most is what we do with the data, how we integrate it, use it, and generate meaningful insights.

Keep your measurement plan and what matters to you front and center while connecting the data to your marketing and SEO goals.

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Featured image: chayanuphol/Shutterstock