Using Google Analytics for SEO
A tutorial by Dan Barker - expert commentator on the Smart Insights blog. Thanks to Dan for all his efforts to create and share this - it has been well received on the Twittersphere.
Content
1
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
ACTIONABLE SEO:
ADDING EXTRA DATA TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Here s a tutorial to create an actionable SEO report like the following:
This guide will show you how to add extra data to your Google Analytics reports so that you can easily take some positive actions to improve your natural search rankings.
y y y
The original article referencing this tutorial can be found on the Smart Insights Blog here: http://bit.ly/ga-seo You should download the example Excel workbook here:http://bit.ly/ga-workbook The example Excel sheet should allow you to paste your own results over the top, or to reverse engineer the file.
By following this tutorial you ll be able to answer questions like: 1. 2. 3. 4. Which pages on my site should I concentrate on to improve my natural traffic? Which keywords do I have the potential to increase traffic for the quickest? What should I do first?! Roughly - what share of the market do I have for each of my main keywords?
The 3 pools of data we re going to combine are: 1. 2. 3. Google Analytics search terms Google s Keyword Tool data Rankings from SEOBook s Rank Checker
We ll use Excel to combine them though you could happily do the same with a Google Spreadsheet manually, , , or even on paper if you ve got a load of time on your hands . Again - the example Excel file at http://bit.ly/ga-workbook should allow you to copy & paste your own data over the top or to reverse engineer the process.
DATA SOURCE 1: GOOGLE ANALYTICS
The report we re going to use from Google Analytics is one of the standards: the top keywords report. We ll narrow it to get rid of our brand terms & extend itso that we get the top 100 results.
2
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
This basically tells us over the period we re looking at,these were the most valuable keywords bringing traffic to the site . Some of the data we ll use later is for monthly periods, so it s best to either grab Google Analytics data for a month, or to divide it down so that it s equivalent to a month (for example ,you might want to pull a year s worth of data & divide it by 12 to give you monthly averages).
HOW TO GRAB THE GOOGLE ANALYTICS DATA:
1. 2. Log into the account & profile for your site with Google Analytics. In the left-hand menu, choose Traffic Sources, then within that click Keyword:
3.
Next, limit your report to just show natural traffic. To do that, underneath the main graph look for the little Show: total | paid | non-paid switch & set it to non-paid :
4. 5.
Next, at the bottom of the report, extend the rows to 100 . Now, using the filter keyword option at the bottom,exclude your brand terms:
6.
Export this data using the Export tab at the top of the page.( CSV or CSV for Excel both work fine for this):
7. 8.
Once you ve opened this in Excel, delete everything above the line which begins Keyword | Visits | Pages/Visit You should have something a little like this:
Here are 3 notes on what we did above:
£
y
y y
The reason we e clude brand terms is those will take up quite a few of the top search phrases and we should already be ranking #1 for them hence they are not very useful here. (there are many other reasons why you would want to focus on non-brand terms first, but those are outside of the scope of this document!) In the e ample filter, we re using the | symbol. This acts as an or in the filter box. So, in the example we re saying don t show me any results including either hp or hewlett or packard . Note: You may want to narrow this down to a single search engine (eg. Google) as we re using Google s keyword estimates later on. (You may also like to add your ecommerce data to the report so that you can sort by revenue, etc.)
¥ ¢ ¤
The Google Keyword is a free tool that gives very rough estimates showing how many people search for a given phrase. It s worth noting that the tool is by no means totally accurate, its coverage is patchy, and it has some very odd bugs. But - it is far more accurate than any other free tool & is useful if you bear its limitations in mind.
HO
TO GET THE DATA
Here s how to get the data we re looking for from the Google Keyword Tool:
1. 2. 3. 4.
Visit the Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.googl .com/select/K o d ToolExternal Enter the CAPTCHA code. Make sure that your Locations & Languages options are for your local region (you can see these just to the right of Advanced Options + . Take your list of 100 keywords from the Google Analytics report (column A from the file we produced), and paste that into the ord or Phrase box in the top left of the keyword tool. (it should look a little like the image below)
¨
¨¨
©¨§
DA A
C 2: G
GL K
W
D TOOL
¡
3
dan barker | @danbarker | originally pos ed at http://www.s artinsights.com
¦
4
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
5. 6.
7.
Click Search . In the left hand-hand navigation, scroll down and uncheck Broad. Now check Exact . (We mentioned previously that the Google Keyword Tool only gives rough estimates. Using exactgives you the most accurate picture the tool allows of the exact number of searches for the term.) You should see something like the following:
8.
Once you have that, click on the little download icon and export the results.
y y
Occasionally the tool will skip keywords, you may want to add exras t Occasionally it will add in extras, you may want to fiddle around with the settings in the left -hand menu to exclude some, etc.
DATA SOURCE 3: SEOBOO
S RAN CHEC E R
5
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
Aaron Wall s Rank Checker is a Firefox plugin for checking your rankings. There are many similar tools around (for example Advanced Web Ranking ). We are using Rank Checker for the following reasons:
y y y y
It s free. It s really easy to use. As it s a firefox extension, most people should be able to use it. (ie. No need to install a complete software package). You can use it for numerous local google domains (.ie, .co.uk, etc).
DOWNLOADING RANK CHECKER
To download Rank Checker, open Firefox and do the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Go to http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ Click on download . Sign up for a free account. Go back to http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ Click download again. Install the tool & restart Firefox.
SETTING UP & RUNNING RANK CHECKER
Once you ve restarted Firefox, go to Tools > Rank Checker > Options in the menus. 1. To set it up to run the fastest, choose the following options (making sure to choose your local domain if it s something other than google.co.uk):
6
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
2. 3. 4.
Once you ve done that & saved it, open Rank Checker by clicking its icon in the bottom -right of Firefox (or choosing Tools > Rank Checker > Run from the menus). In the tool, click Add Multiple Ke ywords . Add your domain, and your list of keywords (from the original Google Analytics report we created) & click Add & then Close .
5.
Back in the main screen, click Start & you should see something like the following:
7
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
In other words, it shows you the current rank for the term in Google UK & the page that is ranking. Once this is complete, click Export results to CSV to download the complete file.
A couple of notes on this:
y y
If any of this is unclear, there s a gre at little video tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= __ngJcrOYU It s always worth hand-checking a few of the rankings to make sure they re in the right ballpark to what you actually see in Google.
PULL N G IT ALL TOG T HER IN EXCEL
An example worksheet showing how you can combine our 3 datasources can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/ga-workbook Here s an explanation of the Excel Spreadsheet one worksheet at a time. Take each of the reports we ve saved so far & save them into the individual worksheets within the Excel file. th The 4 Results sheet combines them all. If you open the example workbook, you ll see there are 4 worksheets in the file: 1. 2. 3. 4. GA-data (google analytics data) KT-data (keyword tool data) RC-data (rank checker data) Results (everything combined into an actionable report)
" !
Here s an example of each. From this, you should be able to reverse engineer your own version (or paste your own data on top!)
SHEET 1: GA-DATA
8
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
This worksheet contains the Google Analytics data. GA puts a lot of messy, not-very-useful data into the top of the file. It s worth removing the top few-dozen rows, so it starts with the Keyword | Visits | row:
If you look at the top-left here, you ll see I ve given the data the name analyticsdata . To do that, select the whole worksheet and type analyticsdata into that box. This allows you to then reference the table by name later on.
SHEET 2: KT -DATA
This worksheet contains the data we took from the Keyword Tool. It should look a little something like this:
SHEET 3: RC -DATA
This sheet contains the Rank Checker results. It should look like this:
9
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
(again, I ve defined a selection of data here called ranker ).
SHEET 4: RESULTS (PU TTING IT ALL TOGETHE R)
The final sheet pulling all of this together looks like this:
Here s an explanation of each of the columns there: A. B. C. D. E. F. G. The keyword we re looking at from the Google report (GA-data sheet). The estimated volume from the Keyword Tool (KT-data sheet). The current visits we re getting for the keywords (GA -data sheet). Our current rank in our chosen search engine for the term from Rank Checker (RC-data sheet). Our current share of the total estimated volume (column C as a percentage of column B). [blank] The page currently ranking for the term.
HOW TO USE THIS FILE TO INCREASE YOUR NAT URAL SEARCH TRAFFIC
Fo a full explanation on ho to use this file to i p ove you natu al search ran ings & increase your traffic, visit the full overview at http://bit.ly/ga-seo
& # # # % $ #
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
ACTIONABLE SEO:
ADDING EXTRA DATA TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Here s a tutorial to create an actionable SEO report like the following:
This guide will show you how to add extra data to your Google Analytics reports so that you can easily take some positive actions to improve your natural search rankings.
y y y
The original article referencing this tutorial can be found on the Smart Insights Blog here: http://bit.ly/ga-seo You should download the example Excel workbook here:http://bit.ly/ga-workbook The example Excel sheet should allow you to paste your own results over the top, or to reverse engineer the file.
By following this tutorial you ll be able to answer questions like: 1. 2. 3. 4. Which pages on my site should I concentrate on to improve my natural traffic? Which keywords do I have the potential to increase traffic for the quickest? What should I do first?! Roughly - what share of the market do I have for each of my main keywords?
The 3 pools of data we re going to combine are: 1. 2. 3. Google Analytics search terms Google s Keyword Tool data Rankings from SEOBook s Rank Checker
We ll use Excel to combine them though you could happily do the same with a Google Spreadsheet manually, , , or even on paper if you ve got a load of time on your hands . Again - the example Excel file at http://bit.ly/ga-workbook should allow you to copy & paste your own data over the top or to reverse engineer the process.
DATA SOURCE 1: GOOGLE ANALYTICS
The report we re going to use from Google Analytics is one of the standards: the top keywords report. We ll narrow it to get rid of our brand terms & extend itso that we get the top 100 results.
2
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
This basically tells us over the period we re looking at,these were the most valuable keywords bringing traffic to the site . Some of the data we ll use later is for monthly periods, so it s best to either grab Google Analytics data for a month, or to divide it down so that it s equivalent to a month (for example ,you might want to pull a year s worth of data & divide it by 12 to give you monthly averages).
HOW TO GRAB THE GOOGLE ANALYTICS DATA:
1. 2. Log into the account & profile for your site with Google Analytics. In the left-hand menu, choose Traffic Sources, then within that click Keyword:
3.
Next, limit your report to just show natural traffic. To do that, underneath the main graph look for the little Show: total | paid | non-paid switch & set it to non-paid :
4. 5.
Next, at the bottom of the report, extend the rows to 100 . Now, using the filter keyword option at the bottom,exclude your brand terms:
6.
Export this data using the Export tab at the top of the page.( CSV or CSV for Excel both work fine for this):
7. 8.
Once you ve opened this in Excel, delete everything above the line which begins Keyword | Visits | Pages/Visit You should have something a little like this:
Here are 3 notes on what we did above:
£
y
y y
The reason we e clude brand terms is those will take up quite a few of the top search phrases and we should already be ranking #1 for them hence they are not very useful here. (there are many other reasons why you would want to focus on non-brand terms first, but those are outside of the scope of this document!) In the e ample filter, we re using the | symbol. This acts as an or in the filter box. So, in the example we re saying don t show me any results including either hp or hewlett or packard . Note: You may want to narrow this down to a single search engine (eg. Google) as we re using Google s keyword estimates later on. (You may also like to add your ecommerce data to the report so that you can sort by revenue, etc.)
¥ ¢ ¤
The Google Keyword is a free tool that gives very rough estimates showing how many people search for a given phrase. It s worth noting that the tool is by no means totally accurate, its coverage is patchy, and it has some very odd bugs. But - it is far more accurate than any other free tool & is useful if you bear its limitations in mind.
HO
TO GET THE DATA
Here s how to get the data we re looking for from the Google Keyword Tool:
1. 2. 3. 4.
Visit the Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.googl .com/select/K o d ToolExternal Enter the CAPTCHA code. Make sure that your Locations & Languages options are for your local region (you can see these just to the right of Advanced Options + . Take your list of 100 keywords from the Google Analytics report (column A from the file we produced), and paste that into the ord or Phrase box in the top left of the keyword tool. (it should look a little like the image below)
¨
¨¨
©¨§
DA A
C 2: G
GL K
W
D TOOL
¡
3
dan barker | @danbarker | originally pos ed at http://www.s artinsights.com
¦
4
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
5. 6.
7.
Click Search . In the left hand-hand navigation, scroll down and uncheck Broad. Now check Exact . (We mentioned previously that the Google Keyword Tool only gives rough estimates. Using exactgives you the most accurate picture the tool allows of the exact number of searches for the term.) You should see something like the following:
8.
Once you have that, click on the little download icon and export the results.
y y
Occasionally the tool will skip keywords, you may want to add exras t Occasionally it will add in extras, you may want to fiddle around with the settings in the left -hand menu to exclude some, etc.
DATA SOURCE 3: SEOBOO
S RAN CHEC E R
5
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
Aaron Wall s Rank Checker is a Firefox plugin for checking your rankings. There are many similar tools around (for example Advanced Web Ranking ). We are using Rank Checker for the following reasons:
y y y y
It s free. It s really easy to use. As it s a firefox extension, most people should be able to use it. (ie. No need to install a complete software package). You can use it for numerous local google domains (.ie, .co.uk, etc).
DOWNLOADING RANK CHECKER
To download Rank Checker, open Firefox and do the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Go to http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ Click on download . Sign up for a free account. Go back to http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ Click download again. Install the tool & restart Firefox.
SETTING UP & RUNNING RANK CHECKER
Once you ve restarted Firefox, go to Tools > Rank Checker > Options in the menus. 1. To set it up to run the fastest, choose the following options (making sure to choose your local domain if it s something other than google.co.uk):
6
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
2. 3. 4.
Once you ve done that & saved it, open Rank Checker by clicking its icon in the bottom -right of Firefox (or choosing Tools > Rank Checker > Run from the menus). In the tool, click Add Multiple Ke ywords . Add your domain, and your list of keywords (from the original Google Analytics report we created) & click Add & then Close .
5.
Back in the main screen, click Start & you should see something like the following:
7
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
In other words, it shows you the current rank for the term in Google UK & the page that is ranking. Once this is complete, click Export results to CSV to download the complete file.
A couple of notes on this:
y y
If any of this is unclear, there s a gre at little video tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= __ngJcrOYU It s always worth hand-checking a few of the rankings to make sure they re in the right ballpark to what you actually see in Google.
PULL N G IT ALL TOG T HER IN EXCEL
An example worksheet showing how you can combine our 3 datasources can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/ga-workbook Here s an explanation of the Excel Spreadsheet one worksheet at a time. Take each of the reports we ve saved so far & save them into the individual worksheets within the Excel file. th The 4 Results sheet combines them all. If you open the example workbook, you ll see there are 4 worksheets in the file: 1. 2. 3. 4. GA-data (google analytics data) KT-data (keyword tool data) RC-data (rank checker data) Results (everything combined into an actionable report)
" !
Here s an example of each. From this, you should be able to reverse engineer your own version (or paste your own data on top!)
SHEET 1: GA-DATA
8
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
This worksheet contains the Google Analytics data. GA puts a lot of messy, not-very-useful data into the top of the file. It s worth removing the top few-dozen rows, so it starts with the Keyword | Visits | row:
If you look at the top-left here, you ll see I ve given the data the name analyticsdata . To do that, select the whole worksheet and type analyticsdata into that box. This allows you to then reference the table by name later on.
SHEET 2: KT -DATA
This worksheet contains the data we took from the Keyword Tool. It should look a little something like this:
SHEET 3: RC -DATA
This sheet contains the Rank Checker results. It should look like this:
9
dan barker | @danbarker | originally posted at http://www.smartinsights.com
(again, I ve defined a selection of data here called ranker ).
SHEET 4: RESULTS (PU TTING IT ALL TOGETHE R)
The final sheet pulling all of this together looks like this:
Here s an explanation of each of the columns there: A. B. C. D. E. F. G. The keyword we re looking at from the Google report (GA-data sheet). The estimated volume from the Keyword Tool (KT-data sheet). The current visits we re getting for the keywords (GA -data sheet). Our current rank in our chosen search engine for the term from Rank Checker (RC-data sheet). Our current share of the total estimated volume (column C as a percentage of column B). [blank] The page currently ranking for the term.
HOW TO USE THIS FILE TO INCREASE YOUR NAT URAL SEARCH TRAFFIC
Fo a full explanation on ho to use this file to i p ove you natu al search ran ings & increase your traffic, visit the full overview at http://bit.ly/ga-seo
& # # # % $ #
