Three must-have GA4 SEO reports you can build in under 30 minutes
30-second summary:
- If conveying the value to C-suite wasn’t challenging enough, SEOs are now having to deal with the GA4 shift
- Does your SEO reporting take hours or days? Is it too detailed, or not detailed enough?
- Buy back some time for a cuppa and a catch-up, use this super-detailed guide that will save you hours and get you the most effective GA4 reports
Have you experienced this… desperately trying to find where your favorite GA3 reports are hiding inside the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?
The process can feel daunting for all teams–including SEO teams looking to trace the impact of their search engine optimization efforts on the website’s overall performance. That is because many GA3 (also known as Universal Analytics) reports are either difficult to locate or need to be custom-built from scratch inside the new GA4.
1. SEO Pages report
2. SEO Profiles report
3. SEO Paths report
Step 1: Create your SEO Pages report
- Click Explore. Click Explore in the left menu
- Click Blank. On the next screen, click Blank
- Name exploration. Under “Variables” change the Untitled exploration to SEO Pages. You have now named your report.
- Create Organic Search segment. Click the + sign next to “SEGMENTS” > User segment > At the top, change the segment name from “Untitled segment” to “Organic Search Traffic” > Add new condition > search for and click on First user medium > click Add Filter > select contains > type and select organic > Apply. You have just created a segment (or filter) that automatically only displays information about your organic search traffic in the report you’re about to create.
- We’re going to bulk-add: Now that you have created your organic search traffic segment, it’s time to build a custom report, then apply your segment to it. In the coming steps, we will bulk-add all the metrics and all the dimensions we will need for all three SEO “P” reports.
- Add Landing Page dimension. Click the + sign next to DIMENSIONS > in the search box, type landing page and when it appears, check the Landing Page + query string box.
- Add additional dimensions. Repeat the previous steps by searching for and checking the checkboxes of the following dimensions:
- Device category
- Browser
- Country
- City
- Type “demographic” and check all the demographic dimensions you want to report on, such as Age, Gender, and Interests. Note: For these selections to report any data, you will need to enable the Google Signals functionality in GA4 which you can do by opening another tab and going to Admin > Data Settings > Data Collection > Get Started > Continue > Activate. Be sure to read Google’s policy to ensure that it complies with your organization’s privacy requirements If not, skip this bullet.
- Import all dimensions at once. After the final dimension’s checkbox has been checked, click the Import button to bulk-import all of the dimensions into your exploration report.
- Add Entrances metric. Click the + sign next to METRICS > in the search box, type entrances and when it appears, check the Entrances box.
- Add additional metrics. Repeat the previous steps by searching for and checking the checkboxes of the following metrics:
- Entrances
- Views
- Views per user
- Engagement rate
- Bounce rate
- Conversions
- Session conversion rate
- User conversion rate
- New users
- Returning users
- Total users
- eCommerce revenue (if you have an eCommerce website)
- Optional step: Add other metrics–If you prefer to use different metrics than the ones listed above, GA4 makes it very easy to do so. Just leave the search box blank and use the “All” column to expand and add additional metrics you’re interested in. Hovering over a metric shows a definition of the metric, which is very helpful. You are free to do this now, or later. For now, let’s keep going.
- Import all metrics at once. After the final metric’s checkbox has been checked, click the Import button to bulk-import all of the metrics into your exploration report.
- Name the report. Rename the Free form report to Landing pages by clicking and typing over it.
- Add dimension to the report row. Double-click the “Landing page + query string” item under DIMENSIONS > this will add it to the “ROWS” section under the “Tab Setting” section.
- Add metrics to the report column. One by one, Double-click the following items under METRICS and they will be added to the columns of the report we are building: Entrances, Views, Views per user, Conversions, Session conversion rate, User conversion rate.
- Change cell type. Under the “Tab Setting” section, scroll down and change the Cell type to Heat map.