How to Check SEO on Google Analytics

Wondering how your SEO efforts are paying off? Google Analytics 4 holds the answers, but you need to know where to look. While it doesn't give you SEO feedback directly, it provides all the data you need to measure your organic performance, understand which keywords drive traffic, and see how that traffic contributes to your bottom line. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to check your SEO performance using GA4, from connecting essential tools to analyzing the most important reports.

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First, A Critical Step: Connect Google Search Console to GA4

To unlock the most valuable SEO data inside Google Analytics, you first need to connect it to Google Search Console (GSC). Google Analytics tracks what users do on your website, while Google Search Console tracks how your site performs in Google search results - including a big one: the specific keywords people use to find you.

Connecting the two brings that precious keyword data directly into your GA4 reports, giving you a much fuller picture of your organic search performance.

How to Link Search Console to Google Analytics 4

If you haven't done this yet, it should be your top priority. You'll need Admin access to both your GA4 property and your GSC property to complete these steps.

• Step 1: In your GA4 property, click on "Admin" in the bottom-left corner (the gear icon).
• Step 2: In the "Property" column, scroll down to the "Product Links" section and click on "Search Console Links."
• Step 3: Click the blue "Link" button.
• Step 4: Click "Choose accounts" and select the Search Console property you want to link. Make sure it's the right one for the website you're tracking. Click "Confirm."
• Step 5: Click "Next," then select the web data stream for your website. Click "Next" again.
• Step 6: Review your settings and click "Submit."

That's it! Once linked, it can take up to 48 hours for the Search Console data to start appearing in your GA4 reports. After it's set up, a new "Search Console" section will appear in your GA4 reporting menu.

Finding and Using Your SEO Reports in GA4

With Search Console connected, you can now access two new reports that are pure gold for SEO analysis. You can find them by navigating to Reports → Acquisition → Search Console.

Inside, you'll see two key reports:

1. Queries: This shows the actual search queries people typed into Google to discover your website.
2. Google Organic Search Traffic: This shows which of your landing pages perform best in organic search.

Let's dive into how to analyze each one to improve your SEO.

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How to Analyze the "Queries" Report for Keyword Insights

The Queries report is your window into the mind of your audience. It shows you the exact terms they use to find you, along with key performance metrics for each one.

When you open this report, you’ll see four main columns:

• Google Organic Search Query: The keyword or phrase someone searched for.
• Impressions: How many times your site appeared in the search results for that query.
• Clicks: How many times someone clicked on your site from the search results for that query.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click (Clicks ÷ Impressions).
• Average Position: Your average ranking position in the search results for that query.

Find Your "Striking Distance" Keywords

One of the most powerful ways to use this report is to identify your "striking distance" keywords. These are queries where you have a high number of impressions and an average position between 8 and 20 (late page one or page two). People are seeing your site, but they aren't clicking on it as much as they could be.

Here’s how to find them:

1. Sort the Queries report by "Impressions" from highest to lowest.
2. Scan down the list and look at the "Average Position" and "CTR" columns.
3. Identify keywords with a high impression count but a low CTR and an average position of 8 or more.

These are prime candidates for optimization. A small push on these pages could move them up a few spots and result in a significant traffic increase. Try improving your on-page SEO for these keywords by:

• Optimizing the page's title tag and meta description to be more compelling.
• Revisit the on-page content to ensure it fully answers the user's search intent.
• Build a few high-quality internal links to the page from other relevant pages on your site.

Double Down on What’s Working

The Queries report also tells you what's already winning. Sort the report by "Clicks" to see which keywords are currently driving the most organic traffic. This confirms that your content strategy for those topics is effective and resonates with your audience. Consider creating more content around these successful topics to build your authority and capture even more related long-tail traffic.

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How to Analyze the "Google Organic Search Traffic" Report for Landing Page Performance

While the Queries report tells you what terms people used, the "Google Organic Search Traffic" report tells you which pages they landed on. This helps you identify your most valuable content from an SEO perspective.

Identify Your Top-Performing SEO Pages

By default, this report is sorted by clicks. The pages at the top are your current SEO workhorses. These pages are doing a great job of attracting organic traffic. Ask yourself a few questions about these top performers:

• What kind of content are these pages (blog posts, service pages, product pages)?
• What topics do they cover?
• Is there a call-to-action (CTA) on these pages to guide users to the next step?

Understanding what makes these pages successful can provide a repeatable template for creating future content.

Spot Opportunities for Page-Level Optimization

Just like with keywords, you can find landing pages that have high impressions but low click-through rates. These are pages that Google sees as relevant but aren't compelling enough for users to click on in the search results.

Sort the report by impressions and look for pages with a low CTR. For these pages, review your title tags and meta descriptions. Are they descriptive? Do they stand out from the competition? A small tweak here can make a huge difference in attracting more clicks without even having to change your ranking.

Checking Your Overall Organic Channel Performance

The Search Console reports are fantastic for query-level SEO, but you also need to see how your entire organic search channel performs compared to others like paid search, social media, or email. For this, you’ll use the Traffic Acquisition report.

Using the Traffic Acquisition Report

Navigate to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition. This report breaks down your site's visitors by their source - how they found you.

Find the row for "Organic Search" in the "Session default channel group" column. By looking across this row, you can quickly see key metrics for your SEO efforts:

• Users and Sessions: The total number of people and visits from organic search.
• Engaged sessions: How many visits were actively engaging with your site (e.g., lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion, or had multiple pageviews).
• Average engagement time: A great indicator of whether your content is meeting the needs of organic visitors.
• Conversions: The most important column! This shows how many goal completions (like sales, form fills, or sign-ups) came from organic search.

This report is the best way to prove the value of your SEO. Instead of just showing traffic numbers, you can show exactly how organic search contributes to key business objectives.

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Drilling Down on Landing Pages by Channel

What if you want to see which landing pages drive the most engagement specifically from organic search users? You can do this by combining data from two reports.

1. Go to the Reports → Engagement → Landing page report.
2. At the top of the report, click the "Add filter" button.
3. Create a filter where the "Session default channel group" exactly matches "Organic Search."

Now, the landing page report is filtered to show you data only for traffic that came from SEO. Here you can see which of your organic landing pages have the highest engagement rates and which ones are leading to the most conversions. This helps you identify your most valuable SEO content and discover pages that might be getting traffic but aren't converting visitors.

Final Thoughts

By regularly monitoring your Search Console reports and the Traffic Acquisition report in Google Analytics, you can move from guessing to knowing exactly how your SEO strategy is performing. It allows you to find new keyword opportunities, optimize underperforming content, and directly tie your organic marketing efforts to real business outcomes like leads and revenue.

We know connecting data sources like Google Analytics and digging into reports to find insights can be time-consuming, especially when you need to combine that information with performance data from your ad platforms, email tool, and CRM. That’s why we built Graphed. We centralize all your marketing and sales data, so you can just ask questions in plain English - like "Which blog posts drove the most leads from organic search last month?" - and get a clear dashboard instantly, without any manual report building.