How to Use Google Analytics for SEO

Most people treat Google Analytics as just a traffic counter, peeking at the big numbers on the dashboard but never digging deeper. It's a huge missed opportunity because Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool for understanding and improving your SEO performance. This guide will show you exactly how to use it to find new opportunities, track what's working, and make data-driven decisions that grow your organic traffic.

First Things First: Connect Google Search Console to GA4

If you only do one thing after reading this article, make it this. Google Analytics shows you what users do on your site, while Google Search Console (GSC) shows you how your site performs in Google Search results - including the specific keywords people use to find you. Connecting them combines these two datasets, unlocking a goldmine of SEO insights right inside your GA4 property.

Integrating them is essential for getting the full picture of your SEO efforts. Here's how to set it up:

1. Make sure you have Admin access to your Google Analytics 4 property and authenticated ownership of your site in Google Search Console.
2. In your GA4 property, navigate to the Admin section (the gear icon at the bottom-left).
3. Under the Property column, scroll down to Product Links and click on Search Console Links.
4. Click the blue Link button. From here, choose the Search Console property you want to connect and follow the on-screen prompts to select your site's web stream and finalize the connection.

Once linked, it can take up to 48 hours for data to start populating. You'll find two brand new reports in Reports > Acquisition called "Google Organic Search Traffic" and "Queries."

Analyze Your Organic Search Traffic

Before you dive into a specific strategy, it's vital to get a high-level view of your organic search performance. You need to know how much traffic you're getting from search engines and whether that traffic is growing over time.

Here's how to isolate your organic search traffic in GA4:

1. Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
2. This report shows you where your traffic is coming from, categorized by the Session default channel group. You will see traffic broken down into channels like Direct, Paid Search, Referral, and of course, Organic Search.
3. To focus solely on SEO, you can use the search bar right above the table and type "Organic Search" to filter everything else out.

Once you've isolated your organic traffic, pay attention to the trends. Use the date range selector in the top-right corner to compare performance week-over-week, month-over-month, or year-over-year. Are your SEO efforts leading to more users and sessions over time? This report is your main health monitor.

Discover Your Most Popular Pages with Organic Traffic

Understanding which pages and blog posts attract the most visitors from Google is key to a smart content strategy. This data tells you exactly what kind of content resonates with both the search engine and your audience, so you know what needs updating, promoting, or creating more of.

The Landing Page report is your go-to for this insight:

1. Go to Reports > Engagement > Landing Pages. A "landing page" in this context is the first page a user enters your site on during their session.
2. By default, this report shows data for all traffic channels. To see which pages are your SEO workhorses, you need to add a filter. Click the Add filter button at the top of an All Users dropdown.
3. Set your filter dimensions as follows:

• Dimension: Session default channel group
• Match type: exactly matches
• Value: Organic Search

1. Click Apply.

The report now displays a prioritized list of your best-performing content from search engines. The pages at the top are your winners. Ask yourself:

• Can I update these posts with fresh information to maintain their rankings?
• Can I add internal links from these posts to other important, lower-performing pages?
• Can I create more content on similar "winning" topics?

Uncover Keyword Opportunities in the Queries Report

This is where connecting your Google Search Console account really pays off. The Queries report shows you the actual keywords people are typing into Google to find your website. This is crucial for guiding content updates and finding new content ideas.

Find the new reports by navigating to Reports > Acquisition > Search Console > Queries.

Here you'll find a table with four important metrics for each search query:

• Clicks: How many times users clicked on your site from search results for that query.
• Impressions: How many times your site appeared in search results for that query.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click (Clicks ÷ Impressions).
• Average Position: Your average ranking in search results for that query.

Look for two primary types of opportunities here:

1. Keywords with High Impressions and Low CTR

If a keyword has thousands of impressions but only a 1% CTR, it means people are seeing your site in the search results but not clicking on it. This often happens when you rank on the bottom half of the first page. The fix? Try updating your page title or meta description to be more compelling and better match the searcher's intent. Even a small CTR improvement can lead to a significant traffic increase.

2. Keywords Floating on Page 2 (Positions 10-20)

These are your "striking distance" keywords. You are so close to page one where all the clicks happen! Filter your report to show keywords with an average position greater than 10. For these pages, a little SEO love can give them the push they need. Try improving the content by adding more detail, embedding a video, or building a few internal links from your more authoritative pages.

Use Engagement Metrics as an SEO Health Check

Does your content actually satisfy the visitor who just arrived from Google? SEO is not just about getting the click, it's about providing a great user experience once they land on your site. Pages with high traffic but extremely poor engagement could indicate a mismatch between what the user was searching for and what your content delivers - a signal that could eventually harm your rankings.

Go back to your filtered Landing Page report (the one showing only Organic Search traffic) and look at these columns:

• Engaged sessions: The number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 pageviews.
• Average engagement time: The average time your web page was the main focus in the user's browser.
• Event count/Conversions: How many key actions are being completed from these organic landing pages.

Are there any pages with a lot of organic sessions but unusually low engagement time? That's your red flag. Visit that page yourself and analyze it critically. Does the headline match the search intent? Is there a distracting popup? Does the page load slowly? Improving the content and user experience on these pages can help them stick their rankings.

Track What Matters: Measuring SEO ROI with Conversions

Web traffic is nice, but conversions are what truly matter to your business. Whether it's a form submission, a free trial sign-up, or an e-commerce purchase, you need to know if your SEO efforts are contributing to the bottom line.

Once you've configured conversion events in GA4, you can see exactly how much business your organic traffic is driving.

1. Return to the Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report.
2. Filter the report by Organic Search like you did before.
3. Scroll to the far-right columns in the table, where you will see one dedicated to each conversion event you've set up (e.g., generate_lead, purchase).

Now you can see it clearly: The Organic Search channel drove X number of leads and Y number of sales last month. This data transforms your SEO reporting from "we got more traffic" to "we generated more revenue," making it much easier to justify your budget and strategy.

Bonus Tip: Find Link Building Opportunities in Your Referral Traffic

Link building remains a cornerstone of good SEO. Identifying other relevant websites to link to your content can be tedious - but Google Analytics can help you discover some warm leads.

Your Referral Traffic report shows which websites are already sending you visitors by linking to you. If a website already appreciates your content enough to link to it, they're often a perfect candidate to approach for future collaborations or links to your new content.

Head over to the Traffic Acquisition report again, but this time, filter for the Referral channel group. You'll see a list of domains sending traffic your way. Sort through this list and identify high-quality blogs or industry sites. These are your allies! Consider reaching out to thank them for the existing link and build a relationship that could lead to even more organic exposure in the future.

Final Thoughts

Google Analytics offers everything you need to move beyond guesswork and build a truly data-driven SEO strategy. By connecting it with Search Console and regularly digging into reports for keywords, landing pages, and conversions, you can pinpoint exactly what's working and where your biggest opportunities are for growth.

Drilling down into these reports is powerful, but we know it can also be time-consuming to find what you need. That's why we built Graphed. Instead of clicking through menus and adding filters, you can connect Google Analytics, Search Console, and your other marketing platforms in seconds. Then, you can simply ask questions in plain English, like "show me the YoY growth for organic traffic to our blog" or "which pages have the highest conversion rate from search?" Graphed builds those reports for you instantly, on a live-updating dashboard.