How to Use Google Analytics to Improve SEO

Most SEO guides focus on what happens before a visitor lands on your site, but Google Analytics picks up where they leave off, revealing exactly how users interact with your content. It’s far more than a simple traffic counter, it's a treasure trove of data that you can use to sharpen your SEO strategy and improve your rankings. This article will walk you through how to use specific reports in Google Analytics to find actionable SEO insights.

First, Connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics

To unlock the most powerful SEO reports in Google Analytics 4, you first need to link it with your Google Search Console (GSC) account. This is a critical step that combines GSC's Clicks, Impressions, and Average Position data with GA4's user behavior metrics.

If you haven't done this yet, it's a quick process:

1. Log in to your GA4 property.
2. In the bottom-left corner, click Admin.
3. Under the Property column, scroll down to Product Links and click on Search Console links.
4. Click the blue Link button and follow the steps to choose your GSC property.

Once linked, give it about 24-48 hours to populate the data. You will now have a new "Google Search Console" section in your Reports tab, which is where we'll find some of our best insights.

1. Find Your "Low-Hanging Fruit" Pages

One of the quickest ways to get an SEO boost is to identify pages that are on the verge of ranking highly. These are your "low-hanging fruit" pages - content that Google already views favorably but just needs a little push to get onto the first page of search results. These are often pages ranking in positions 11 through 30.

How to Find Them in GA4:

1. In the left-hand navigation, go to Reports > Acquisition > Search Console > Queries.
2. This report shows you the actual search queries people used to find your site. By default, it's sorted by clicks.
3. Click the little pencil icon (Edit comparisons) at the top right of the report to customize it.
4. The default primary dropdown is set to "Search query." Click it and change it to "Landing page + query string". Now you can see performance by page URL instead of just by keywords.
5. Find the "Average position" column. Click the down arrow next to its title to sort the report from highest to lowest.
6. Scan for pages with an average position greater than 10. These are your page two and three superstars.

What to Do Next:

Once you have a list of these high-potential pages, your job is to give them a boost. Here are a few ideas:

• Content Refresh: Can you update the content to be more comprehensive, fresh, or accurate? Add new data, examples, or images.
• Improve On-Page SEO: Review the page title, meta description, and headings. Can they be more descriptive and compelling?
• Add Internal Links: Find higher-authority pages on your website that can link to this "almost there" page. This passes ranking power and helps Google understand the page's importance.
• Build Backlinks: While more difficult, earning a new backlink or two from a relevant, authoritative site can quickly push a page onto the first page.

2. Identify and Double Down on Top-Performing Content

If you don't know what’s already working, you can't create more of it. Google Analytics makes it easy to spot your most successful content - the pages and blog posts that draw the most organic search traffic and keep visitors engaged.

How to Find Your Top SEO Content:

1. Navigate to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens.
2. This report shows you a list of every page on your site, typically sorted by total views. However, we only care about traffic from organic search right now.
3. At the top of the report, look for the "All users" bubble and click it.
4. In the right-hand panel that appears, select the "Session default channel group" dimension.
5. Choose "Organic Search" from the list and hit Apply.

You are now looking at your most popular pages specifically among visitors who arrived from a search engine like Google. These are your proven SEO winners.

What to Do Next:

Analyzing your top performers gives you a blueprint for future success:

• Analyze the "Why": Why are these pages so popular? Is it the topic? The format (e.g., listicle, how-to guide, case study)? The depth of information? Try to replicate these successful elements.
• Create Pillar Content: Use these pages as "pillars" in a topic cluster model. Since they already have authority, you can build out more detailed, related articles that link back to the main pillar page.
• Promote Them: Make sure these popular pages are prominently featured on your homepage or in your main navigation to guide more users directly to your best assets.

3. Pinpoint Content That Actually Drives Conversions

Impressions and clicks from SEO are nice, but conversions are what really move the needle for your business. You need to know which pages aren't just attracting visitors, but are also turning those visitors into leads, subscribers, or customers.

How to Track Organic Conversions:

First, ensure you have set up conversions in GA4. A conversion is any meaningful action a user takes on your site, like a form submission, a free trial signup, or a purchase. You can configure them under Admin > Conversions.

Once that's done, here’s how to see which content is driving them:

1. Go to Reports > Engagement > Landing Pages. (This report is slightly better than "Pages and Screens" for this task as it focuses on the first page a user sees).
2. Apply the same "Organic Search" filter we used in the previous step.
3. Scroll the report table to the right until you see the Conversions column.
4. Click the header for that column to sort the report and see which pages are generating the most conversions from organic visitors.

What to Do Next:

• Optimize High-Traffic, Low-Conversion Pages: Find pages that get a lot of organic traffic but have very few conversions. Ask yourself why. Is the call-to-action (CTA) unclear? Is the page loading too slowly? Is there a disconnect between the search query and the page content? Add stronger CTAs or relevant content upgrades (like a downloadable checklist) to these pages.
• Learn From High-Converting Pages: Analyze your top converting pages. What makes them so effective? Maybe they use social proof, have a clear value proposition, or include a compelling video. Apply these learnings to your other important pages.

4. Use Engagement Metrics to Assess Content Quality

Strong user engagement is a positive signal to Google. If users arrive on your page and stay for a while, it suggests your content satisfied their search query. GA4 has replaced old metrics like Bounce Rate with more useful ones like Engagement Rate and Average Engagement Time.

How to Analyze Engagement for SEO:

1. Return to the Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens report.
2. Again, apply your "Organic Search" traffic filter.
3. Pay attention to two key columns: Average engagement time and Engagement rate.
4. Sort by Average engagement time to see where users spend the most (and least) time. Pages with abysmally low engagement time (e.g., under 15 seconds) might have an issue.

What to Do Next:

For pages with poor engagement metrics, something is likely turning users away. Investigate potential causes:

• Poor Readability: Are you using massive walls of text? Break up content with subheadings, bullet points, images, and blockquotes.
• Slow Page Speed: If a page takes too long to load, users will leave before the content even appears. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to check your performance.
• Weak Introduction: Does the first paragraph fail to hook the reader or confirm they are in the right place? Rewrite your intro to be more compelling and a better match for the search intent.

5. Mine Your On-Site Search for Keyword Ideas

The search bar on your own website is an untapped goldmine of keyword and content ideas. When users search your site, they are telling you in their own words what they expected to find. Analyzing these internal searches can reveal content gaps in your strategy.

To use this, you'll need to enable Site Search tracking in GA4. Go to Admin > Data Streams > [Your Web Stream] and ensure 'Site search' is turned on and configured to track your search query parameter (often 'q' or 's').

How to Find Internal Search Terms:

Once enabled, you can find the data by creating an Exploration report. However, an easier way is to simply go to the Pages and Screens report and type "/search" or whatever URL structure your search results pages use into the search box above the table. This will filter down to only show you search result pages.

Then, click on one of those search result URLs. A new section appears below showing the Page title that GA4 captured. Very often, this title will include the actual search term used, like "Search results for: 'best SEO tools'." You can scan this list for common themes and phrases.

What to Do Next:

• Create New Content: If lots of users are searching for a topic that you don't have a dedicated page for, you’ve just found a valuable content idea. Go build that page.
• Optimize Existing Content: Does a single page or blog post show up frequently in search results? That might mean the content is hard to read or not structured well for a quick answer. Improve its headings and add a summary at the top.

Final Thoughts

Google Analytics provides a direct line to understanding how your users behave after clicking through from a search engine. By regularly reviewing which pages attract organic traffic, how engaged users are, and which content drives real business goals, you can stop guessing and start making data-driven decisions to systematically improve your SEO.

Exploring all these different reports in Google Analytics can be powerful, but it’s still a very manual process. At Graphed, we simplify this entirely by allowing you to connect your Google Analytics and Search Console accounts. From there, you can just ask plain English questions like, "Show me my top 10 landing pages from Google for the last 90 days sorted by conversions" or "Build a dashboard comparing my organic traffic this month versus last month." We instantly build the dashboards and reports you need, helping you find actionable insights in seconds, not hours. Feel free to check out Graphed to see how an AI data analyst can save you time.