How to Improve Your SEO Using GA4

With the switch from Universal Analytics to GA4, the way we use Google Analytics to help inform SEO strategies has changed. We have new reports and better data so we can make better recommendations.

In fact, GA4 has so much in the way of new reports and analytics that it can be hard to know where to start, and once you start it can be a lot to set up and analyze – especially when you have other priorities. So we’ve narrowed down the most important reports to help with SEO.

The Most Important Reports for SEO  

Top Landing Pages

This tells you what landing page is generating the most organic traffic, which indicates which landing page has the best SEO. More importantly for improving your SEO, it tells you which landing pages are generating the least organic traffic.  

If your page isn’t generating organic traffic, it means that your content is missing the mark. Users aren’t finding the information they needed or thought they’d find on this page, so they’re moving elsewhere, and you may need to rewrite the content. With this report you can target specific pages to analyze and improve to match the user’s intent.

Organic Conversions

Traffic is incredibly important, but realistically, it’s all in service to conversions (however you define those*). If you’re seeing great traffic and great SEO, but they’re not converting, you’ll still want to investigate how to improve your SEO to better target your audience and users.

*Traditionally in marketing a conversion was when your user gave you money for a product or service. If you have a straightforward B2C product, that may still be your site conversion! But for most of us a site visit is just one step in the selling process. In GA4, you get to decide what a conversion is. It could be someone downloading a PDF you’re offering, filling out a form, submitting an application—whatever is the most logical next step in your selling process.

Acquisition Reports

There are a variety of acquisition reports available in GA4 which can help you understand where users are coming from. You can review all new users, users in the last 30 minutes, etc. This can help you understand where traffic is coming from, including a breakdown of what search engines users are using, and whether you're getting a healthy amount of traffic from organic search.

Demographic Details

While demographic details don’t directly correlate to SEO traffic, it can help you determine what kind of content would resonate with your users. After all, you’d speak differently to college students than you would to retirees: their goals and outlook in life are different, and they want different things in the moment. SEO rankings rely a lot on users finding the information they need on your site, so being able to understand what information your user may need is going to make improving your SEO ranking a lot easier.

Why Does it Matter?

None of these reports will be a magic fix for your site’s SEO, but each will help you understand what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong. More importantly, it’ll help you understand how to improve your SEO—whether the content needs to be rewritten, if your call to action needs to be improved, what search engines to focus on, and what your user may need.