Kyle says: “So my additional insight is to utilise the customisation features that are available in GA4 to your advantage.”

Okay, what customisation options are we talking about here?

“It's a new feature that didn't exist in old analytics (Universal Analytics), and it's in the report section. If you're an admin or an editor of GA4, you have the option to customise the reports that you see. That's whether you want to add in additional metrics or remove dimensions that aren't valuable.

For SEO, I think this comes into play where you want to really hone in on organic traffic, you want to hone in on organic landing pages, and maybe even bring in Search Console reports.

Then, the customisation option means that you can create an SEO report that gives you the insights you need at the click of a button, rather than scrambling around and trying to find it every month or so.”

Okay, traffic, landing pages, and organic traffic are obviously key metrics for SEOs.

How do they go about incorporating that information in GA4?

“As long as you're an admin or an editor, you have the option in the top right-hand corner of reports. You'll see what looks like a pencil (sometimes I think it looks like a cigarette, but it's definitely supposed to be a pencil).

You click on that button, and up pops customisation options. You can then add in the dimensions and add in the metrics or remove metrics that you don't find valuable.

Then there's a filter option. Certainly, for SEO, that filter option is key. Then you can filter by, ‘I only want to see data where the default channel group is organic search’ or, if you want to get a little bit more granular, you can say, ‘I only want to see data where the session source medium is Google organic/Bing’ (or other search engines do exist).

Then you go from there and, in your admin section, you have the option to add in collections, which you can create yourself. You could call it ‘David's SEO Report’, and then you could add that collection into the report section on the left-hand side, so it's available for you whenever you need it.”

Should all SEOs in an organisation be using the admin login for GA4 or is it a better setup for SEOs to find some automated way of taking the data out of GA4 and analysing it somewhere else?

“I think both options do exist. What I like to do is have that report option that's available to you in GA4 and – whether it's a client and you're an agency or you're within an internal business – you're having that conversation about what's important to track. You can then create that in GA4.

Then, if you want to, in terms of visualisation, you can replicate those in Looker Studio. There is also the option in GA4 that, if you've created a report, you can actually schedule that to be sent to yourself or a suite of users on a monthly basis. Then, you don't even have to go into GA4. You can just schedule that email, and it gets sent on a monthly or weekly basis.

But it’s almost like muscle memory. It starts to get the conversation going around what's important to track. Why do we want to track it? And then, what information is that going to tell us about how we can then improve SEO for the organisation?”

I get the feeling that a few SEOs have given up on trying to become experts in GA4 because it looks so overwhelming to begin with. Is that an appropriate reaction to have?

“I think it is because I think that (and this is such a broad-stroke thing here) change is a challenge. Overall, whether it's algorithm updates or different ways to assess what's bringing in traffic and what isn't, SEOs manage or deal with change fairly regularly. To add in another thing that's changed is quite difficult to manage.

GA4 is certainly a different way of looking at data compared to Universal Analytics, which had been in place since 2013. So, for a lot of SEOs, they've had a decade of getting used to Universal Analytics and then, all of a sudden, this GA4 thing comes along.

But, as long as SEOs get stuck into the customisation features that are available in GA4 and the different ways of accessing that data, I think there'll be some light bulb moments where they're saying, ‘Oh, actually this is really valuable. I really like this.’ and they'll get stuck into it more.

Then, slowly but surely, they'll forget what Universal Analytics was and wonder why they ever worried about GA4.”

It would be good just to delve into a little bit more detail about the specific metrics that are available within GA4. I mean, you mentioned traffic, landing pages, and organic search, just to name three there.

Maybe just going for traffic, what specific aspects of traffic should SEOs be looking at and how should they be using that data?

“For me, it should always go back to the conversation that you have – either in the internal organisation or with your clients, if you're an agency or freelancer.

But the number one for me is a conversion metric, or what is now called a key event metric. You should always be focusing on what the conversion is and what the traffic is doing once it lands on the site.”

So that conversion metric has got to be set up within GA4 as well, I presume?

“Yeah, either within GA4 or within Google Tag Manager but, once you've set it up as an event, you then have to mark it as a key event. I would always say less is more with key events.

Really try and understand, what's the key business indicator? What's the really important value? Whether it’s the internal organisation or your clients, they are going to come to you and say, ‘Things are going great because we've seen X increase in revenue, we've got X amount more leads coming through the contact form.’ That's the key metric, I'd say.”

It's easy to actually have a metric set up in relation to a purchase that happens relatively quickly after a visit occurs but, if it's a top-of-funnel visit, is it still appropriate to set up a conversion metric?

“Yeah, I think so. Hopefully it's okay to name-drop, but I've worked with Zoe Ashbridge before on a couple of her e-commerce clients, where we understand that the key conversion point is the purchase.

But what we've actually then done is created events and created audiences where we're understanding that people are landing onto the site top-of-funnel because they're reading blogs and they're getting the information they need, and we're able to assess that, from an organic SEO perspective, X amount of people who land on the page – who land on an informational blog page, for example – then go on to convert.

That's really useful information, to say that's the number now. What can we then do? How can we A/B test ways to drive more people to convert? That potentially means more people in or finding better ways to drive people to purchase.

It's still a really useful metric to say, ‘We're driving X amount of traffic, and it's converting, and here's how we're going to get more people to convert for you.’”

With your landing page information that you can set up within GA4, are you simply looking to match keyword phrases against the landing pages that are being discovered/found for those particular keyword phrases and ensuring that the most relevant landing page is being served for a particular keyword phrase? Or are you doing something else there?

“You know what, I think that's right. The information that you can bring in to GA4 via Search Console, for example, will really help with that. You'll be able to say, these are the queries that are driving people to this landing page.

You might ask the question, is that relevant? If it's not relevant, then there's work to be done on-page, and there's work to be done with internal linking. You might ask the question, I think that is relevant and it's the right keyword, but they're not potentially converting. Then you'd be asking the question about what you can do on-page to drive people to convert better.

This is where there is another facet to GA4 that's really important. If you're linking Google Ads data and you're driving people to the same landing page with the same keywords that you're trying to bid for, there's information that you can glean there, which is really useful for SEO as well.

Don't just focus on your specific organic search SEO metrics. Have a look at the data that's available from Google Ads, for example, and it'll help build a picture about what's working and what's not working.”

Yes, and I guess there will be keyword phrases that you can discover through looking at that data that you may not even be attempting to optimise a page for.

“100%. Once a user gets to the page, one of the enhanced measurements that's available and is automatically tracked is a search term report. You can see the landing pages people arrive at, and then you can build a report to see what they then potentially search for on the site.

If you can see that you’re building a landing page for this specific product or this specific question, and then they're searching for something that's related to that, then maybe that will help you build out some more content on the page to help answer that query.

That's another thing to utilise within GA4.”

For your organic traffic, do you have any preference with regards to comparing data to get some sense as to whether organic traffic's improving or getting worse?

“I like to compare both previous year and previous period.’

As in quarter?

“If you're looking at the last 30 days, you could also compare the previous 30 days to that, or quarter to quarter. I think my go-to is always the previous year because that's then taking into account standard seasonal trends.

If you're an e-commerce client and you're comparing January to December, and you're going back and saying, ‘January's traffic and revenue is down compared to December’ well, obviously it's going to be because there was Christmas in December. But if you're comparing January to the January the previous year, you'll get some better insight about where traffic is coming from.

What I also like to do (which is nice to bring into the conversation around AI overviews in Google) is have a look at what's going on with the different types of search engines that are coming in or bringing traffic in.

I've seen, certainly on some SaaS clients of mine or educational clients, that they're seeing a much bigger increase in traffic from Bing, which comes with its own conversations around how to optimise.

Maybe there's even a conversation where you're saying, ‘Have we thought about advertising on Bing Ads?’ for example – and using a year-on-year perspective of that will help drive that conversation.”

Are you able to track any traffic coming in from AI conversations as well?

“Not at the moment. As far as I'm aware, there’s nothing that helps you, in terms of source medium, to say that this is from an AI overview, for example. There's nothing like that. Maybe they'll bring that in, I don't know.

But it's certainly worth reviewing that, if you see a drop in traffic, then you can have a look at those search results on the SERPs and think, ‘Well, actually, my ranking position hasn't changed. The trend is still the same, but what's existing on the SERP has changed, and that's potentially why there's a drop.’

Again, that's a conversation to be had around the next steps for how to combat that.”

Is there any particular industry sector that you're seeing increases in traffic from Bing and why do you think you're seeing increases in traffic?

“It's interesting, actually. I have quite a few education clients – like academies or private schools – and I'm seeing traffic increases for those, but I'm also seeing traffic increases for B2B SaaS clients who are coming in from Bing.

The thing that I'm putting that down to is where they're searching. If you are somebody who's working in an industry, like a B2B industry, you may have standards or defaults set up for your computer which you can't change – so they're using Bing, and they can't change that.

That's what I'm seeing. In those industries, like B2B SaaS, there's been a bit of an increase in Bing. I'm putting it down to the fact that there are more opportunities out there. In a post-COVID world, businesses are starting to think about where their next long-term purchases are. And also the fact that they're having to use Bing's search engine because there's no other option available with their defaults within the business.”

Should SEOs be using a GA4 professional to get this all set up as effectively as possible, or is it something that they can still reasonably do by themselves?

“I think they can still reasonably do it by themselves – although I might have just put myself out of a job there.

There are two things here. One is, can you reasonably trust the data that you're getting? In a consent/cookie/compliance environment at the moment, there's certainly a query about that. Then it's around, if the key business indicators are this, this, and this, how can I set that up appropriately so that I'm making sure that the data is correct, and the actions are the right actions based on that?

If there's something in the back of your mind – and an SEO is thinking, ‘Can I really trust this data?’ – that's when I'd probably lean on a GA4 professional. But, in the world we're in, SEOs are already very technical. They're already utilising lots of different tools. Learning a bit more about GA4 is a great tool to have, for an SEO.

I'd definitely recommend getting stuck in and trying to learn a little bit more about it.”

Are there any other customisation options that we're likely to see in GA4 over the coming few months or is it fairly set in stone over the next few years?

“They do have a roadmap. It's not necessarily a customisation feature, but the one thing that's coming out, I think in Q3 this year, is the ability to add annotations.

That was something that was really appreciated in Universal Analytics, and I think will be really useful from an SEO perspective so that you know, if there's been a core algorithm update or you've made a huge change to a website, you can mark that in GA4 and then understand that potentially that's where some huge increases have come from.

It’s great to report back on as well. It’s great to say, ‘We made this change on this date. Look at the huge benefit it's brought in.’”

You've shared what SEO should be doing in 2024. Now let's talk about what SEO shouldn't be doing. What's something that's seductive in terms of time, but ultimately counterproductive? What's something that SEO shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“I kind of alluded to it already. It's that, reporting-wise, let's not focus on those metrics and those things that we always tend to add to reports and we always tend to talk about, but nobody – no business owner and no internal team – heeds that warning.

What we should stop doing is building reports that have no benefit to any audience that we're sending them to. Let's start having conversations about what's really important and building reports based on that, because I think that's going to be hugely fruitful.

Put out all the rubbish and start getting really succinct reporting from GA4. I think that's going to be awesome for SEOs.”

Kyle Rushton McGregor is a GA4 specialist at KRM Digital Marketing, and you can find him over at KRMDigital.uk.