You’ve probably noticed in the acquisition tab of Google Analytics that your blog or website gets traffic from Organic Search. It is also possible to see what words and phrases people searched when they found your blog + what pages they landed on.
In order to see search keywords, you need to connect your Google Webmaster account with Google Analytics. If you haven’t set up a Google Webmaster account, do that first. (You should also check out my other post about Google Webmaster)
Special thanks to Nicole of Mendez Manor for letting me use her screenshots!
Displaying keywords in Google Analytics
From your Google Analytics dashboard navigate to Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization. If you do not have Webmaster Tools enabled yet, you will only see this:
To enable click the Set up Wembaster Tools data sharing button.
This will bring you to the settings page in your admin tab. Scroll down to the bottom where it says Webmaster Tools Settings. Click the edit button.
Select the site you wish to link with your Google Analytics account and hit Save.
Now when you go to Search Engine Optimization tab you will be able to see the keywords people are searching to find your blog (Google calls them Queries).
Utilizing the Search Engine Optimization tab in Google Analytics
Queries in Google Analytics
There are 5 columns in the Google Analytics Queries tab:
- Query: The words or phrased people search for in Google.
- Impression: The number of times your blog shows up in search results when that particular search is made
- Clicks: The number of times your site was clicked on during the search.
- Average Position: The average ranking your blog shows up for that search.
- CTR: (click through rate) The percentage of clicks per impression for the search.
Sort by Impressions
By default, queries are sorted by the number of impressions each word/phrase receives. This tells you what phrases your blog shows up for in Google the most.
If your click through rate is low for high impressions (and the query is relevant to the post), try making adjustments to your title, meta title and description to make it more enticing to click on your site. Sometimes the CTR is low because your site really isn’t relevant to the query. You’ll be able to judge which search terms you want to focus on.
Sort by Clicks
I like to sort by clicks to see what search terms are bringing people to my blog. This will show you the subjects on your blog that are performing well for search engines.
Sort by Average Position
If you want to see which search terms you are ranking the highest for, sort by average position (1 is highest). Again, if people aren’t clicking on your site when you’re ranking high try making adjustments to your titles and meta title/description (called SEO title/description if you are using Yoast WP SEO pluign).
Query landing pages
The Landing Pages tab under Search Engine Optimization tells you which pages people clicked through your site. You can sort with the same sections as the query page. I find it interesting and helpful to see what pages my search traffic lands on.
Have fun discovering what people are searching for to find your blog! Use the knowledge to improve your titles and descriptions and to continue to produce content that ranks well on search engines.
What are people searching to find your blog?
This was so simple and awesome, even though I have been using the google analytics for so long… still always find new things which are right in front of my eye… but only get to know the importance of it after reading an informative blog like this, and eventually also makes me feel like a idiot 😛
But thank you so much for this post 🙂
Thank you! I never knew how to enable the webmaster tools thing before! I get tons of ‘queries’ about cosmetology school–which is funny, since I graduated about 2 years ago and haven’t written about it since.
This is so funny, I tried to look at my Google Analytics for these terms but for some reason I cannot set up my webmaster tools, it has something to do with my site being listed as http://viewfrominhere.com at one spot and http://www.viewfrominhere.com in another spot. I tried to change it on my site so that it was the same and I broke my site, I had to have my host download a backup, losing a few days of posts and comments. I have no idea where to go from here. Do you have any idea?
Oh no! Nikki you need to ownership for the www. and no www on Webmaster, then set your preferred. I’ll send you a tutorial link soon.
Thanks, I did not want to try and fix it again, lol, although my host did a great job getting me back up and running I had to recreate quite a bit. Thankfully I was able to take the posts from my list and redo the posts, hate that I wasted all that time, and I lost the comments on all those articles. I learned a good lesson though! LOL! Ask before I change something that big!
This was sooo helpful! Thanks again! And uyour spring cleaning post was great too. FOr the month of April I am cleaning up my blog and design. 🙂
Hey Kristie, cool info. I’m following the steps but it tells me that this report requires Webmaster Tools to be enabled.
What am I missing?
Hi Amy! In the first section, Displaying Keywords in Google Analytics, the screenshot shows that you have to enable Google Webmaster first. The instructions there help you enable Webmaster tools. If you don’t have a Webmaster account yet, you’ll need to do that first! Let me know if you need help verifying your Webmaster account.
I did it! Very interesting…to find out what brings people to my blog!!
What are some of the phrases they are searching to get to your blog Janelle?
Thank goodness, someone finally answered my questions with regards to this. I knew it was somewhere, just had no idea how to get to it. Going to save this post somewhere handy. Thanks again for your amazing computer back door knowledge, what would we do without you???? Yikes……
xoxoxo
Woot! Glad I could answer your questions about keywords and Google Analytics.
Thanks for dealing with this important point.
Well hidden isn’t it… I remember the first time I set this up got stuck at the Webmaster Tools Settings.
This is a great guide am sure it will help lots of people, good job.
Thanks Justin! The query tab is fairly new, before you could access the same data in your Webmaster Tools, but it’s nice to have it in Google Analytics now.
This is very interesting Kristie, I am embarrassed to admit that I never clicked on Queries before (or at least I don’t recall doing it for this blog).
I always went looking for ‘keywords’ in the acquisition/source-medium tab and I had this frustration with the infamous ‘not provided’ keyword.
What is the difference between the two reports, though?
I see a lot of adjustments in my blog in the near future! Thanks so much!
Hi Flavia. Great questions. Google is actually working on phasing out the keywords section (that shows the annoying “not-provided”). The query tab is the new method for seeing keywords. While we’ll never understand all of Google’s reasoning for the change, a lot of it had to do with protecting people’s privacy. The query tab does not link the keywords to very much information about the user other than the landing page. The old keywords page would let you see more.