Google Analytics can be an incredibly useful tool for growing your business, but it’s also easy to get confused by the wealth of data and statistics that Google provides. One of the hardest things to decipher in Google Analytics are the keywords section—how do you know which keywords you should use to optimize your website? Which keywords bring the most traffic? This article will walk you through how to find top keywords in Google Analytics so that you can optimize your website and bring in more traffic, leads, and customers!
How To Find Top Keywords In Google Analytics
Here are 7 Easy-to-follow steps in order to Find Top keywords in Google Analytics.
Step 1 – Open up your Google Analytics
If you have an active Google Analytics account, just log in and click on Admin at the top right. The next step will be finding your way over to your reporting section where you can find your data. But we’re not quite there yet!
Step 2 – Choose the Audience tab
In the Audience tab, the tool will provide you with audience insights based on who’s visiting your site. To help you narrow down the results, use filters and segmentation. For example, select Country, Language & Platform to see what audiences are visiting your site. Based on the data collected in Google Analytics, you’ll be able to choose target audiences that have similar interests with low competition for popular keywords. But don’t focus too much on the exact numbers of these metrics; instead use them as a guideline for how to create your target audience lists.
Step 3 – Click on ‘New View’
Navigate to your Google Analytics account and click on ‘Admin’ in top right corner. Then, click on ‘View’ at bottom of left menu. From there, click on ‘New View‘. Enter a name for your view and set it as default. Then, click on ‘Create View‘. The beauty of having a separate view is that you will not affect your original reporting data while learning how to find top keywords in Google Analytics. We suggest naming your view something like Google Search Keywords. However, for sake of explanation we will use our example name Top Keywords. Now you are all set up with a separate Google analytics view where you can create new reports that isolate certain data from all other reports.
Step 4 – Click on ‘Event Action Types’
You can use Google Analytics’ Event Action Types report to find out which of your site’s users are using which keywords. This can help you fine-tune your search engine optimization and better target your site for maximum ROI. Follow these steps, below, in order to find out how many people are using certain keywords on your site and what kind of traffic they bring in. Simply sign into Google Analytics and go here. (Selecting different dimensions will adjust data ranges; choose Acquisition as both dimensions.) Once there, click on Event Action Types at the top.
Step 5 – Choose ‘Search Terms’ and click ‘Next’
When you choose ‘Search Terms’ and click ‘Next,’ Google will begin displaying suggestions based on your chosen seed keywords. Try clicking on some of these suggestions in order to find additional related terms that may be useful for your SEO strategy. These suggestions include both singular and plural versions of keywords, so you may have to dig through a few pages before you find a list that contains what you need. At any time, feel free to press Ctrl + F (command + F for Mac) and search for individual words or phrases if none of Google’s recommendations are perfect fits.
Step 6 – Type in your website URL, set time frame, click ‘Analyze’
To get started, type in your website URL and select a time frame. For example, if you want data on your web traffic in December of 2014, click Today and then select Month from the drop-down menu. Finally, click Analyze.
Step 7 – Sort by volume. Save View and share with your team.
You can also sort by Volume and click on Save View as to share with your team. The column that is sorted by volume shows you how many clicks each keyword received in a specified period of time. This gives you another view into keywords (with actual numbers) and how they are driving traffic. Tip: Once you’ve chosen your priority keywords, add them all into Google AdWords. It’s a great way to measure their success against each other and figure out what works!
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find top keywords in Google Analytics?
Google Analytics doesn’t make it easy. To find top keywords in Google Analytics, go to Behavior -> Site Content -> Landing Pages. Then select Primary Dimension as Landing Page and Secondary Dimension as Page Type. For example, you might select Receiving Value, Features & Services, and User Intent as your three page types. Once you do that, you can see how often people are landing on certain pages with specific keywords—and use that information to better understand what kinds of content will most likely bring in new customers.
How to Connect Google Analytics to Google Search Console?
In order to utilize Google’s keyword data in search console, you’ll first need to connect your two accounts. To do so, head over to your google analytics account and select Admin in the top right corner. From there, select Search Engine Optimization and then click on Manage Search Console Connected Accounts. Click on Google Search Console 1 and wait for a pop-up saying that they have been connected successfully. Save your changes by selecting Continue Saving Changes. You will now be able to see your top keywords! This should cover you for most queries relating to keyword research with Google Analytics data.
How to Connect Google Analytics to Google Data Studio?
One of my favorite tools is Looker Studio 2 (Formerly: Google Data Studio). With data studio, you can connect data from a multitude of sources to build dashboards that display graphs and charts. Best of all, it comes with powerful pre-built templates, including some for marketing KPIs and reports. You can also create multiple accounts for different purposes if you’re using a team. It does have one downside—Google Data Studio doesn’t provide top keywords in Google Analytics by default. But there are a few ways to work around that! This tutorial will show you how to connect your Google Analytics account to your data studio account to get that KPI just as easily as any other template provided by google analytics .
How to Connect Google Analytics to Google Tag Manager
Once you’ve connected Google Tag Manager 3 to your website, create a new tag from scratch in Google Tag Manager and link it to Google Analytics. Name your tag, select Google Analytics as your trigger and fill out any details about the profile you created earlier. Now, head over to Google Analytics and go to Audience > Keyword Planner . Copy and paste your target keyword into Your target keyword field (note that Tag Manager won’t send data to GA until after we click Save Changes). Click on Get Ideas. What pops up is a list of keywords associated with your target keyword in Google search, YouTube search or both.
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