Google Analytics Web Master Tools Explained

Recently you may have noticed some extra detail in your Google Analytics dashboards - a new set of reports has been added under the ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ header in the Traffic Sources area. This is really easy to set up, if your username for your Google Analytics account has admin rights and it is the same username you use for your webmaster tools, you can just add them in through the back end interface.

But what does this do?

WhenCanIStop's search queries

Well it gives you some information that is very useful for your SEO work.  Firstly it is showing you how often your web pages have appeared in the results (impressions) how often they were clicked on (clicks), your click through rate – CTR – (one divided by the other!) and your average position in the result.

This is useful information to know and the example that I’ve given above is for search terms, but the report can be broken down for pages, Google property or country.

• The search terms report is useful because you can use this to work out what people are talking about that might generate traffic on your site.  Does ‘Conversion Rate’ appear high on the list?  Maybe you should write some more content about conversion rates and link to that page (or alter that page to be more about conversion rates).  You’ll also be able to tell from the CTR whether or not people are likely to click through to your page – does it have a relevant title, description, etc.
• The Pages report is useful because it will show if pages are being shown in the results at all.  You can also use this report to look at CTRs for pages that you know you are getting impressions for given the search terms in the previous report. Eg the report above suggests a 0.1% CTR for the term ‘conversion rates’ but a much healthier 2.5% for the page as a whole.
• The country report is useful for you to work out if your impressions are in the right place (remember in the Google Web Master Tools you can choose whether you want to be based in a country or internationally).
• The Google property report will give you insight as to where you are appearing in the results. You’re likely to get a much lower click through rate on Google Images for example (there are just more results to pick from) than you are in Google Web.