Finding Keywords From Google Analytics

As all online marketing professionals will tell you, running an Adwords or SEO campaign is a never-ending process. You’re constantly looking for new ways to promote a business and identify new keyword phrases to attract fresh visitors, which is what Google analytics can help you with.

So the important question is; how do you find new keywords in your page content or Adwords text ads?

Previous website visitors provide one of the most overlooked methods for identifying new, important keywords.

Each time someone visits a site, they leave a trail of information. Some of which can be useful for determining which keywords are important and should be used as the basis for future changes. These internal website searches can be tracked within Google Analytics.

This information is contained within the website analytics program and records all users’ activity. This includes, how they arrived at the site, what pages they visited on the site, how long they spent and much more.

Have a look here to understand the basics of SEO

Drilling into Data From Google Analytics

Using site analytics can be useful in several ways. First, if a visitor is referred to a website by a search engine, the reports will record which search engine sent them AND what keyword search was used to locate the site.

Mining this information shows these words. But this raises the question: If visitors are already getting to the site using the keywords, isn’t the site already successfully optimised for those keywords? Maybe not.

Having visitors directed to a site doesn’t mean the site is doing as well as it can with the keywords. It is more important to examine the keywords and a site’s position in the search engine rankings.

To do this, enter the keyword string into the search engine from which traffic was received. Next, check the site’s ranking for that keyword. If the site appears well down the list (e.g. below 10th place), then clearly, the site is not receiving as many referrals as sites that show up on the first page.

This may suggest to the marketer that some adjustment to the site could improve their rankings.

Furthermore, the keywords may not currently form part of your Google Adwords Campaign. So identifying new keywords from your Organic traffic can greatly improve your paid search performance.

Once you’ve identified which keywords are driving active visitors, you need to generate a list of all the phrases. This list should then be de-duplicated to remove any keywords you are already using – the remainder forming the basis of a new Adgroup.

Keywords from Internal Site Searches

The Site Search facility of Google Analytics allows you to see how people search your site. For example, you can find out what your visitors search for and which pages they visit.

If a specific keyword is frequently searched for, questions should be asked as to why this is happening. The most likely cause is that the site navigation is not intuitive enough to allow this particular piece of information to be found.

It can also be an item unavailable through the menu structure, or visitors aren’t willing to invest time looking for it. Whatever the reason, the list of keywords used within the Internal Site Search is a valuable source of new terms that can be used in Adwords and SEO promotion.

One way to use the internal search feature is to spot the pattern of what popular items are being looked for and make this much more easily accessible. For instance, if someone is searching for a product, promote it on your home page. Then, for everyone who goes to the trouble to search your website, three or four others won’t bother.

Learn how to add the Google Analytics Site Search to your website with our training courses here.

This is just one area of SEO that can help you increase the positioning of your site and help you start ranking for various keywords. For a more in-depth look at your digital marketing, take a look at our Basics of SEO blog post and see how else you can improve your website.

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