Measuring Success

First make sure that Google Search Console is integrated with your Google Analytics account. It will appear in the left hand Acquisition menu if it is. If it isn’t you can follow the instructions here.

You can get to your Search Console in Google Analytics by following this tree:
Acquisition > Search Console

There are 4 key sections : Landing Pages, Countries, Devices and Queries.

The difference between this and other reports in Analytics is that you can measure the interaction between Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) on Google and your eventual goals - whether that be blog sign up, add to cart or purchase  and eventual revenue. This can help you understand the value of a given page, the return you are getting on it and helps you understand the relationship between effort and reward in your quest for better SERPS for a given page and implicit keyword or phrase.

Let’s start with the first in the list… Landing Pages
Acquisition > Search Console > Landing Pages

This is by far the most useful report.

You can see here the number of impressions on Google for a given page (and therefore implicit keyword or phrase), the clicks that page received and then the Click through Rate (CTR). This will help you understand how good your abstract is on the SERPs it will help you edit your TITLE tag and will help you understand relevancy. You can also look at Bounce Rate - ask yourself what can I do with my high SERPs performing pages but high (Poor) Bounce Rate? If you have an Ecommerce site, and E-commerce integrated into your analytics, you can also see Revenue and Conversion Rate. Again this can help provide valuable feedback on pricing policy, descriptions, page layout or photography by analysing the full customer journey from SERPs to checkout.

You can then make action lists, perhaps add new goals to measure, and then execute and compare results over time.

Countries
Acquisition > Search Console > Countries

Interesting to look at - possibly it gives you a sense of how you can write country specific content, offer different forms of delivery or helps you concentrate your content on a specific country.

Devices
Acquisition > Search Console > Devices

Again the power of this report is to understand the total journey from SERPs to goal completion. It gives you a sense of which devices are converting and the report can be drilled into so that you can compare a given page’s performance against desktop, mobile or tablet.

Queries
Acquisition > Search Console > Queries

With the demise of total keyword disclosure some years ago, this report is only really good for your brand led key phrases. Sometimes there are some richer keyphrases that sneak in and these can be valuable too. Look at CTR and get some action points together to influence these figures.

Search Console is just one of the ways to measure success.

It can often get you to reconsider the goals you are measuring and it is a valuable addition to your toolbox if you are not already using it.