Google analytics training: SEO Reports for clients

Google Analytics produce a huge amount of different results that you can generate for your clients but how do you create the reports that will really matter for your SEO clients?
Here I am going to share with you some of the official Google Analytics training I received prior to achieving my GAIQ qualification.
SEO clients want to know the success of their keywords and be able to see results improving over a period of time. They want to know more than what position in the SERPs they are. Clients want to know how many people actually click on the keywords they pay for and how many visits come as a direct result of the SEO work.
Assuming you have GA code already installed in your clients site that has received a certain amount of data you can then produce the following reports.
Basic Keyword Report

This will show exactly what keywords where typed into the search engine by visitors that came to the site.

Get this report by going to Traffic Sources – keywords. The drop down box that says “none” needs to be changed to medium which will add a column to enable you to differentiate between keywords that were CPC and Organic search.

The good points about this report is that it shows every keyword that was typed to find the site not just the ones the SEO is focused on. It may give you ideas of what keywords you could used to expand your SEO campaign.

The bad points are that for some clients this is not specific enough to their campaign so I will now show you a second report.

Advanced Segments for SEO

If you want to be more specific as to how many visitors come a a direct result of the SEO the client pays you for you can create an advanced segment. Click on advanced segments on the top right of the dashboard page and click to create a new advanced segment.

Here you need to type in the left column “keyword then drag and drop the tab to the top section of the grid. Change the grid drop down to “contains” and type your first keyword in the box. Add a “or” statement repeat the process above and add the second keyword. Keep going until you have all the keywords.

Doing the search with “contains” helps to bring all the long-tail versions of your keywords into the figures also.

Name the segment SEO and save it. Go back to the dashboard and in the advanced segments drop down select SEO and Visits. Now you will see a report which shows you each aspect of data with a second figure below for the figures relating to your SEO campaign.

These are just the start of what you can do with Google Analytics for your SEO clients. Have a go at experimenting with advanced segments further. You could set one segment for each keyword to change the SEO mark to individual keywords to see the proportion each keyword brings.

This example below set the condition to matches exactly and I entered just the one keyword saved the report and repeated for the next keyword.