Don’t forget about the power of analytics

Krzysztof says: “Don't forget about analytics, and I’m not just talking about Google Analytics 4. We have lots of tools. If you don't like GA4 you can find great alternatives like Microsoft Clarity.

It is super important, as an SEO, that you check the results and effects of your content optimization in your analytics. You have to base your decisions on data. For example, you can get a report in GA4 that will tell you exactly how your landing pages gather organic Google traffic. You can check the newly defined bounce rate and sessions with interactions to see whether you are matching the intent of your users.

Other reports can give you a lot of data as well. If you have GA4 merged with data from Google Search Console or Google Ads, you can check for keywords that are performing well, which could be great candidates for your SEO campaign. There are a lot of reports that can tell you why your campaign isn’t performing and give you ideas. They might tell you that you have some very hard work ahead of you because your copy doesn’t match user intent.

Your text might not be well prepared for your end user, so you have to improve it by adding explanations of your products or services, adding photos, etc. You can see this in your analytics data.

With Microsoft Clarity, you can also see recordings of user sessions, which will tell you if your SXO (Search Experience Optimization) is on point. For example, you might see that a user is entering your website and they are lost. Now you have to think about what your landing page is lacking. It's not only technical SEO that you can improve with analytics data, but also the UX or usability of your website.”

What is GA4’s new definition of ‘bounce rate’?

“You have to be very careful when comparing data from Universal Analytics with GA4 data. In GA4, the user has to enter your website and stay there for 10 seconds for it to be treated as a session with engagement. Seeing two views or making a conversion can also be viewed as a session with engagement, even though the event is totally different.

The new bounce rate is the opposite of a session with engagement. The old bounce rate was only showing sessions with one interaction. The 10-second session factor was not included.

It’s important to know that you can change this 10-second period in your GA4 setting to define your own bounce rate. You can check not only if a user enters and leaves your site, but if they open a blog post and spend less than 10 seconds reading your perfectly well-made SEO copy.

You can also improve your analysis of this by using something we call micro conversions. If you have an e-commerce site, you think about conversions as transactions; where someone adds something to their cart and makes a transaction. A micro conversion, on the other hand, could be viewing three different products in your store or enlarging a single photo.

That micro conversion will show you whether the traffic is better or worse and whether it might gain you more total conversions in the future. If you don't have conversion data, or you’re making predictions, then you can use a micro conversion as a sign alongside bounce rate.”

Can an in-house SEO work with GA4 themselves or should they be outsourcing to a GA4 professional?

“It depends on the site. If you have a lot of data, then you should outsource. If you have a small service, you might still outsource the implementation because it needs knowledge of things like Google Tag Manager and Cookie Consent settings.

However, I think that SEOs have the technical knowledge to learn GA4. If you want Google Analytics knowledge for free, Google documentation is the best place to go. There is also a platform called Skillshop where Google specialists can learn Google Ads, Google Analytics, etc. You can take exams there and certify yourself, and it's all for free.”

How do you merge your GA4 data with data from Google Search Console?

“You have to go into the administration bar and you can merge data from Google Search Console into Google Analytics by allowing it there.

If a user has permission to view data in Analytics and view and edit data in Google Search Console, you will have this option already. Just click and you will be able to use GA4 to check the data from Google Search Console.

There is one catch, though. You can’t match keywords with exact conversions. You can only do that in Google Ads. If you want to test a keyword, use Google Ads for that. To check the results for SEO, you have to look at incoming traffic to a landing page.”

Can an SEO use only GA4 to analyse their data or should they still be using a tool like Looker Studio to bring data sources together?

“Looker Studio is a great way to save time because, if you don't need to dig into the data, you can prepare your reports without spending hours on them. If you are sending reports to someone who is not well-versed in Google Analytics, Looker Studio can prepare great examples that are interactive for the end user and very nice to read.

Remember, if you are a good programmer, you can merge all your data sources in Looker Studio. You can take other reports from your internal agency or freelancer CRM, and you can add your notes. These reports are as good as they come. You can make them look great as well, with your logo, etc. If you don't like GA4 and it's too much of a puzzle for you, Looker Studio is the answer.”

Why should you use Microsoft Clarity as an additional tool?

“We are very used to data from Google Analytics, and clients are asking for data from third parties so that we don't only provide them with our stuff. Clarity is an add-on but, if you value your time and your data, and you’re concerned about the speed of your website, then you should still use both of them.

It won't affect site speed significantly and it won’t waste your time because you can choose which source you collect data from when you’re gathering it. You want to have the two best tools that are available to you, and they are both free.

There are differences between them, of course, but now we are in the best situation because those two companies are fighting to provide us with the best tool. They are fighting for the end user and we, as end users, are benefiting. It’s a great opportunity to start testing. You can’t collect data from back in time, so you have to start collecting now if Clarity is a new tool for you. When you have free time in a few months, you can use that data to dig into it.”

Are you seeing analytics professionals moving away from GA4 to something else?

“We still try to keep tabs on GA4 but, of course, there are some people who have used the update as an opportunity to test other systems like Adobe Analytics.

For small websites, we are seeing that people only use GA4 and Microsoft Clarity. Maybe that’s just here in Poland, but those are the two best options right now if you ask me.”

In terms of UX, what metrics are you looking at and how does that impact your SEO strategy?

“One example that you can check very easily is heatmaps, and you can check how users scroll your website. GA4 has a built-in event that will tell you when a user has scrolled through 90% of your page. It’s automated but you can change it if you have knowledge of Google Tag Manager.

In Clarity, on the other hand, you have reports, and you can check all of the data. They are very nice to read because they are colourful and they’re easy to present to your clients or other team members.

When you’re analysing this report, you can change the order of elements like text, side elements, or call-to-action buttons. If you know that most of your users aren’t scrolling past 50%, then you can rearrange it to keep them on the page for longer. You can move up the most important elements that will address the user’s intent.

This isn’t something you do every week. When you start working with a website, gather this data, then gather new data after you have made changes to see the difference in traffic after two or three months. You might learn that you lost some users and gained some unnecessary bounce rate because it was not made perfectly. We cannot know this before. We work based on intuition, experience, and how the website looks. After some time, we have data, so we can base our decisions on that data.”

Are you still using a tool like Google Tag Manager to install and manage your tracking scripts?

“Yes. It's the best tool to manage all of your tags.

For example, if you're working on a website, it might use a tag like the LinkedIn Pixel to gather demographic data from LinkedIn. You can use GTM to implement other systems too, like GDPR in the EU consent mode. It’s very important to use and know this tool, but I don't recommend becoming an expert in it. You’re an SEO. You don't have to know GTM completely, but you do want to know the possibilities it offers.

In GTM you can ‘hack’ some websites, in a good way. For example, we are working with car dealers who own a website that is made centrally. They cannot change anything on this website in the code or the CMS, but we can use GTM to change titles, descriptions, or even text – and it affects the Google index. We can change it not only for the end user but for Googlebot as well. It's a good idea to know the possibilities of GTM because there are many of them.”

Is using Google Tag Manager to make these changes more of a temporary band-aid fix?

“Of course, it’s best to make permanent changes, but we sometimes work with clients that have so much bureaucracy that it takes months to make any changes at all. GTM can help because it allows us to install new codes and change how we implement Google Analytics without asking the client’s IT team for anything. We have access to the containers.

When you're an SEO, you want to deliver results. You don't want to wait two months for a client to change your titles, which does happen in the real world.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“Stop making manual reports, except when they describe what you’ve done for a client.

I’ve seen SEOs wasting time copying data from GA4 and Search Console into some nicely made PDF reports. It's a complete waste of time because all of those tools are based on technology. You can use scripts, APIs, and Google Docs to merge this data, or you can use Looker Studio to make those reports for you. SEOs should read reports and get ideas from the data, but you should not waste your time copying it out.

Writing a script or using an API is hard work and it takes time but doing reports every month takes time – and it takes part of your soul as well. Automate it. There are a lot of pre-made scripts that you can use, and they will help you to share data. Google Ads teams and SEO teams should be sharing their data, for example. Google Ads teams can make those scripts and export data that is very useful for SEOs. Don't do it manually; automate it.”

Krzysztof Marzec is CEO at DevaGroup, and you can find him over at DevaGroup.pl.