An important part of search engine marketing centres around keyword research. In an ideal situation eCommerce catalogue pages and pay per click advertising are optimised for or explicitly target keywords and phrases which are used in search by users who are your potential customers. To do any of this of course you first need to work out which keywords and phrases to target.
Google Analytics can form part of this research as it can give you a great idea of what keywords and phrases are already winning traffic for your site; and how well they are performing. This will directly or indirectly suggest keywords and phrases to target and optimise content and advertising for. Here I will quickly go over some set-up required for getting the best out of Analytics as well as introduce a few reports which lend themselves to keyword research.
Setup
If you are starting from scratch with Google Analytics then perhaps you may want to read my previous post on getting started with Analytics before continuing. As mentioned in that article, to release the full potential of Google Analytics it is important to setup a few extra features in order to gain access to reporting insights outside of that which can be garnered from simply setting up Google’s basic JavaScript tracking snippet alone. Below I have listed some of these features with links to the setup guides / introductions taken from the Google Analytics blog, I highly encourage eCommerce Analytics users to set these features up to get maximum value from Google Analytics and not just when using the application for keyword research.
- Goals
- eCommerce Tracking
- AdWords Integration
- Webmaster Tools Integration
- Site Search
A Note On “(not provided)”
When using reports in Analytics which display keyword information from organic traffic you are going to see a hell of a lot of the term “(not provided)” in place of where you would expect (normally your most popular) keywords to be. This practically useless data comes from Google’s users who are using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) connections to use Google search, these user’s queries are encrypted and Google has deemed it necessary to hide this information from anonymised aggregated data despite this information posing no risks to the personal information of Google search’s users. There are a lot of marketers out there which are less than happy at this decision, with logged in users automatically being forwarded to SSL connections the amount of “(not provided)” over all other keywords is commonly over a third and in some cases much higher.
As a side note you can petition against Google’s lack of keyword transparency here. Additionally work has been done to regain some of the lost insight from this data through means such as custom filters.
Report: Traffic Sources > Search
Within this section of the Analytics interface we have the Organic and Paid reports. These are your first port of call when looking to find keywords which are currently sending traffic to your site and in what quantity they are doing so. Make sure to compare against previous time periods using the custom date range options. This will allow you to see keywords on the up either due to increased rankings or search volume, additionally keywords with reducing traffic may suggest a recent detrimental change to your site or a decrease in search volume for a particular term.
With the addition of Goals and eCommerce tracking as suggested above, keywords can be compared in terms of their conversion and revenue generation. This will give you a true picture of just how valuable a keyword or phrase is, which amongst other things may suggest terms for which higher pay per click bids can be made as the higher conversion will keep your cost per acquisition low.
Report: Content > Site Content > Landing Pages
A landing page is the first page your visitor reaches when reaching your site, unless a user’s query is quite specific (known as a longtail query) then the majority of users will be landing on a small set of pages usually including your home page and main category pages.
Seeing which keywords are driving traffic to a landing page is very powerful as it allows you to find targets for optimising a single page directly. To see keyword landing data for a specific page ensure that you enter the page in the filter box and select keyword as a secondary dimension.
As with the previous report with the addition of Goals and eCommerce tracking choices can be informed as to onpage optimisation and pay per click keyword selection. The ability to see keywords which are relevant (send traffic which converts) to a particular page can directly lead to successful search advertising for the keyword to that particular page.
Report: Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimisation > Queries
The Search Engine Optimisation section of reports will only become available once you have setup Webmaster Tools integration. The query report gives (approximate) figures for which queries are generating the most impressions in search engine results pages.
A comparison of these keywords with the actual onsite performance of matching keywords can lead to insight into keywords which are currently producing impressions but are not relevant, or impressions of pages on your site with a poor call to action formed from the page title and content.
Report: Content > Site Search > Search Terms
It is important for any eCommerce site to have some form of site search so users can easily find a product when they know specificity what they are looking for thereby increasing conversion. With site search tracking setup with Analytics the Site Search set of reports will become available. This is a truly great resource as it will allow you to gain more suggestions for potential keywords and phrases, but will also show what the users who are relevant to your site are looking for (which you might want to sell) or search terms which are not finding the results which they should.
Summary
In relation to keyword research Google Analytics is a useful tool, however it is of course not the only tool which should be used. It is also important to always compare keywords and phrases in terms of traffic volume, competitiveness and relevancy (often in the form of conversion) to get a true overall picture of where your efforts will be best spent.
Hopefully from this introduction you can begin to see the value in using the Analytics application for keyword research and validation of marketing decisions.