One of the most important components of any marketing campaign is access to analytics. Simply put, marketers need to regularly check in to see what kind of engagement they’re getting and what sort of progress they’re making. Rather than relying on guesswork, the best marketers draw from actual data in order to fine-tune their strategies.

For years, Google Analytics has been one of the most popular hubs for data about website performance, making it an essential tool for marketers and SEOs alike. Now that Google has introduced the latest iteration of its analytics dashboard, called Google Analytics 4 (or GA4), we thought it would be helpful to highlight some of the most useful reports that the platform provides.

What is GA4?

We’ve already written about the transition from Universal Analytics, and extolled the virtues of GA4. For those in need of a quick refresher, here’s a high-level overview.

Essentially, GA4 is the new version of Google’s flagship analytics platform, revamped to reflect changes in consumer behavior. This new analytics program understands user engagement in terms of events and is designed to show how a user might engage with a particular brand across multiple devices, websites, apps, and sessions. In short, GA4 is better suited for monitoring the way consumers actually engage on the Internet today.

The new Google Analytics is designed to be intuitive and easy to use, but nevertheless, if you’ve not spent any time with it, we’d recommend playing around with the new interface to figure out how to generate and view reports. We’re happy to provide further guidance to our clients.

Key SEO Reports from GA4

As you get started with GA4, here are a few of the reports that are most pivotal to effective marketing endeavors.

1) Traffic Acquisition Report

Marketers want to know exactly where their visitors are coming from. The Traffic Acquisition Report can reveal just that. Knowing exactly where visitors are coming from (also known as the “source” of your website traffic) can be helpful for many reasons, not least by showing how your SEO, SEM, email, and other campaigns are faring compared to other traffic generation channels (such as social media or direct traffic).

As you try to understand exactly how people find your site, and which channels are most worthy of your investment, the Traffic Acquisition Report is invaluable, providing clarity about:

• Conversions
• Average engagement
• Engaged sessions
• Event count
• Events per session
• Total users

2) Conversions

Marketers want to know where visitors come from, but also what visitors do once they land on the page. Conversion Reports are important here, providing tools to track the events that lead a visitor to take meaningful action once they are on the site.

The Conversion Reports in GA4 indicate what triggers a conversion, specifically by registering Conversions based on event name and the attribution model of your choosing.

Conversion Reports will provide you with information not only about conversions but also total revenue and total users, two closely related metrics.

3) Google Search Console Reports

Google Search Console provides a treasure trove of performance data that’s coveted by SEO pros. As with Universal Analytics, GA4 provides options for easy integration with Google Search Console.

There are two specific reports that SEOs may wish to monitor. These include:

• Google Organic Search Queries, a report that shows you Search Console data by search query.
• Google Organic Search Traffic, which shows landing pages with Search Console and Analytics numbers.

Both reports offer a lot of value, but we especially like having the ability to track organic user engagement across specific landing pages.

4) Landing Page Reports

Speaking of which, these reports allow you to monitor which pages of your website receive the most organic traffic. This allows you to determine your best-performing pages and perhaps to identify ways to optimize other pages, replicating your high engagement rates throughout your site.

Landing Page Reports provide a chance for you to assess metrics like bounce rate, average time on page, conversion rate, and more.

Keeping Tabs with GA4

Google’s new analytics platform is a boon to marketers overall, providing a wealth of useful and actionable information about user engagement. The reports we’ve highlighted here are just the tip of the iceberg, yet we think they provide a great starting point.

We are big believers in the importance of data for informing marketing and website design decisions, and we provide an abundance of data and reporting to all of our clients. Additionally, we’re happy to help our clients navigate the changes to Google Analytics, and to help pinpoint reports that might be especially pertinent. Have questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to the team here at the enCOMPASS Agency.