Web Analytics for SEO can be a completely different animal than other traffic sources. You want to know what keywords are performing well on your site. You want to know what search engines are giving you the best converting traffic. You want to know what keywords you should be going after more aggressively. When the right data is researched, you can increase your SEO abilities ten fold. Look at the right data and well…let’s just say you can’t afford to look at the wrong data. I wanted to quickly show you the 8 Google Analytics reports I rely on to help me with SEO.

1. Search Engine Organic Report

Google Analytics allows you to create segments in your data using the Advanced Segments tool. One of those segments you want to create (which will help you for all of these reports I am going to explain to you) is an Organic Search Segment. Luckily there is already one pre-configured and you just need to activate it in the Advanced Segments area. What is this report all about? You basically want to see data relating to the 3 major search engines

• Google
• Yahoo!
• Bing (MSN)

Broken down by these 3 major search engines, you can now start to see specific metrics pertaining to these search engines. This will help answer two very important questions. 1) What search engines perform better than others? and 2) Is there a smaller search engine we need to be putting more efforts towards? The specific metrics I like to look at are:

• Bounce Rate
• Goal conversion rates %
• Unique visits

2. Keyword Organic Report

Now that you have your Advanced Segment setup for organic traffic, looking at this report is much easier. I generally like to take a look at the top 100 keywords that drive organic traffic to my site. This answers two important questions. 1) What keywords perform the best and 2) what high converting keywords should be going after more aggressively. Metrics I like to look at include:

• Bounce Rate
• Goal conversion rates %
• Total searches
• Placement (from Google webmaster central)
• Unique visits

From here I get a very unique and detailed look at what specifically needs to be done in my SEO efforts.

3. Top 5 Keyword Report

Now that we have a list of our top 100 performing keywords, I like to dig deeper into the top 5 as in the top 5 keywords that are generating the most traffic. By doing this we can help answer 3 questions for ourselves. 1) Which of the top 5 keywords should we more aggressively go after, 2) How can we get more of the search market share and 3) How does SERP really affect our number of clicks? To do this I look at these metrics:

• Bounce Rate
• Goal conversion rates %
• Total searches
• Placement (from Google webmaster central)
• Search Market Share
• Unique visits

I love this report. If Organic Search makes up a big portion of your traffic like it does for most of my sites, you will find that by focusing on increasing conversion rates for your top 5 keywords will increase your overall conversion rates tremendously.

4. Organic Search Traffic Share Report

This is one of my favorite reports in Google Analytics. Comparing across all other traffic sources/marketing channels, how does Organic Search measure up? That’s what this report is all about. Why is this important? Because if you want to be at the top of your Internet Marketing game you need to be receiving at least 60% or more of your daily traffic from organic search. I don’t really need to explain to this audience how important that is to online business. With this report you can answer 2 important questions. 1) What is the % of overall traffic the site receives from organic search and 2) How does SEO compare statistically in other metrical categories against other traffic sources? Here is what I look at:

• Bounce Rate
• Unique visits
• Goal conversion rates %

If you work at a large company like I do, this can help justify the need for spending more money on SEO. To run this report the best way you choose 2 segments in your segments drop-down, allowing you to compare organic traffic to another segment.

5. Organic Search Vs. Report

This is Organic Search vs. another segment. You are probably asking yourself, didn’t you just mention that in the previous report? Yes and know. This type of report is about diving deeper into the relationship between Organic Search traffic and another source or segment. What comparisons can be drawn between say your SEO traffic and your PPC traffic? Or your SEO traffic and your Email Marketing traffic? What can you learn from one and apply to the other?

Rather than listing all the metrics, let me explain that in this type of analysis I actually look at all kinds of stuff. Everything from conversion rates to what browser the visitor uses. I like to look at everything and see if I see any striking contrasts. I then start digging deeper from there.

6. SEO and Google Adwords Report

To do this your first need to make sure that your Google Adwords and Google Analytics accounts are talking to each other. That way Google Analytics can see the specific data from Adwords and allow you to see it in your reports. Why is this analysis helpful? You can see which paid search terms are performing well which in turn tells you what to go after organically in your SEO efforts. Also because of Broad Match in Adwords you can locate highly targeted long tail terms that are doing well for you in PPC, and in turn start ranking for those organically. Here are the metrics to look at:

• Bounce Rate
• Goal conversion rates %
• Total # of searches
• Unique visits

7. Internal Search Engine Report

In Google Analytics settings you can actually configure your analytics to capture data from your internal site search engine. If you use Google Custom Search as your search engine this becomes even easier. The benefit? How about full metrical data pertaining to what people are actually searching for within your site? Talking about an advantage! If you know what people are searching for than you know what content to put together and what to show people prominently on your site. Look at these metrics:

• The Search Queries
• # of Searches per
• Pages visited

This is actually the type of data that more people need to be taking advantage of. For some odd reason this type of report and metrics go highly unnoticed in the site conversion and Internet marketing world.

8. Organic Mobile Report

More and more people are using their phones to browse content on the web. And as time moves on you are only going to see this more and more. Chances are you might be seeing 1-2% of your current organic search traffic being viewed through a Mobile Web Browser. So take advantage of this. Look at the data first, then start making your plans for a mobile version of your site. 3 questions this report will answer for you:

1. Am I capitalizing off my mobile traffic?
2. How well does my mobile traffic convert?
3. Do I need a mobile version of my site right now?

Looking at the metrics that I have mentioned in this article of Bounce Rate, Unique Visits, Goal Conversion Rates, and a unique one for this called Visit Share ( meaning the total percentage of overall organic traffic used a mobile ) will help you in this effort.