Webmaster Tools Integration

In order to provide helpful information for webmasters who want to optimize their website visibility on search results, Google created Webmaster Tools. These tools provide a wealth of information regarding Google organic search, including (but not limited to) crawling, indexing, traffic, and search appearance data.

If this is the first time you've read about Webmaster Tools, you should definitely get more involved with it, no matter if you are an analyst, a marketer, or a website owner. The rich data provided by the tools can help optimize your website visibility and usability in many ways. Read more about Webmaster Tools at http://goo.gl/nEVgBM.

This chapter provides a detailed step-by-step guide to integrating Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics as well as a walkthrough to the reports available once the integration is complete. While not all data can be imported from Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics, this integration will bring additional reports into Google Analytics, which can save time while analyzing Search Engine Optimization–related data.

Linking Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics

The first step to linking a Webmaster Tools account to a Google Analytics property is having the right access levels. In order to link the accounts you must have Edit rights on Google Analytics and be an owner on the Webmaster Tools account of the site you want to import the data from. Learn more about access levels in both tools:

• Google Analytics: http://goo.gl/G8dZnN
• Webmaster Tools: http://goo.gl/t0CNad

It is also important to note that the accounts are linked on the Google Analytics property level; a website on Webmaster Tools can be linked to only one property on Google Analytics. And since the integration allows for just one-to-one linking, it might be affected by the way Google Analytics has been implemented.

For example, when measuring websites that span multiple top-level domains (such as daniel.com, daniel.co.uk, and daniel.com.br), a common solution for implementing Google Analytics is to have all top-level domains under the same property to make aggregation simpler. In that case, filters would be used to create a view for each domain. Since Webmaster Tools accept only one top-level domain per account, you would need to open one Webmaster Tools account for each top-level domain. In such circumstances it would be problematic to have the accounts linked properly, as you would have multiple Webmaster Tools accounts that relate to a single Google Analytics property.

If you have a Google Analytics property that relates to a single top-level domain and a Webmaster Tools account for this domain, the linking should be straightforward. First, log in to Google Analytics (make sure you have Edit permissions for the relevant property), and then click on the Admin link on the top of your screen.

You will reach your administrator panel. Click All Products under the Property Linking section. If this Google Analytics property is not linked to any Webmaster Tools account, you should see the snippet shown in Figure 5-1 when you scroll down that page.

Figure 5-1: Linking Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

In order to continue, you must be a Webmaster Tools owner in the account you want to link. Click on Link Webmaster Tools, and from the page displayed, click on Edit under the Webmaster Tools Settings section to reach the page shown in Figure 5-2 (in the Webmaster Tools website).

This page (see Figure 5-2) will list all accounts for which you are an owner. Choose the Webmaster Tools account you want to link to your Google Analytics property and click Save.

You will now be returned to the Google Analytics property settings page. Note that by default all views will show this Webmaster Tools account's data; if you want to limit the data to a number of views, click on the Enabled Views drop-down box and choose the views that should have this data enabled. Then click on Save.

Your Google Analytics account is now associated with your Webmaster Tools account. It's important to note that once the accounts are linked, the data from Webmaster Tools will populate Google Analytics reports retroactively, showing data starting from the day the Webmaster Tools account or the Google Analytics view was created, whichever came last.

Figure 5-2: Enabling Webmaster Tools data in Google Analytics

In the next section, you learn more about the reports that are now available to you through Google Analytics.

Analyzing Webmaster Tools Data on Google Analytics

In order to find the Webmaster Tools reports, called Search Engine Optimization, log into your Google Analytics account and look for them in the Acquisition tab (left sidebar) on the reporting interface. Three reports are available: Queries, Landing Pages, and Geographical Summary. In this section, you learn more about each report.

Note that the Google Analytics-Webmaster Tools integration is not as “deep” as the ones you've seen for AdWords and AdSense; it is not possible to analyze Webmaster Tools data using any other Google Analytics metric. For example, it would not be possible to segment queries by traffic source or any other metric unrelated to Webmaster Tools.

Once the accounts are linked, the following Google web search metrics will be available in the Search Engine Optimization reports:

• Impressions: The number of times a website URL appeared in Google organic search results.
• Clicks: The number of clicks on a website URL from a Google organic search result.
• Average Position: The average ranking of either a query or a landing page in Google organic search results. For example, if the query or landing page appeared at position 1 for one query and 3 for another query, the average position would be 2 ((1+3)/2). Keep in mind that if the site appeared several times for a specific query, only the top position contributes to the average position score.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): Calculated as Clicks/Impressions * 100.

The following dimensions will be available to be analyzed:

• Queries: The queries users click in Google organic search results before visiting a website.
• Landing Pages: The pages users land on when clicking on a Google organic search result. It's important to note that multiple queries can lead to the same landing page and one query can lead to multiple landing pages.
• Google Property: A breakdown of search activity by web search, mobile search, video search, and image search.
• Country: The country of users, derived from their IP addresses.

Queries Report

This report displays the top 1,000 daily queries with the following metrics: impressions, clicks, average position, and CTR. You can also use country and Google property as a primary or secondary dimension. The direct link to the report is http://goo.gl/2cIL0h.

This report allows for an interesting analysis that can provide actionable insights. Figure 5-3 shows, at a glance, the clicks for each query as compared to the average number of clicks on your website queries (sorted by impressions). The central line in the chart represents the website average, and bars to the left of it show that the number of clicks was below the average, while bars to the right of it show that the number of clicks was above the average. You can see the queries with the highest number of impressions and their clicks as compared to the website average.

For example, in Figure 5-3, you see that the query types of graphs is well positioned when it comes to query impressions; however, this query is very ineffective when it comes to attracting people to click on it from Google organic search results.

Figure 5-3: Queries report in Google Analytics

Figure 5-3 will uncover queries that are receiving high amounts of impressions on search results but are not succeeding in turning searchers into website users—that is, queries with a low CTR.

A good practice to improve queries' CTR is to customize your search snippet, which is the few lines of text that appear under every search result. The search snippet can be the user's first interaction with your website, and ultimately it will determine the click-through rate of visitors coming from Google organic search. The snippet is what you promise to your user; are you delivering it in the landing page? Learn more about ways to customize search snippets at http://goo.gl/OYPZE0.

In order to reach the report shown in Figure 5-3, follow these steps:

1. Open the Queries report (go to http://goo.gl/2cIL0h).
2. Change the graph type to Comparison by clicking on the fourth icon to the right of the filter box, above the main table.
3. Change the right-most drop-down to Clicks (see the top-right drop-down in Figure 5-3).

Another interesting way to look at this data is to apply filters to see how different types of queries perform (the filter field is available right above the table). Here are a few query filter examples you might want to apply to your data:

• Branded vs. non-branded: This will provide a better understanding of how you can improve your organic search results for users who already know you (branded queries) as opposed to those who arrived using a general query (non-branded queries).
• Product category: If you sell products on your website, it is a good idea to see which product categories are performing well when it comes to organic search results.
• Content section: If you have different content sections on your website, such as Men and Women for ecommerce websites or News and Travel for publishers, you might want to analyze queries related to each section separately.

Landing Pages

This report shows the top 1,000 daily landing pages for users coming from Google organic search. The URLs are ranked by impressions (the number of times an organic search result included a snippet leading to the specific landing page) on Google search result pages. You see the number of impressions, clicks, average position, and CTR for your top 1,000 pages.

With this report, you can see which pages drive the most organic search traffic to your site and which pages might need content improvements in order to deliver a better click-through rate. The direct link to this report is http://goo.gl/uH1Zvd.

When discussing paid search campaigns, it is very natural to talk about landing page optimization; however, optimizing organic search landing pages is not so common. But the importance is the same; both should be highly efficient in engaging incoming traffic. As I previously mentioned, it is not possible to mix the metrics from Webmaster Tools with the standard Google Analytics metrics, which means you can't add a success metric to this report (such as ecommerce conversion rate). This means that you can only learn which page brings the highest number of organic sessions, but not its success.

You can tell from Figure 5-4 that the page with the highest number of impressions is /analytics/google-tag-manager, but it has an average CTR of 3.33%. On the other hand, /analytics/filters has significantly fewer impressions but a much higher CTR of 6.11%, so it is probably doing a better job with the search snippet.

Figure 5-4: Landing page report in Google Analytics

You can go one step further to understand landing pages performance by adding a secondary dimension to this report, as shown on Figure 5-5. The following link will lead you directly to the report: http://goo.gl/W8IGQV. I have highlighted all the Google image results in the Top 10 organic landing pages in Figure 5-5. As you can see, this instantly shows that while Google image is showing a large amount of impressions for these pages, the CTRs are significantly lower than those for Google web results.

Figure 5-5: Landing page report segmented by Google property

In addition to this initial segmentation, which is possible only in the Search Engine Optimization reports, there is a way to analyze organic traffic success using Google Analytics standard reports. Next, you will learn how to analyze landing pages from organic search traffic and discover how well they are performing. You will not be able to see this analysis side by side with the Webmaster Tools metrics (impressions, clicks, average position, and CTR), but knowing organic landing page conversion rates will provide an excellent proxy for Search Engine Optimization success.

To perform this analysis, visit the standard Landing Pages report (direct link: http://goo.gl/WQAi4x), click on the box marked as letter A on Figure 5-6, and then choose Organic Traffic. (By default, your screen will show All Traffic instead of Organic Traffic.) You can also remove the All Traffic segment by clicking on the arrow on the upper-right corner of the box. Following this step, choose the visualization type Comparison—marked as letter C in Figure 5-6. Finally, choose the metric you would like to use as a comparison point just below the icons for visualization type. Note that you can also choose different metrics by choosing a different Metric group, as explained below.

The report shows all the landing pages from organic traffic and their performance when it comes to bounce rates and goals you have configured in your account.

Figure 5-6: Analyzing organic landing pages in Google Analytics

Here is a quick explanation of what you see in Figure 5-6:

1. Organic traffic segment: This segment ensures that only organic search traffic information will appear in this report. If you want to learn more about segments, read http://goo.gl/ZaG64q.
2. Metric group: Each of the links represents a group of metrics to be displayed on the table. You will be able to see landing page performance by any goal set, ecommerce, AdSense revenue, or a customized set.
3. Visualization type: As you saw in the previous section, the Comparison visualization is very effective when analyzing data; it shows how each row compares to the average of the website for a specific metric (middle grey line). Note that for bounce rates (the rate at which visitors leave a website without interacting with it), lower is better; therefore a higher than average bar will be red and a lower than average bar is green. When you're looking at metrics such as conversion rates, the colors will be inversed.
4. Metrics drop-down: This drop-down can be used to choose which metric will be shown in the visualization. Metrics that can be used are % new visits, bounce rate, pages/visit, average visit duration, and other goal-conversion metrics.

If you analyze Figure 5-6, you can see that the website has a steady organic traffic growth. Looking at the Top 5 organic search landing pages shown in the table below the chart, you learn that besides number 4 they all have a lower than average bounce rate, which is a good sign. I also recommend that you change the metric group to check how landing pages perform for more meaningful metrics such as goal and ecommerce conversion rates. You might want to take further action on landing page number 4, /testing/content-experiments, probably by adding more engaging content and testing it through an A/B test.

I also highly recommend that you perform this analysis separately for organic search mobile traffic; this will give you an indication of how you are performing on mobile as well. In order to do that, add a mobile organic segment to your account using this link: http://goo.gl/9sh2i8. Then change the segment in the report shown in Figure 5-6 by clicking on Add Segment next to annotation A. Make sure to check the Webmaster Tools list of recommendations to optimize websites for mobile devices at http://goo.gl/BMieZI.

Geographical Summary

The SEO Geographical Summary table provides a breakdown of impressions, clicks, and CTR with country as the default primary dimension. You can also select Google Property as a primary dimension to get a breakdown of the metrics by one of the following search types: web, image, mobile, mobile smartphone, or video. The direct link to this report is http://goo.gl/6aaHrT.

The default view in this report, which shows countries where your site has been exposed on search queries, will help you understand in which countries you appear the most on search results. This view can be used to understand CTR from different countries, which might be used to decide which countries need their own localized version using the country language.

The second view provides information about Google search properties (image, web, mobile, video, and so on). In order to reach this view, visit the Geographical Summary default report and click on Google Property, as shown in Figure 5-7.

Figure 5-7: Finding the Google Property report

You can use the information in this view to understand how your site is optimized for different properties. For instance, based on the information shown in Figure 5-8, you might decide to try to optimize your search results on Google Image, which has a high number of impressions but a very low CTR.

Figure 5-8: Google properties report in Google Analytics

Summary

In this chapter you learned how to link Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts. As you saw, while this integration is not as robust as the AdWords and AdSense integrations, it is certainly helpful and can be used to extract important insights.

You learned some techniques to help analyze the new data. You saw how to uncover low-performance queries by looking at click-through rates from Google organic search results and learned why organic landing pages should be optimized. You also learned how to compare query performance by Google search property and how to optimize it by improving your organic search snippets.

To learn more about analysis techniques for performing Search Engine Optimization using Google Analytics, read http://goo.gl/rrPRVV. Here are the techniques discussed in that article:

• Landing page analysis that focuses on Google/organic traffic
• Segment analysis of Google/organic traffic
• Multi-channel funnels and attribution analysis
• Keyword analysis with Webmaster Tools data
• Generating content ideas
• Internal site search analysis