Track the keywords people search to find your website

Most of us are used to jumping from one tool to another to get different information, right? You access the CRM to see your contact info, Google Ads to see how your ads are doing, or Meta, to see keywords, Google Analytics 4 to check your web traffic, or Google Search Console to analyze links to your website and search terms (check our +200 digital marketing tools if you want to know more about these tools).

It's pretty cool to have the ability to access all these platforms, but let's be honest, it's much better when we find ways to integrate all this information and have it on a single page 🙄. It's not easy, tools like Gretel work to achieve something similar, however, we still access these tools whenever a Gretel insight rises up 😪.

Today we're going to share with you a tip to simplify one of these tasks so you can have the keywords or search terms that help users find your website in Google in the organic search results that appear in Google Search Console in a Google Analytics 4 report!

We’ll need to connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics 4 for this. Let’s look deeper!🧐

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google that helps website owners keep track of their site's presence in Google search results.

It shows info like:

• How Google crawls and indexes your website,
• Alerts if there are any issues like crawl errors or security issues.
• You can submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling
• view search analytics data
• You'll even get notifications if any manual actions are taken against your site.

💡If you want to see more information check our article about Google Search Console.

Overall, Google Search Console is an essential tool for any website owner looking to boost their search engine optimization (SEO) and make sure their site is being properly indexed by Google (check more info here).

Steps to connect Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4

Great news! Once you’ve confirmed that you own your website and have installed the Google Analytics 4 code, you can easily complete the linking process of Google Search Console to Google Analytics 4 by following a few simple steps. Let's get started!🤘

> Step 1: Create your Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console accounts

Alright, so, we can't link the accounts if we don't have them set up, right?😜 If you haven't set up GA4 yet, follow our guide to do so.

And, if you haven't created your Google Search Console account, now's the time to do it! No biggie, here's how:

1. Go to the Google Search Console website.
2. Click on the "Start Now" button.
3. Sign in or create a new Google account.
4. Enter your website URL and click on "Add Property."
5. To verify your ownership, do what Google says. You can add a meta tag, upload an HTML file, or use Google Analytics.
6. Once you're verified, you can use Google Search Console's features to monitor and improve your website's performance in Google search results.

Step 2: Linking Google Analytics 4 with Google Search Console

Let's link your Google Analytics 4 account with your Search Console account by following these simple steps:

1. First, sign in to your Google Analytics 4 account and navigate to the "Admin section" (you'll spot this one by the ⚙️).
2. Next, click on "Product Links" under the Property column and then click on "Search Console Linking".
3. You'll now see a "Set up Search Console data sharing" button, click on it.
4. Select the domain you want to link and click "Save" to proceed.
5. If you haven't verified ownership of the domain in Search Console yet, don't worry! Just follow the instructions provided and you'll be good to go.
6. Once you have verified ownership, click on the "Enable" button to link your Search Console account to your Google Analytics 4 account.

And that's it! Now you should be able to see Search Console data in your Google Analytics 4 account. Happy analyzing 💃!

Step 3: Publish the New Report Collection in GA4

Once we have the linked accounts, we can publish the new Search Console Collection. This will have been created automatically, so no need to worry about that.

What is a collection?

In GA4, “A collection is a set of reports. You can create your own collections. Life cycle and User are predefined collections that appear in the report navigation, by default.”

You can organize your reports into collections and topics in the report navigation.

How to access the collections?

To access the collections, you must have editor or administrator permissions on your GA4 account.

1. Go to Reports.
2. In the left navigation, click Library (at the bottom). If you don't see Library, you don't have Edit permission!

You’ll find some collections created by default, you can edit or review them. If you have linked the Search Console, the collection will be created by default.

The only thing you have to do is to publish it. Go to the three buttons at the top right and click on publish. When it is published, the "published" reference will appear in green.

Step 3: View the New Search Keywords report in GA4

You are almost done!💪

A new report has been created in GA4, under Reports -> Search Console. In it we can see two tabs:

• The first one is where the keywords we are searched for in Google appear, so we can control which terms bring us traffic, the impressions we have with that term, and how many times they end up entering the web.

• The pages where our visitors land the most with the same information, clicks, impressions, and position. In this report, you can compare the metrics that you’ve configured in GA4 such as traffic by device, age, etc.

Benefits of integrating Search Console in Google Analytics 4

Now you've got this integration that’ll make it super easy for you to measure and evaluate the organic traffic coming to your website, all from the same place you check your Google Analytics 4. With this info, you can improve your SEO like:

• Tweaking the meta titles and descriptions for your most popular pages so more people click on them.
• Creating new pages to target those super popular search terms.
• Shifting your Google Ads strategy to focus on the keywords that aren't getting you the results you want.
• Scoring some fresh links to boost your rankings.
• Keeping an eye on new search terms and how they're trending.

Conclusion

We're excited to see how this integration will help make your daily search tasks a whole lot easier.

We use it too, and it's been a lifesaver in cutting down the time we spend analyzing our company's data. Plus, if we connect this info in GA4, Gretel will be able to generate insights that alert us when there are important changes in these terms. It's like having your own personal data assistant! 😛