This article was originally published in my Digital Tip-A-Month Newsletter. Sign up to get more tips like this in your inbox once a month.
I want to share a Google Analytics tip that’s crucial for getting usable keyword data, one that surprisingly many digital marketers I talk to don’t know about.
Disappearing Keywords and the Google Search Console
Once upon a time, you could log into Google Analytics and see all the keywords that brought you traffic from the major search engines, but over time, less and less of that data became available. Now, if you visit the keyword report, you’ll probably see something much like this:
You can see that search traffic is coming in, but 99% of the actual keywords your visitors are using are “not provided.” Not very useful for providing insight into your traffic.
Fortunately, there’s a better way to see your Google keyword data – but you have to enable it, and it’s surprisingly non-obvious and intimidating-looking. It’s called Search Console, and you’ll find it in the Acquisition section of your Google Analytics menu:
30-minute Project: Enable Google Search Console
Follow the link through from Google Analytics to your Search Console settings, choose the option to add a site, and enter your site URL.
Next, you need to let Google verify your site ownership. You’ve got a few options, including DNS records, uploading a verification file to your server, or connecting to Google Tag Manager. Depending on your level of access, you may need to work with IT or your web developer to complete the process, but it’s pretty quick to implement.
Once that’s done, Search Console will send keyword data into Google Analytics, and you’ll have much deeper data on your search performance: not just keywords that drove visitors, but your search ranking and visibility for each keyword. It’ll give you a wealth of insight into your search optimization – though analyzing that data is a topic for another day.