{"id":19333,"date":"2023-04-05T08:32:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T08:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nobraineragency.com\/seo\/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-seo-five-essential-seo-metrics-and-where-to-find-them-in-ga4\/"},"modified":"2024-09-04T12:58:08","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T12:58:08","slug":"five-seo-metrics-where-ga4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobraineragency.com\/seo\/five-seo-metrics-where-ga4\/","title":{"rendered":"Five essential SEO metrics and where to find them in GA4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millions of websites currently rely on Google Analytics data to monitor how their website is performing and how effective SEO services<\/a>\u00a0and content marketing strategy<\/a> is working, as well as a myriad of other important information about how people use their website. As a result of the arrival of GA4 (and the sunsetting of Universal Analytics), the way we do things needs to change.<\/p>\n

While GA4 first launched in October 2020, Google has been warning us since early 2022 that Universal Analytics (UA) will stop processing data by July 2023 and encouraging every website owner or administrator to set up GA4 properties in the meantime. While many will have done this, whilst leaving their existing UA properties running alongside, actually starting to use GA4 and changing the way you report according to the data it provides is another matter.<\/p>\n

GA4 works very differently from UA, both in the data capture in the first place and the UI that users navigate around to access the information. We won\u2019t go into great detail about this here, but our previous blog on why to migrate to GA4 ASAP<\/a> could be useful if you want to know more about the main differences and read some migration tips.<\/p>\n

In this blog, we cover some important SEO metrics and reports<\/a> that many marketers currently use in UA that are different in GA4, and explain how to ensure you can access the data you want in GA4 to be able to accurately measure and report on it from July 2023 onwards.<\/p>\n

SEO metrics that measure user engagement in GA4<\/h2>\n

GA4 is markedly different from UA in many of the ways it captures and reports on data. This means that reports you may have been relying on for years will need to change when using GA4. Confusingly, some of the terminology used in GA4 is the same, but has a different meaning now to what you may be used to in UA.<\/p>\n

User engagement is front and centre to SEO reporting, because it\u2019s not enough to just know that organic traffic has been driven to your website; you need to know that the organic traffic landing is relevant to your business and how they engage with your content and site provides important information on things like your keyword strategy, content performance and UX.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve outlined some of the essential SEO metrics and reporting features that help quantify and illustrate organic performance and user engagement in GA4.<\/p>\n

Find GA4 traffic source data<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s always important to have a clear picture of the digital channels that are driving people to your website and increases in organic visits over time is a good indication that your SEO strategy is having an impact. GA4 provides acquisition data by both session and user. This can be found under the reports section. Life cycle > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

By default, this is sorted into channel groupings, but this can be tweaked according to your preference. For example, clicking on the dropdown below the search bar, at the top of the data table, will give you the option to change the view to something such as source\/medium if that is more useful for you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You can also view additional dimensions, including custom dimensions, and can filter the report just for organic search if that\u2019s the channel and data you\u2019re focusing on.<\/p>\n

Find GA4 bounce rate data<\/h2>\n

In the context of GA4, the way that bounce rate is measured is different to how it is in UA. In UA, bounce rate refers to the percentage of sessions that only take in a single page view on your website. Anyone who views just one page and leaves the site is considered a bounce and that number of bounces is divided by the number of total sessions to produce the bounce rate.<\/p>\n

In GA4, bounce rate is calculated by the absence of \u2018engagement\u2019, rather than simply a session ending without viewing more than one page. In GA4, an engaged session is measured by one or more of the below criteria being met:<\/p>\n