Approach to use when investigating the Search Analytics Report
Before looking at the Search Analytics data of a business, start by asking the questions to understand the 1) business and 2) audience. Some questions to keep in mind as you improve your site are:
- What are the goals of your website and your business?
- What groups are you targeting?
- Where are they located?
- What devices are they using?
- What are their objectives?
- Can or do their objectives align with your company's business goals?
- Do their search terms match your content?
Question: What happens when you select filters in Search Console?
Filters to see your audience
When it comes to better understanding the audience who sees your site in search results, select "Filter" and you will notice the breakdown of the searchers given their country and search types, for instance
1) Web, 2) Image and 3) video Search.
On the Search Analytics Report page, the default "Search Type" is set to web. Currently in Google Search Console, there is a filter for each of the corresponding radio buttons:
- Queries
- Pages
- Countries
- Devices
- Search Type
- Dates
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If your visitors come from several different countries, you can begin evaluating whether your site properly meets their needs and if it is worth investing more time to do so.
For example, given that much of the audience came from India in addition to the United States, if we were a business looking to develop, we could try writing content tailored to issues in India.
Avoid search personalization while investigating
As you investigate individual queries, it is often helpful to use an
incognito window, or a browser without stored cookies, where you are not logged in to Google,
so that your personal data does not affect your results. Investigate queries with a browser that does not use
- logins
- store cookies.
Sorting by clicks
Going back to the Search Analytics Reports page in the Search Console, one of the first things I do is "Sort by clicks" rather than by the default "sorting of impressions".
This is because impressions, although being extremely valuable, can initially blur the real picture of my site since they can refer to both
- qualified and
- unqualified queries
Once queries are sorted by clicks for a specific date range, you will have the Google queries that bring your website the most traffic. Once again, once you have sorted by clicks,
these are the actual Google queries that bring your site the most traffic.
I often start here because, because after knowing what audiences I want to attract, it is good to know what I am already obtaining the desired results before I start making changes.
Be aware that changing the date range can change the results, so you may want to look at a 3-month time range, and then keep track of your queries overtime by downloading the data.
Note: You have to know what you are already doing well, before you start making changes.