We have discussed how to use keywords to guide the content you create and how to track and maintain rankings for your target keywords. Now your site is bringing in search engine traffic. What comes next in the keyword game!?!
There is a wealth of keyword data available to existing sites that are getting traffic from search engines. Unfortunately, not all of that data is as easy to come by as it once was.
In the past finding out which keywords were sending you traffic was as easy as opening up Google Analytics and checking the Organic Traffic report. Today, however, most of that data is unavailable because search engines like Google provide the majority of their search results on secure (https) pages and no longer pass keyword data along in the referring URL when someone clicks on your site.
The most common keyword in that Analytics report is now the disappointing but accurate: (Not Provided). Luckily, there are a few ways to work around this limitation and we’re going to show you how.
Find your landing pages
Using Google Analytics, or your preferred web analytics software, bring up a report of all the landing pages from organic search sources.
To do this in Google Analytics, bring up the Reporting screen for your site. Then, in the left-hand navigation, go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages. The report that comes up will show all the pages people landed on for your site from all sources.
To narrow that down to just the landing pages from organic searches we’ll need to filter the data. First, add a Secondary dimension of ‘Medium’ to the report:
Second, click the ‘advanced’ link by the search box on the right to set a search filter which will include only medium dimensions containing ‘organic’:
Your homepage (i.e. “/”) will likely be at the top of the list. It’s less useful than specific topical pages for inferring keyword intent, but it can still help you discover keywords you’re ranking for.
Your interior pages should provide some more context. If you’re using keyword-rich URLS (which you should be!), you’ll be able to easily see the topic of each page.
The next step will be to download this report into a spreadsheet (like Excel or Google Sheets) so you can easily copy the URLs.
Find out where your landing pages rank
Now we’re going to take that list of URLs and go to a tool like SEMRush that keeps a massive database of search results pages. With SEMRush, we can then search for our site URLs in the database and the tool will show us the keywords that return those pages.
Take this blog post URL from the AuthorityLabs blog for example:http://authoritylabs.com/blog/how-to-use-your-visitors-favorite-keywords-throughout-your-marketing/ Search for that URL using the SEMRush search box on the homepage and then scroll down and look for the Top Organic Keywords box.
Click on the blue ‘View full report’ button.
That will bring you to a page with a list of all the keywords that blog post has shown up for, with specific ranking data for each keyword:
Based on the first two columns, position (Pos.) and volume, you can make some educated guesses about which of these keywords might actually be sending traffic to your site. Of course, higher positions and higher search volumes would be the most likely.
Rankings of 10 or higher can effectively be assumed to be sending some traffic. Lower rankings in the 11-20 range might send a little bit of traffic, especially for high volume keywords. Beyond that, the traffic potential drops significantly. On the other hand, keywords that are close to those thresholds represent low hanging fruit for your SEO efforts.
The only issue with this method is that it’s fairly time consuming and speculative. Thankfully, AuthorityLabs solved those problems by creating the Now Provided Report.
By integrating your Google Analytics account with their tool they can pull all the organic landing pages and cross-check them against their search results databases (including the SEMRush data set). They can then present all the most likely keywords driving traffic to your pages, as well as highlight your top keyword opportunities.
This is valuable data all business owners need. By having the right keywords and topics to focus on you save money because your marketing efforts are targeted correctly.
Speaking of targetting your marketing efforts, in the next email we will dive into two critical areas for many business owners. We will tell you how to find local keywords and keywords for e-commerce.
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