The relationship between a website and a search engine is complicated and often ambivalent. There are good days and bad days. There are benefits and frustrations. There are ups and downs both literally and figuratively. But as digital marketers, we can’t live without them.
For any relationship, they say communication is key. In the absence of heart-to-heart talks with Google, we have to take what we can get. With that being the case, the SEO insights view that connects Search Console and Google Analytics data is one of the best ways to find out what’s working in the relationship and what isn’t.
When evaluating your how your site performs in organic search, you want to measure what’s working well and look for opportunities to improve. For this analysis, Google gives you two tools, which you can now link together into one handy report.
Google Search Console, once known as Webmaster Tools, allows you to see data about your site’s positioning in organic search results. You can see clicks, impressions, and average position. You can also get information about how Google is crawling your site and review site errors that may be interfering with indexing.
In May 2016, Google released a deeper integration of Google Search Console data with Google Analytics. While Search Console integration has been available for many years, this data was always kept in its own section, separate from any data collected by Google Analytics. For the first time, data from Search Console actually appears alongside data from Google Analytics.