GA4 basics for SEO reporting

What GA4 does for SEO

Google Analytics 4 measures what people do on your site: which pages they visit, how they arrived and whether they take actions such as sending an enquiry. For SEO, its main job is connecting search traffic to business outcomes. Search Console tells you someone clicked. GA4 tells you whether that click led anywhere.

Getting the basics right

Install it once, properly

Add GA4 through your website platform's integration, Google Tag Manager or the tag code. Make sure it's on every page and only installed once. Duplicate installs double-count visits.

Set up consent correctly

UK data protection law and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations mean you generally need consent before setting non-essential cookies, including analytics. The ICO's guidance on cookies explains the rules.

Use a proper consent banner and, if you use Google's tags, consider Consent Mode so GA4 respects visitors' choices. Expect your figures to undercount, because some visitors decline. That's fine. Trends still show direction.

Exclude your own visits

Filter out internal traffic from your office so your team's visits don't inflate figures.

Mark the actions that matter as key events

GA4 tracks many interactions automatically. You need to tell it which ones matter to your business. These are called key events (previously "conversions").

Common key events for small businesses:

• Enquiry form submitted, ideally tracked by a thank-you page view or form submission event.
• Phone number tapped on mobile.
• Email link clicked.
• Online booking completed.
• Purchase, for shops.

Without key events, you can only see traffic, not results.

Finding organic search traffic

In GA4's acquisition reports, look at traffic by "Session default channel group". "Organic Search" covers unpaid visits from search engines. You can then see:

• How many sessions came from organic search.
• Which landing pages they arrived on.
• How many key events they triggered.

The landing page report is especially useful. It shows which pages bring visitors in from search and whether those visitors go on to enquire.

Linking Search Console

GA4 can show Search Console data once you link the two. You'll get reports showing the search queries and landing pages from Google Search alongside on-site engagement. It's one of the most useful things you can set up for SEO reporting.

Metrics worth understanding

• Sessions. Visits to your site.
• Engaged sessions. Visits lasting over ten seconds, with a key event or with at least two page views.
• Engagement rate. The share of sessions that were engaged.
• Bounce rate. In GA4, the opposite of engagement rate. It's not the same as the old Universal Analytics definition, so comparisons with old reports don't work.
• Key events. The actions you've marked as important.

For SEO, focus on organic sessions, key events from organic search and which landing pages produce them.

What GA4 can't tell you

• Phone calls from people who dialled your number without clicking on your site.
• Visitors who found you on Google, then came back later by typing your address.
• Enquiries from people who saw your Business Profile and called directly.
• Visitors who declined analytics cookies.

That's why asking "How did you hear about us?" on enquiry forms and calls is still valuable.

A simple monthly view

You don't need a complex dashboard. Each month, note:

1. Organic sessions, compared with the same month last year. 2. Key events from organic search. 3. Top five organic landing pages and their key events. 4. Any page with lots of organic visits but no key events, which may need a clearer next step.

A worked example

A boat hire company on the Norfolk Broads had GA4 installed but no key events. Reports showed lots of traffic and nothing else.

The owner set up key events for booking enquiries and phone taps. Within a couple of months, it was clear that a guide to "best moorings for families" brought plenty of organic visitors but almost no enquiries, while the "day boat hire" page brought fewer visitors but most of the bookings.

He added a short section to the moorings guide linking to day boat hire, with a clear booking button. He also improved the day boat page's title in light of Search Console data. The decisions came from having the right events set up.

Checking tracking still works

Tracking breaks quietly. A new form plugin, a redesigned thank-you page or a change to your consent banner can stop key events recording without any warning. Once a month, submit a test enquiry and check it appears in GA4's realtime report. If key events drop to zero overnight while traffic stays steady, suspect tracking before you suspect SEO.

Common mistakes

• No key events, so no way to connect traffic to results.
• Tracking every click as a key event, which hides the meaningful ones.
• Comparing GA4 bounce rate with Universal Analytics bounce rate.
• Ignoring consent rules.
• Never checking that form tracking still works after a site update.