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Hi.
I'm Maile Ohye.
I'd like to share some of the ways I use Search Queries
information from Google Webmaster Tools
to improve my site.
To give some background, the first step of the search
engine pipeline is crawling, then indexing, and last is
search results, which includes ranking and display
of results to users.
Search Queries data sheds light on this third step in
the search engine pipeline.
If a user clicks and comes to your site, that's where
traditional Google Analytics comes in.
Search Queries, however, also displays impression data,
meaning you'll also have information about searchers
when they see your site but might not click through.
A couple of years ago, Webmaster Tools data was
integrated as SEO Reports in Google Analytics.
Often, we see people who want to bring more visitors to
their site over-focus their attention on Search Queries
and ranking, when there are even bigger gains in search
friendliness if they investigated how their site is
crawled, or if they reduced duplicates so that their site
was more optimally indexed.
Additionally, while Search Queries feature provides lots
of actual information, the ranking of your pages and
search results is only one part of the process to the
ultimate goal of having users convert on your site.
Whether conversion is buying a product or becoming a
subscriber, you still need to provide a great result and a
good user experience on your site.
With this covered, let's take a look at Search Queries in
Webmaster Tools.
Search Queries is tabbed with Top Searches and Top Pages.
There's also a Filter button, the ability to set a date
range going back several months, download information,
or even to see the change rate during the prior but equal
time interval.
Some of the words on this page might be new to you, so let's
review definitions.
Query is a user's search term or terms.
This is the query for Google Webmaster Tools.
Impression means that when a user performed a query, a page
from your site could be visible in
their search results.
For example, if a searcher queried "Google blog for site
owners," if our site, googlewebmasterc
entral.blogspot.com was ranked number five, and one through
10 of the search results were shown to the user, then this
would count as an impression.
However, if my page ranked number 11, and only one
through 10 of the results were displayed to the user, this
would not count as an impression for the query
unless the user clicked to see the next page of results, 11
through 20.
The next term is average position.
To calculate average position, we take into account the top
ranking URL from your site for a particular query, but often
across different users.
In the example of the query "Google blog for site owners,"
we'd use the position of number five for the Webmaster
Central blog and disregard the later positions for the query
for this search.
If another user made the same query, but our top result was
in the number three position, the average top position would
be four, since it's the average of five and three.
Click means that the user selected the result.
They must have found the display enticing.
CTR stands for clickthrough rate.
It's the percentage that the site's page
was selected in results.
This provides some insight to how well the results display
matched the query and the user's intent.
One other term that's good to know, although it's not
mentioned in this feature, is qualified query, or even
qualified traffic.
Qualified means that if a user arrives at your site, or sees
your site in search results, there's a realistic chance
that they would like your content and convert.
It's more efficient to focus on your site receiving
qualified traffic, rather than trying to rank for terms where
users will be unsatisfied with the result.
For example, while the Google Webmaster Central blog has
impressions for the standalone query "Google," that query
won't bring us qualified traffic.
Those searchers likely want the Google homepage.
Therefore, we can de-emphasize unqualified queries like
"Google" during our site's improvements.
Now, let's get into an approach that I use when
investigating the Search Queries feature.
Before I even look at a business's Search Queries
data, I start by asking the questions to
understand the 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 query terms match your content?
On the Search Queries page, the default
filter is set to Web.
When it comes to better understanding the audience who
sees your site in search results, select Filter, and
you'll notice the breakdown of the searchers given their
countries and search types, like Web and Image search.
If your visitors often come from several countries, you
can begin evaluating whether your site properly meets their
needs and if it's worth investing more time to do so.
For example, given that much of the audience comes from
Canada in addition to the United States, if we were a
business looking to develop, we could try writing content
tailored to issues in Canada.
As you investigate individual queries, it's often helpful to
use an incognito window, or a browser without stored
cookies, or you're not logged into Google so that
personalization doesn't affect your results.
Going back to the main Search Queries page, one of the first
things I do is sort by clicks rather than by the default
sorting of impressions.
This is because impressions, while 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 this date range,
you'll have on display the Google searches that bring
your site the most traffic.
Just to repeat, once you've sorted by clicks, these are
the actual Google queries that bring your
site the most traffic.
I often start here, because after knowing what audiences I
want to attract, it's good to know what I'm already doing
well before I start making changes.
Be aware that changing the date range can change the
results, so you may want to look at also a three month
time range, and then even keep track of your queries over
time by downloading the data.
Webmaster Tools provides up to three months of history.
Often, businesses want to see yearly trends for searcher
behavior that changes with the holiday shopping season,
Valentine's Day, or back to school.
To see yearly trends requires downloading the information.
Questions to ask yourself as you investigate are--
are these the queries I would expect?
Does it seem like these clicks would bring qualified traffic?
Can the display of my page in search results be better
optimized for this query?
As you investigate the queries that bring your site the most
traffic, simulate the entire searcher experience, from
their possible location and motivation, to performing the
query, to viewing the search results display, to clicking
on your site, and then the user experience.
More advanced analytics users can also tie in their
knowledge here.
If you click the query, you'll see the pages that appear in
results for the query.
Hovering on the arrow provides a preview of the page.
If there are different URLs with duplicate content,
improve your site by consolidating the information,
perhaps with a 301 redirect or rel=canonical.
If there are pages that you wouldn't expect to rank for
the query, check how many clicks they have.
If you feel it's significant, then check out the page.
Take notes, because after reviewing more of your queries
and more result pages, you'll need to determine which pages,
and for which user experiences, you'd like to
prioritize improvements.
If, when you sorted by clicks, you were surprised that
certain queries were missing from the list, you might begin
investigating why.
How does your site rank and appear for the query?
Is a search results display compelling?
How do your competitors look?
Information about improving the title and snippet display
in search results can be found here.
After we've investigated by sorting by clicks, let's now
sort by CTR, clickthrough rate.
High CTR means that your page probably has a good search
result display for the query.
Low CTR for a relevant or qualified query likely means
that you'll want to improve your search results display.
Take note of which queries aren't performing as expected,
and as before, investigate how your site appears in search
results for the query.
Is the title and snippet compelling to click on?
Does it show a unique value ad to the searcher?
With an understanding of impressions, clicks, and CTR,
you'll likely want to start organizing your queries into
categories that will simplify tracking them and making
improvements.
For example, for the Webmaster Central blog, I might want to
break down our queries into branded terms that we
definitely should rank for.
These are often navigational queries of users
looking for our site.
Now, I'll check my CTR for these queries to make sure
users are able to reach my site.
Another category of queries that might be useful are those
strongly correlated with conversion.
If the goal of our Webmaster Central blog was to provide
readers the latest in Google News for site owners, we might
start categorizing queries that match this goal, like
"Google SEO tips 2012" and "Google SEO secrets 2012."
I might also notice that searchers use technical terms
to find our site.
So I might have another category on how our site
performs for technical instruction.
For each of these categories, I'll make sure to understand
the user's mindset as they perform the query, where
they're located, and even whether their device might
change their behavior.
Then, whether my page's search result display is compelling.
Furthermore, if they click on my site, does the content
match their expectations, and are we providing a great user
experience?
Back at the main Search Queries page, let's now check
out the Top Pages tab.
If you sort your top pages by clicks, you can see that, for
a given date range, these are the pages
most visited by searchers.
Whereas before we saw the queries that brought our site
the most traffic, now we're seeing the pages most visited
by searchers.
It's probably pretty obvious that you'll want to
investigate these pages to make sure that they're clear,
well written, and provide an easy way for a visitor to
further navigate your site, buy your product,
or otherwise convert.
You can gain a better sense of what users are doing on these
pages through Google Analytics.
Next, you can sort top pages by impressions.
Because these pages are often shown to users in search
results, it's likely that Google considers
them relevant pages.
Given that these top pages are valuable from a search engine
perspective, you can use them to link to your high quality
but lower ranking or less featured pages for more
visibility for users and search engines.
To optimize top pages, first, accept that top pages for your
users and Google might not be what you originally imagined.
Second, check that all top pages are user friendly and
perhaps even conversion friendly.
Third, consider utilizing your top pages to internally link
to your high quality but lower ranking pages.
Search queries and ranking are an important step in bringing
qualified visitors to your site and meeting
your business goals.
But remember, they're not the only step.
For example, better marketing can lead to more searchers
looking for your product or service.
Good content can up-sell to your visitors.
And then, providing a great user experience can bring
direct referrals and repeat customers.
Our team hopes you can make use of the search queries
feature to improve your site.
Thanks for your time.
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