Track Keyword, Rank and Landing Page with Google Analytics

Google recently changed the referring strings that they are using to send traffic through to sites once you click on a search result. One of the major benefits of this to analytics geeks and SEOs is that you can now see where you rank for a given keyword, and what page people go to when clicking on the search result.

A post on the Google Anayltics blog mentioned the gradual roll out of these new referring URLs for some search queries. It was pretty much immediately noticed by people like Patrick at Blogstorm that there is a number contained within the string, the example which was given being:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

You can see cd=7 within the string, and Patrick wondered if this could be the rank that a result appears it. In the comments on the post, Matt Cutts suggested very strongly that this was the case. For the search geeks amongst us, this was fantastic news, as it means that we can now track rank against keywords and the landing page people go to.

Tracking more than most

Most other posts that I have seen on this subject have only shown how to set up analytics for rank and keyword, but not for the landing page. I happen to think that landing page is pretty important – if you’re looking to optimise on a term you need to know which page people are more likely to go to, and if you’re looking again to use something like my second page keyword targeting method, landing page is incredibly useful. Also if you’ve a number of pages that people are visiting based around one keyword, then finding the most visited of these is really useful in optimising the right page.

How to set this up then? First, create a new profile in Google Analytics, and call it something like ‘SERP result and landing page.’
Hit ‘Edit’ and add a new filter. We’ll be setting up four filters in total, the first being Google only traffic:

Select filter type: Custom filter
Check the ‘Include’ radio button
Select Campaign Source in the Filter Field dropdown
Type ‘google’ into the Filter Pattern
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Case Sensitive’ radio buttons

Next, Create another filter called ‘search term and rank filter’

Select filter type: Custom filter
Check the ‘Advanced’ radio button
Select Campaign Term in the Field A -> Extract A box. Enter (.*) in the text box
Select Referral in the Field B -> Extract B box. Enter (\?|&)(cd)=([^&]*) in the text box
Select Custom Field 1 in the Output To -> Constructor box. Enter $A1 | rank: $B3 in the text box
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field A Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field B Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Override Output Field’ radio buttons
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Case Sensitive’ radio buttons

Next create a filter called ‘landing page’ to search for the landing page people are getting to:

Select filter type: Custom filter
Check the ‘Advanced’ radio button
Select Referral in the Field A -> Extract A box. Enter (\?|&)(url)=([^&]*) in the text box
Leave the Field B -> Extract B box empty.
Select Custom Field 2 in the Output To -> Constructor box. Enter $A3 in the text box
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field A Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Field B Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Override Output Field’ radio buttons
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Case Sensitive’ radio buttons

Finally, merge the last two filters together with one called ‘keyword, rank and landing page.’

Select filter type: Custom filter
Check the ‘Advanced’ radio button
Select Custom Field 1 in the Field A -> Extract A box. Enter (.*) in the text box
Select Custom Field 2 in the Field B -> Extract B box. Enter (.*) in the text box
Select User Defined in the Output To -> Constructor box. Enter $A1, LP: $B1 in the text box
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field A Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field B Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Override Output Field’ radio buttons
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Case Sensitive’ radio buttons

To get value out of this report, go to Traffic sources, Keywords and select User Defined Value in the Dimension drop down. This will give you something like this once it has run for a few days:

Note that a lot of the results have both ‘Landing Page’ and LP appearing, and that many don’t have a landing page showing. This is because I changed Landing Page to LP as it took too much space in the results, and the lack of landing pages is because I didn’t have ‘yes’ checked in the ‘Field B Required’ radio button on the last filter.

Let me know in the comments if you find this useful, or if you’ve got any suggestions for how I could tweak my filters to get even more information from these new referring strings.

Tags: advanced filters, digital marketing, Google Analytics, rankings, search engine optimisation, SEO

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