Google Analytics 4 & SEO podcast with Preeti Gupta

In this episode 8 of the Search and Grow podcast, I enjoyed talking to Preeti Gupta, about GA4 & SEO, and the importance to use it effectively, for businesses and consultants.

Preeti is an SEO consultant and coach, specialised in GA4, and she’s the founder of Packed, a SEO consultancy.

Here is a summary of the conversation:

What are the differences between UA and GA4?

The data model is different in both. UA is session and pageview based, while GA4 is events based
UA had four scopes “hit, session, user, and product”, while GA4 has 3, “user, session, and event”
Hits: UA has different hit types. So there were ‘page view’, ‘event’, and ‘social’, but GA4 has no hit types. Everything is an event.
There are differences in how sessions, pageviews, and users are calculated.
Users: The primary user metric in UA is Total users (shown as users), but the primary metric in GA4 is Active users (also shown as users). And there is a difference between total and active users. Total users are the Total number of users. An active user is any user who has an engaged session (The number of sessions that lasted 10 seconds or longer or had 1 or more conversion events or 2 or more page or screen views)
Sessions: both UA and GA4 sessions timeout at 30 minutes. But in UA, a new session is started if a user is on the website when midnight arrives, if a user picks up a new user campaign, or in session timeout.
Pageviews: Universal Analytics measures screen views in separate mobile-specific properties, whereas GA4 combines both web and app data in the same property.
Conversions: Universal Analytics supports five goal types: destination, duration, pages/session, smart goals, and event goals. GA4, in contrast, only supports conversion events. UA counts only one conversion per session, for the same goal. GA4 usually counts multiple conversions per session, for the same conversion event.
Bounce Rate: In Google Analytics 4, Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged sessions. (The number of sessions that lasted 10 seconds or longer, or had 1 or more conversion events or 2 or more page or screen views) In Universal Analytics, the Bounce rate is the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only one page and triggered only one request to the Analytics server.

Main SEO KPIs to measure on GA4?

Conversions: You can make custom events and mark them as conversions and track them
Landing page: See what landing page is performing best or worst. And then change your strategy accordingly
Average engagement time: User engagement is the amount of time someone spends with your web page in focus or app screen in the foreground, which allows you to measure when users actively use your site or app. So you can see what pages have a higher/lower engagement time.
Traffic by location: To see where you should focus your efforts. And if a good amount of traffic comes from a country you don’t have pages in, then you should probably work on international SEO.
New users and users: New users are the Number of users who interacted with your site or launched your app for the first time. Users or active users is any user who has an engaged session.
Referral traffic/sources: See how much traffic is coming from referrals vs organic

Here are the links and resources shared during the session:

SEO tools:

Screaming Frog Spider

SiteBulb

GA4 Alternatives

PostHog:https://posthog.com/

Hubalz: https://hubalz.com/

Hotjar: https://www.hotjar.com/

SEO Pro Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seo-pro-extension/lajfdngpocmchpihjecojjllfjeehgnl

Google Analytics Support Articles: https://support.google.com/analytics/

Analytics Mania (YT Channel): https://www.youtube.com/@AnalyticsMania

Google Analytics (YT Channel): https://www.youtube.com/@GoogleAnalytics/