If you are doing a lot of work on your site or spending money with an SEO or Digital Marketing Agency, you might want to know how much success you’re having.

But how can you track it?

You can find this information Using Google Analytics 4 (GA4). By adding some code to your site (ask your web developers to do this if they haven’t already, or if you are a client of ours, we will sort it for you), you can access this information and see how you are performing and progressing online.

Most people aren’t that confident or clear about where the majority of traffic goes when on their site – and by analysing GA4 data, you can do more of what works well and hone/do less of what isn’t currently performing.

Where to look in GA4

In GA4, go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition.

This report gives you a snapshot of how visitors find your website. To get a good comparison, you can change the date range and compare two different periods.

There are a number of different channels you might see in this report:

  • Organic Search: Visitors from Google searches, excluding ads
  • Cross-network: Traffic from ads across multiple networks (e.g., Search and Display)
  • Paid Search: Traffic from standard Google ads
  • Direct: People who type your website address directly into their browser
  • Email: Visitors clicking on links in your emails
  • Referral: Traffic from other websites linking to yours
  • Organic Social: Visitors from your social media posts, excluding ads
  • Paid Social: Visitors from social media ads
  • Unassigned: Traffic from unknown sources

If you have an e-commerce site, you might also see:

  • Organic Shopping: Visitors from Google Shopping results, excluding ads
  • Paid Shopping: Visitors from Google Shopping ads

By reviewing each channel, you can quickly determine which brings the most traffic and whether those visitors engage with your website and convert into customers.

If you notice a channel that isn’t performing well or needs a boost, you can focus on it or ask your agency some questions to get further clarity.

Or contact the Seriously Helpful team for an audit and campaign overview—it never hurts to have a fresh pair of eyes take a look.

Rebecca Sturgess
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