Google Analytics 4 is a powerful analytics tool, but it was clearly not designed with SEO teams in mind. Out of the box, there is no landing page report filtered to organic search, no keyword data, no easy way to compare organic conversions against other channels. Universal Analytics gave you most of that in two clicks. GA4 makes you build it. A comparable breakdown sits on diggrowth.com.

The good news: once you build those reports one time, they stay in your left-hand navigation forever. This guide shows you exactly how to track SEO in GA4, report by report, with the clicks, dimensions and metrics to use. No theory, just setup instructions you can follow this morning.

Before You Build Anything: The 5-Minute GA4 Prep Checklist

Every report below will be wrong or useless if these settings are not in place. Do this first.

1. Set data retention to 14 months. Go to Admin > Data collection and modification > Data retention and switch event data retention from 2 months to 14 months. Explorations can only query data inside that window, so a 2-month setting makes year-over-year SEO analysis impossible.
2. Define your key events. In GA4, conversions are called key events. Go to Admin > Data display > Events and toggle “Mark as key event” for the actions that matter (form submit, quote request, purchase, phone click, demo booking). Without key events, you cannot measure organic ROI.
3. Filter internal and developer traffic. Admin > Data collection and modification > Data streams > Configure tag settings > Define internal traffic, then activate the filter in Data filters. Office visits inflate organic engagement metrics more than people expect.
4. List unwanted referrals. Payment gateways and your own subdomains often steal credit from organic search. Add them under Configure tag settings > List unwanted referrals.
5. Match your reporting time zone to Search Console. Search Console reports in Pacific Time. If your GA4 property uses a different time zone, daily numbers will never line up perfectly. Know it, document it, and stop chasing the gap.

What GA4 Renamed (and Where the Old UA Data Went)

Universal Analytics	GA4 equivalent	Where to find it
Organic Search channel	Session default channel group = Organic Search	Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition
Landing Pages report	Landing page + query string dimension	Reports > Engagement > Landing page (or a custom report)
Bounce rate	Engagement rate (the inverse) and average engagement time	Available as a metric in most reports
Goals	Key events and conversions	Admin > Events, Reports > Engagement > Conversions
Search Console reports (Acquisition)	Search Console collection (must be linked and published)	Admin > Product links, then Reports > Library
Content Grouping	Custom dimensions (event or session scoped)	Admin > Data display > Custom definitions

Report 1: The Organic Search Overview (Saved, Not Re-Filtered Every Time)

Start with the report GA4 gives you, then lock organic in place so you never have to filter again.

1. Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
2. Click Add comparison at the top (the plus icon next to “All Users”).
3. Set: Dimension = Session default channel group, Match type = exactly matches, Value = Organic Search. Apply.
4. Add a second comparison for Paid Search or Direct so you always see organic in context.
5. Click the Save icon (top right) > Save as new report. Name it “SEO: Organic overview”.
6. Go to Reports > Library, edit your main collection (or create one called “SEO”), and drag the new report into it. Publish the collection.

Metrics to watch here: sessions, engaged sessions, average engagement time per session, key events and total revenue. Ignore “users” as your headline SEO KPI; sessions map far better to Search Console clicks.

Pro tip on Google vs other engines

Switch the primary dimension to Session source / medium to split google / organic from bing / organic, duckduckgo / organic and the growing list of AI assistants and answer engines sending referral traffic. In 2026 that split is a report on its own for many sites.

Report 2: The Organic Landing Pages Report (The One GA4 Should Have Shipped)

This is the single most useful SEO report in GA4 and it does not exist by default. Build it as a custom detail report.

1. Go to Reports > Library (bottom of the left navigation, you need Editor rights).
2. Under Reports, click Create new report > Create detail report, then choose Blank.
3. Dimensions: add Landing page + query string and set it as the default. Add Session default channel group and Session source / medium as optional dimensions, plus Device category and Country.
4. Metrics: sessions, engaged sessions, engagement rate, average engagement time per session, key events, sessions per user, total revenue (if ecommerce).
5. Add a line chart and a table card, then save as “SEO: Organic landing pages”.
6. Open the report, add the same Organic Search comparison as in Report 1, and save it again so the filter sticks.

What to do with it:

• Sort by sessions to find your traffic drivers, then check their engagement rate. High traffic plus low engagement means a mismatch between the query intent and the page.
• Sort by key events to find pages that convert but get little traffic. Those are your internal linking and content refresh priorities.
• Use the date comparison (top right, “Compare to: previous period” or “same period last year”) to spot pages in decline before rankings fully collapse.

Report 3: Conversion Segments by Channel (Prove SEO Revenue)

Reports answer “how much”. Explorations answer “who converted and from where”. Build this one in Explore.

1. Go to Explore > Blank and choose the Free form technique.
2. Create a segment: click the plus next to Segments > Session segment > condition Session default channel group exactly matches Organic Search. Name it “Organic sessions”.
3. Create a second session segment for Paid Search, and a third for Direct. Drag all three into Segment comparisons.
4. Rows: Landing page + query string. Optional second row: Session source / medium.
5. Values: Sessions, Key events, Session key event rate, Total revenue.
6. In the Tab settings, set Show rows to 100 and add a filter to exclude sessions below a meaningful threshold if the table gets noisy.
7. Rename the tab “Organic conversions by landing page” and rename the exploration “SEO performance”. Share it with your team using the share icon so they do not each build a copy.

Add a user segment for high-intent organic visitors

Duplicate the tab and build a user segment with two conditions: session channel is Organic Search AND a specific key event occurred. Then break it down by Landing page and Session source / medium. You now know which organic entry pages actually start revenue journeys, even when the conversion happens days later in a different session.

Report 4: Search Console Data Inside GA4 (Queries and Landing Pages)

GA4 will never show you keywords on its own. The link to Search Console is the only way to see queries next to behavioural data in the same interface, and it is switched off by default. Worse, even after linking, the reports stay hidden until you publish them.

Step 1: Link the properties

1. You need to be an Editor on the GA4 property and a verified owner of the Search Console property.
2. Go to Admin > Product links > Search Console links > Link.
3. Choose your Search Console property, select the web data stream to associate, review and submit.

Step 2: Publish the hidden report collection

1. Go to Reports > Library.
2. Find the Search Console collection card. Click the three dots > Publish.
3. Refresh. “Search Console” now appears in your left navigation with two reports.

Report	Key dimension	What it answers
Queries	Google organic search query	Clicks, impressions, CTR and average position per query
Google organic search traffic	Landing page	Search Console clicks and impressions next to GA4 engagement and key events, per page

The report to actually live in: “Google organic search traffic“. It is the only place where impressions, CTR, average position, engagement rate and key events sit in one row. That combination tells you whether a page needs a title rewrite (good position, bad CTR), a content upgrade (good CTR, bad engagement) or a CRO fix (good engagement, no key events).

Two limits to know

• The query dimension cannot be combined with GA4 user or event metrics. Google keeps those data sets separate, so no “conversions by keyword” in GA4. Use landing pages as your bridge.
• Search Console data in GA4 is not available in Explorations or the Data API, only in these two reports. For deeper blending, export both sources to Looker Studio or BigQuery.

Report 5: The Organic Growth and Decay Exploration

SEO is a trend business. This exploration tells you which pages are gaining and which are quietly dying.

1. Open a new Free form exploration and apply your “Organic sessions” segment as a filter.
2. Rows: Landing page + query string. Columns: Month (or Week for fast-moving sites).
3. Values: Sessions, then switch the cell type to Heat map.
4. Set the date range to the last 12 or 13 months (remember the 14-month retention limit).
5. Read it left to right: cooling rows are decay candidates, warming rows are pages worth expanding and internally linking to.

Add a second tab with the Path exploration technique, starting node = Landing page, filtered to organic sessions, to see where organic visitors go next. If most of them bounce back to a hub page, your internal linking on the entry page is failing.

Report 6: Custom Dimensions for Content Groups, Templates and Authors

Page-by-page data is fine for 50 URLs. For 5,000 URLs you need groupings. GA4 has no built-in content grouping, so you create your own custom dimension.

Step 1: Send the value with your page views

Push a variable into the data layer on every page, before the GA4 tag fires:

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
window.dataLayer.push({
  'page_type': 'blog_post',
  'content_cluster': 'ga4_analytics',
  'author': 'itimap_team'
});

In Google Tag Manager, create Data Layer Variables for page_type, content_cluster and author, then add them as event parameters on your GA4 configuration or page view tag.

Step 2: Register the custom dimension in GA4

1. Go to Admin > Data display > Custom definitions > Create custom dimension.
2. Dimension name: “Page type”. Scope: Event. Event parameter: page_type. Save.
3. Repeat for content cluster and author. Wait 24 to 48 hours for data to populate (historical data is not backfilled, so do this early).

Step 3: Use it

Build a detail report or exploration with Page type as the row, the organic segment applied, and sessions plus key events as metrics. In one screen you can answer questions that are painful in any SEO tool:

• Do blog posts or product pages generate more organic key events per session?
• Which content cluster deserves the next 10 articles?
• Which template has an engagement problem across every page using it?

Bonus: A Reporting Rhythm That Survives Client Reviews

Frequency	What to check	Where
Weekly	Organic sessions and key events vs previous week	Report 1
Weekly	Top 20 landing pages, engagement rate anomalies	Report 2
Monthly	Organic vs paid vs direct conversion contribution	Report 3
Monthly	CTR and position shifts, query cannibalisation	Report 4
Quarterly	Decay audit and content cluster performance	Reports 5 and 6

Common Mistakes When You Track SEO in GA4

• Using “Organic Search” without checking source. Some AI assistants, news aggregators and in-app browsers land in Referral or Unassigned. Review Session source / medium monthly and consider a custom channel group.
• Comparing GA4 sessions to Search Console clicks one to one. They are measured differently (cookie consent, JavaScript blocking, redirects, time zones). Track the trend gap, not the absolute gap.
• Leaving data retention at 2 months. Explorations will return empty for last year, every time.
• Forgetting the Landing page “(not set)” rows. These usually come from sessions where the first hit was not a page view, or from consent-related tag timing. A high share indicates a tracking problem, not an SEO problem.
• Building everything in Explorations only. Explorations sample on large data sets and are personal by default. Put your recurring KPIs in Library reports.

FAQ

How can I track SEO performance in GA4?

Filter GA4 to the Organic Search channel with a comparison or a session segment, then build a landing page report with sessions, engagement rate and key events. Link Search Console to add queries, impressions, CTR and average position. Those two layers, behaviour plus visibility, cover the essentials.

Does GA4 have an SEO report by default?

No. GA4 ships with Traffic acquisition and Landing page reports that include organic among other channels, but there is no dedicated SEO section. The Search Console collection exists but stays unpublished until you publish it in the Library. agencyanalytics.com goes into the numbers.

Can GA4 show me the keywords people used?

Only through the Search Console link, in the Queries report. Those queries cannot be combined with GA4 conversions or engagement metrics. Use landing pages as the common key between query data and conversion data.

Is Search Console or GA4 more accurate for SEO?

They measure different things. Search Console is the source of truth for impressions, clicks, CTR and position because the data comes from Google Search itself. GA4 is the source of truth for what happens after the click: engagement, journeys and conversions. Use both, and never average them.

How far back can I analyse organic data in GA4?

Standard properties keep event-level data for a maximum of 14 months, and only if you change the setting from the 2-month default. Aggregated data in standard reports lasts longer, but for reliable year-over-year SEO analysis, export to BigQuery or Looker Studio.

Should I use Looker Studio instead of GA4 reports?

Use GA4 for investigation and Looker Studio for presentation. Blending the GA4 connector with the Search Console connector in Looker Studio gives you one dashboard with impressions, clicks, sessions and revenue for stakeholders, while the six reports above stay your day-to-day workspace.

Next Step

Block 90 minutes, run the prep checklist, and build Reports 1, 2 and 4 today. Those three alone give you more organic insight than most teams get from a full analytics suite. Reports 3, 5 and 6 turn that insight into a content roadmap. If you would like our team to audit your GA4 setup and build these reports on your property, get in touch with itimap.