WMT data vs. Analytics

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Each month I export my data from WMT and go through analytics.

I also export our non brand queries from analytics and not WMT - I haven't had an issue before, but this month the impression data is quite different. In the hundreds of thousands different for keywords, everything seems to have taken a big jump and it seems strange.

However, not everything is different, I've spot checked some and its; consistent in both, I'm not sure what's going on?

One example would be:

<colgroup><col width="281"> <col width="72"></colgroup>
| industrial shelving | 1016 |
| industrial racking | 999 |

These appear as impressions from Query data in analytics, but they appear nowhere in my WMT query data.

Analytics query data shows:

| industrial equipment | 670 |

WMT Data:

| industrial equipment | 143 |

Anyone have any idea? Perhaps some kind of tracking issue?

Also I've triple checked dates etc...

[BeckyKey]

Hi Ruth

This is great thank you. I feel the same way about monitoring keywords, however as we work on thousands of pages I have started to report on traffic to content groups set up in analytics which seems to make things easier.

I'll definitely take your advice on looking at our homepage topics in console

Thanks!

[RuthBurrReedy]

In my opinion, monitoring every phrase your page ranks for isn't a sustainable goal - there are too many variations and long-tail phrases being searched for. In terms of rank tracking, I tend to focus on the one or two higher-traffic terms I'm really targeting for a page, trusting that that ranking will translate into a halo effect of longer-tail terms and topical authority.

Rather than focusing on finding all of the phrases driving traffic to your page, try focusing on how much organic traffic each landing page is getting, and whether or not that traffic is doing what you want people to do when they reach that page. This will help you discover if the page matches the intent of the terms people are searching for. You should also take a look at the query data in analytics/search console to see if there are topics that your home page is appearing on page 2 or 3 for that you could create a more specific piece of content around - it's a sign that Google already understands your site is related to a topic, and just doesn't have a good page to send people to.

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Thats great thanks for the info

How can I easily monitor where the pages rank? Rather than looking at it by keyword?

Is there a tool which would tell you, these are all the phrases your page ranks for? At the moment I have to input all the KWDs I want to monitor into AWR, however this won't tell me the entire picture.

Becky

[RuthBurrReedy]

In terms of the correlations between rankings and traffic, one indicator is to look at how individual pages rank and then how much organic traffic each page gets - if it's ranking for some high-traffic terms, you can safely assume that those terms are driving some traffic. As for reporting in general, Bill Sebald just wrote a great post on this for the Moz blog: https://moz.com/blog/are-your-analytics-telling-the-right-story Hope that helps!

[RuthBurrReedy]

I think it's worth looking at WMT query data - you should just keep in mind that that information is more useful as a directional indicator, as in "in general, here are the types of terms driving impressions and clicks" rather than an absolute indicator, "this is exactly how many impressions and clicks we're getting for these terms."

[BeckyKey]

does anyone have any good reporting tips for SEO?

I use advanced web ranking, analytics & Moz dashboards but reporting takes be some time. Is there anything I can try to report on correlations between rankings & traffic?

[BeckyKey]

Great thank you.

I've been using it to report on for a few months and now my results are skewed. I use analytics too so will stick with that for now.

Thanks!

[BeckyKey]

HI

Thank you for the feedback. Would it still be worth looking at the WMT query data in analytics or just to stick with new users/sessions?

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi,

In addition to this it can be that the data is missing completely in Google Search Console as they're limiting most of the data you'll see in both tools.

[Alick300]

Hi Becky,

Google mentioned very clearly that Search Console data may differ from the data displayed in other tools including analytics.

Here you will find all the possible reason @ https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1213138?hl=en

FYI Google Webmaster tools does't really provide super accurate info.  You'll find that your Google analytics is much more accurate of the two.

You can also check this @ http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/08/05/google-search-console-clicks-vs-google-analytics-sessions/

Hope this helps.

Thanks