SEO
How to Reclaim Your Keyword Data
In Google Analytics, when you see “(not provided)” instead of the queries that led searchers to your website, this means Google is covering organic keywords data in the interest of protecting the privacy of searchers.
But no worries, this doesn’t mean you have configured your Google Analytics wrong or your data is lost. In this article, we’ll cover two solutions to the “not provided” problem and some tips on how to use your newly acquired keyword data:
Sidenote.
At the time of writing, Google Analytics 4, the successor of Universal Analytics, by default doesn’t show any organic keywords (or the “not provided” token) in the Acquisition report. To solve this problem, you can use the same solutions shown in this article.
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool from Google designed to monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance in the search results. On top of revealing organic queries that led to your website, you can use GSC to find and fix technical errors, submit sitemaps, see backlinks, and more.
To see your organic keywords data, you need to set up the tool. You can learn how to do this in our guide to setting up GSC.
Now, let’s see what type of data you will find in GSC. We’ll start with the main reason why you’d want to use GSC: You can see your organic keywords in the Performance report, which you’ll find here:
Once your data becomes available, you will see your keywords in the Queries tab located in the bottom panel:
Here’s what this data means:
- Top queries refer to Google Search queries (i.e., keywords) that generated impressions of your website. This means whenever your website’s URL shows up in Google’s search results (this can be web search, image search, video search, or Google News), the keyword that caused that impression will be reported here.
- Clicks are the number of clicks coming to your website’s URL from organic search results. Note this excludes paid Google Ads search results. Any click that takes the user outside of the search results is considered a click. And when someone clicks a link to a page, returns to the SERP (search engine results page), and then clicks on that page again, it counts only as one click.
- Impressions are the number of times any URL from your website appeared in the search results. Note this does not necessarily imply the searcher has seen your website. This just means it has been displayed.
It may take a while for Google to start showing your data. But the good news is once your data is in, you’ll see up to 16 months of retroactive data.
Sidenote.
While GSC offers insight into the queries that led searchers to your website, it doesn’t show the entire data. The first limitation is that Google doesn’t show very rare queries (performed only by a few users; Google calls those “anonymous queries”). Secondly, GSC will only show you up to 1,000 keywords in its interface.
Other tabs in the Performance report will show you clicks and impressions for:
- URLs of pages that were entered coming from the SERPs.
- Countries where the search came from.
- The type of device on which the search was performed.
- Grouped data for specific types or features of search results (Search Appearance tab). This data is reserved for search results other than typical blue links, such as recipe galleries, review snippets, videos, how-to results, and more.
- Dates (shown in Pacific Time Zone).
And so here it is. The first solution to “not provided” keywords is as simple as setting up GSC and waiting for your data to come in. But before we get into the second solution, let’s see what other things Google offers in the Performance report.
Starting from the top, we have the filters.
They allow you to display only data that meets certain criteria. By default, you can filter by search type and date. Additionally, the “Search type” filter allows you to compare sources:
You can also turn on additional filters for a particular query, page, country, or device.
Below the filters, you have the overview panel with another set of filters and a graph that dynamically displays the data set in filters and plotted against time. These filters also affect the data shown in the Keyword report. So if you tick the CTR filter, CTR data will be shown next to “Clicks” and “Impressions”:
Since we’ve already touched on clicks and impressions, let’s see what CTR (click-through rate) and average position are about:
- CTR is the percentage of organic impressions that result in a click.
- Average position is the average position of your site in the search results based on the site’s highest position whenever it appears in a search.
It’s worth noting that Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 users can integrate GSC data into Analytics to see all data in one tool.
To integrate your Google Universal Analytics with GSC, make sure you set up both services for the same property. Then access your Google Analytics and:
- Choose your property (i.e., website you want to see data for).
- Go to the Admin panel.
- In the Product Linking section, choose All products.
- Look for “Search Console” and click Link Search Console.
- Follow the steps in the setup wizard to connect your GSC data with Universal Analytics data.
To integrate your Google Analytics 4 with GSC, make sure you have set up both services for the same property. Then access your Google Analytics and:
- Choose your property (i.e., website you want to see data for).
- Go to the Admin panel.
- In the Product Linking section, choose Search Console Linking. If you don’t see that option yet, you may need to wait a few days; this is as the integration feature is still on the rollout.
- In the Search Console linking panel, click Link.
- Follow the steps in the setup wizard to connect your GSC data with Google Analytics 4 data.
That’s it for unlocking your organic keywords data in Google Analytics with the help of Search Console—our first solution. But that is not the end of your options for working with organic keywords. This brings us to the second solution for “not provided.”
As already mentioned, GSC has its limitations, with the most important being the 1,000-keyword limit. If you need to work around this limit, you can consider an SEO tool like Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT).
It is our free tool that allows you to improve your website’s SEO performance and get more traffic from search. AWT has four main advantages over GSC when it comes to organic keywords. It shows you:
- All known keywords. No 1000-keyword limit here.
- SEO metrics for pages and keywords.
- A depersonalized SERP snapshot with competitive data.
- SERP features for every keyword.
Also, the data concerning your website is available starting from the time our web crawler discovers and crawls your website. This means that with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, you can access historical data older than 16 months (which is Search Console’s limit).
So let’s see how AWT works. Once you set it up, click on the “Organic keywords” widget in the project overview…
… and you will be directed to the Organic keywords report:
By default, you will be presented with the following data (from left to right):
- Keywords that searchers used to find your website—your solution to the “not provided” problem.
- SF stands for SERP Features that appear in search results for a keyword.
- Volume shows the number of average monthly searches for a keyword.
- Keyword Difficulty (KD) gives an estimate of how hard it is to rank in the top 10 organic search results for a keyword on a 100-point scale.
- Cost Per Click (CPC) shows the average price that advertisers pay for each ad click in paid search results for a keyword.
- Traffic shows an estimation of the monthly organic search traffic that your target gets from a given keyword.
- Change (next to Traffic) refers to the change in traffic between your selected dates.
- Position is the top-ranking position of your target for a keyword.
- Change (next to Position) refers to the change in position between your selected dates.
- URL refers to the URL that is ranking in search results for a keyword.
Next to the URL data are two nifty tools that display competitive data about your keywords. The first one with the “line chart” icon shows the position history of the URL or URLs ranking for a keyword:
The second one shows you a depersonalized SERP overview for a keyword. Also, it allows you to view historical SERPs for a keyword.
Above your keyword data, there are filters you can use to display data that meets certain criteria, such as the country where the keyword comes from, position in SERP, search volume, or search for a particular keyword.
As seen in the above screenshots, there’s a lot you can do with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. Here, we’re only showing a fragment of the functionality related to organic keywords. In the video below, we go through other features that can help you in SEO and share how to set up the tool.
So there you have it—two different solutions to the “not provided” problem. Both are free to use. So go ahead and try them both without any commitments. You can even run them in parallel.
In fact, if you already have GSC up and running, it’s easier to set up Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, as you can verify your property in it using GSC. On top of that, you can see the GSC data overview right in AWT.
One last thing worth knowing about these solutions is they display data using different sources. Google displays data from its own services, and Ahrefs aggregates data from multiple sources.
Knowing which organic keywords bring traffic to your website is great. This is because you can use that knowledge to improve your SEO and grow your organic traffic. Here are three quick ideas to do that. Note that we will be using both GSC and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
1. Optimize pages with underperforming keywords
Underperforming keywords are those keywords where you don’t rank in positions #1 or #2. The reason being most people click one of the first two search results. And if you’re not one of those results, you’ll miss out on a lot of organic traffic.
To find your underperforming keywords using Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, access your Organic keywords report by clicking on the “Organic keywords” widget in the project overview. Once in the report, set the country you want to see data for. Also, set the Position filter to “3.”
In a flash, you will get a list of keywords that rank in position #3 or lower. These are the keywords that are underperforming.
Now you can browse through that list to create a shortlist of pages for optimization. A good practice is to use the SERP tool to see who ranks above you in the SERPs. That way, you can gauge the probability of outranking them. To illustrate, there is little chance for us to outperform Google for the keyword “google keyword planner.”
As for the optimization itself, here are a few ideas on what you can do:
2. Optimize pages with low CTR but high keyword ranking
If you remember from the previous sections, CTR is the percentage of organic impressions that result in a click to your website.
Generally, a page with a high ranking on the SERP should analogically have a high CTR. This is as people tend to click search results with high rankings. And the higher the CTR, the higher the traffic to your site.
But in some cases, pages ranking high can have a lower than average CTR. With the help of GSC, you can quickly find these pages, analyze the cause of their performance, and see if there’s a way to improve CTR.
To do this, go to the Performance report in GSC. Tick the Average CTR and the “Average position” filters. Then filter for keywords with average rankings below 3.1. This way, you will see pages that you already rank for in the top three.
Now sort the report by CTR in ascending order. Then look for keywords with lots of impressions but low CTR. Here’s an example of such a keyword.
As you can probably guess, for position #3 in the SERP, the CTR here should be way higher. Meaning, we’re somehow missing out on a lot of potential traffic that could go to our article on DIY SEO.
In the case of this keyword, the cause of low performance can be seen just by analyzing the SERP. Our webpage, though ranking high, is “buried” under ads, a featured snippet, a video carousel, and a People Also Ask box. Those elements of the SERP probably get the most attention from searchers.
So a viable solution, in this case, is to try and optimize our article on DIY SEO to win a featured snippet.
3. Find easy keywords to rank for
As you may know, a single page can rank for hundreds of keywords. (We even did a study on this subject.) Some of the keywords can even cause a page to be ranked unintentionally. This means Google can associate a webpage with a keyword even if you haven’t specifically targeted the keyword with a page.
When that happens, this is a sign you should create new content optimized for that “unintentional” keyword. If so, you could get more traffic than what you currently receive. And the lower the KD, the easier it is generally to create content that will rank high.
You can look for low-difficulty keywords using the KD metric in Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. Just open the Organic keywords report and put something low like “20” in the KD filter. Then sort the results by volume to spot opportunities with the highest potential. Here’s an example from a blog on web design:
As you can see, the “tinder ui” keyword has a high search volume. But it doesn’t bring any traffic to the page that ranks for it because of the low position in the SERP. However, creating new, dedicated content targeting that keyword could help the blog rank higher and get additional organic traffic.
Final thoughts
In this article, we’ve seen two different solutions for incomplete keyword reports in Google Analytics (both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4). Both Search Console and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools will provide insight into the organic keywords that brought people to your website and/or made your website appear in the SERPs.
But if you want to go beyond just knowing what your organic keywords are, I recommend keeping both of those free tools running in parallel. This way, you will have access to more data and can spot more opportunities for growth, as shown in the three SEO tips above.
And if you’re serious about growing organic traffic, tools like GSC and AWT are simply must-haves.
Want to learn more than just the SEO tactics mentioned here? Head to our complete guide on SEO.
Got questions? Ping me on Twitter.
SEO
How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results
ChatGPT is a game changer in the field of SEO. This powerful language model can generate human-like content, making it an invaluable tool for SEO professionals.
However, the prompts you provide largely determine the quality of the output.
To unlock the full potential of ChatGPT and create content that resonates with your audience and search engines, writing effective prompts is crucial.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the art of writing prompts for ChatGPT, covering everything from basic techniques to advanced strategies for layering prompts and generating high-quality, SEO-friendly content.
Writing Prompts For ChatGPT
What Is A ChatGPT Prompt?
A ChatGPT prompt is an instruction or discussion topic a user provides for the ChatGPT AI model to respond to.
The prompt can be a question, statement, or any other stimulus to spark creativity, reflection, or engagement.
Users can use the prompt to generate ideas, share their thoughts, or start a conversation.
ChatGPT prompts are designed to be open-ended and can be customized based on the user’s preferences and interests.
How To Write Prompts For ChatGPT
Start by giving ChatGPT a writing prompt, such as, “Write a short story about a person who discovers they have a superpower.”
ChatGPT will then generate a response based on your prompt. Depending on the prompt’s complexity and the level of detail you requested, the answer may be a few sentences or several paragraphs long.
Use the ChatGPT-generated response as a starting point for your writing. You can take the ideas and concepts presented in the answer and expand upon them, adding your own unique spin to the story.
If you want to generate additional ideas, try asking ChatGPT follow-up questions related to your original prompt.
For example, you could ask, “What challenges might the person face in exploring their newfound superpower?” Or, “How might the person’s relationships with others be affected by their superpower?”
Remember that ChatGPT’s answers are generated by artificial intelligence and may not always be perfect or exactly what you want.
However, they can still be a great source of inspiration and help you start writing.
Must-Have GPTs Assistant
I recommend installing the WebBrowser Assistant created by the OpenAI Team. This tool allows you to add relevant Bing results to your ChatGPT prompts.
This assistant adds the first web results to your ChatGPT prompts for more accurate and up-to-date conversations.
It is very easy to install in only two clicks. (Click on Start Chat.)
For example, if I ask, “Who is Vincent Terrasi?,” ChatGPT has no answer.
With WebBrower Assistant, the assistant creates a new prompt with the first Bing results, and now ChatGPT knows who Vincent Terrasi is.
You can test other GPT assistants available in the GPTs search engine if you want to use Google results.
Master Reverse Prompt Engineering
ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for reverse engineering prompts because it generates natural and engaging responses to any given input.
By analyzing the prompts generated by ChatGPT, it is possible to gain insight into the model’s underlying thought processes and decision-making strategies.
One key benefit of using ChatGPT to reverse engineer prompts is that the model is highly transparent in its decision-making.
This means that the reasoning and logic behind each response can be traced, making it easier to understand how the model arrives at its conclusions.
Once you’ve done this a few times for different types of content, you’ll gain insight into crafting more effective prompts.
Prepare Your ChatGPT For Generating Prompts
First, activate the reverse prompt engineering.
- Type the following prompt: “Enable Reverse Prompt Engineering? By Reverse Prompt Engineering I mean creating a prompt from a given text.”
ChatGPT is now ready to generate your prompt. You can test the product description in a new chatbot session and evaluate the generated prompt.
- Type: “Create a very technical reverse prompt engineering template for a product description about iPhone 11.”
The result is amazing. You can test with a full text that you want to reproduce. Here is an example of a prompt for selling a Kindle on Amazon.
- Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {product), capture the writing style and the length of the text :
product =”
I tested it on an SEJ blog post. Enjoy the analysis – it is excellent.
- Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {text}, capture the tone and writing style of the {text} to include in the prompt :
text = all text coming from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bard-training-data/478941/”
But be careful not to use ChatGPT to generate your texts. It is just a personal assistant.
Go Deeper
Prompts and examples for SEO:
- Keyword research and content ideas prompt: “Provide a list of 20 long-tail keyword ideas related to ‘local SEO strategies’ along with brief content topic descriptions for each keyword.”
- Optimizing content for featured snippets prompt: “Write a 40-50 word paragraph optimized for the query ‘what is the featured snippet in Google search’ that could potentially earn the featured snippet.”
- Creating meta descriptions prompt: “Draft a compelling meta description for the following blog post title: ’10 Technical SEO Factors You Can’t Ignore in 2024′.”
Important Considerations:
- Always Fact-Check: While ChatGPT can be a helpful tool, it’s crucial to remember that it may generate inaccurate or fabricated information. Always verify any facts, statistics, or quotes generated by ChatGPT before incorporating them into your content.
- Maintain Control and Creativity: Use ChatGPT as a tool to assist your writing, not replace it. Don’t rely on it to do your thinking or create content from scratch. Your unique perspective and creativity are essential for producing high-quality, engaging content.
- Iteration is Key: Refine and revise the outputs generated by ChatGPT to ensure they align with your voice, style, and intended message.
Additional Prompts for Rewording and SEO:
– Rewrite this sentence to be more concise and impactful.
– Suggest alternative phrasing for this section to improve clarity.
– Identify opportunities to incorporate relevant internal and external links.
– Analyze the keyword density and suggest improvements for better SEO.
Remember, while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool, it’s essential to use it responsibly and maintain control over your content creation process.
Experiment And Refine Your Prompting Techniques
Writing effective prompts for ChatGPT is an essential skill for any SEO professional who wants to harness the power of AI-generated content.
Hopefully, the insights and examples shared in this article can inspire you and help guide you to crafting stronger prompts that yield high-quality content.
Remember to experiment with layering prompts, iterating on the output, and continually refining your prompting techniques.
This will help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of SEO.
More resources:
Featured Image: Tapati Rinchumrus/Shutterstock
SEO
Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey
Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.
So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?
Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.
You’ll learn:
- Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
- Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
- Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.
With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy.
Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success.
View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.
SEO
How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords
Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.
Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.
There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.
How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Organic keywords report
The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”
Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:
If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.
How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section
Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.
How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section
You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Paid keywords report
This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.
Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.
You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.
1. Create pages to target these keywords
You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.
However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.
Here’s how to do that:
- Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.
2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics
You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.
How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:
- Export your competitor’s keywords
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
- Look for Parent Topics you already have content about
For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”
If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.
If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”
To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”
3. Target these keywords with Google Ads
Paid keywords are the simplest—look through the report and see if there are any relevant keywords you might want to target, too.
For example, Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter.”
If you’re ConvertKit, you may also want to target this keyword since it’s relevant.
If you decide to target the same keyword via Google Ads, you can hover over the magnifying glass to see the ads your competitor is using.
You can also see the landing page your competitor directs ad traffic to under the URL column.
Learn more
Check out more tutorials on how to do competitor keyword analysis:
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