How to Review Google Analytics
Struggling to figure out if your SEO is actually generating business in London? Google Analytics holds the answers, but finding them isn't always obvious. This guide walks you through exactly how to review your organic search performance in GA4, focusing specifically on understanding what’s working, and what’s not, with your London-based audience.
First Things First: Connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics
Before you dive into any reports, there's one critical step: ensure your Google Search Console (GSC) is linked to Google Analytics 4. Think of them as two sides of the same coin. GSC tells you what happens before someone clicks on your website (which search terms they used, your rankings, your click-through rate). GA4 tells you what happens after they click (how they behave, what pages they visit, whether they convert).
Connecting them gives you a complete picture of your SEO performance, directly within your Analytics dashboard. Without this link, you're missing the 'why' behind your organic traffic.
How to Check and Establish the Connection:
- Click the Admin cog at the bottom left of your GA4 screen.
- In the 'Property' column, scroll down to the 'Product Links' section.
- Click on Search Console Links.
- If you see your website listed here, you're already connected! If not, click the blue Link button.
- Follow the prompts to choose the GSC account that matches your domain, and complete the integration.
Once linked, GA4 will start pulling in valuable GSC data, adding a new collection of reports that are foundational to any SEO review.
Your Go-To SEO Reports in GA4
GA4 organizes data differently than the old Universal Analytics, but once you know where to look, it’s incredibly powerful. For reviewing SEO, your primary basecamp will be the Traffic Acquisition report.
The Traffic Acquisition Report
This report answers the fundamental question: "Where are my website visitors coming from?" For SEO purposes, we want to zoom in on visitors arriving from search engines.
How to find it: In the left-hand navigation, go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition.
When you open the report, you'll see a table with a list of "Session default channel groups" like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, and Referral. Your mission is to focus on Organic Search.
Look at the key metrics for the Organic Search row:
- Users and Sessions: This tells you the volume of traffic. Is it increasing month over month? This is your top-level indicator of SEO health.
- Engaged sessions and Engagement rate: An "engaged session" is one that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or is at least 2 pageviews. A high engagement rate (typically over 60-70%) from organic search suggests that the content on your pages matches the user's search intent. A low rate might mean your title and description look good in search results, but the page itself isn't delivering what people expect.
- Conversions: This is the most important metric. It tells you if your SEO traffic is accomplishing your business goals (e.g., making a purchase, filling out a contact form). Don’t just chase traffic, chase traffic that converts.
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How to Analyze Your SEO Performance Specifically for London
Getting traffic is great, but getting traffic from your target geographical area is even better. If London is your key market, you need to verify that your SEO efforts are resonating there. Here's how to filter your reports to see just London-based traffic.
Using Geographical Filters in Standard Reports
You can add a "City" filter to almost any report in GA4. Let's apply one to the Traffic Acquisition report we were just looking at.
- While viewing the Traffic Acquisition report, look for the Add filter + button at the top of the report interface.
- In the 'Build filter' panel that slides out, start typing and select the dimension City.
- For 'Match Type', choose exactly matches.
- For 'Value', type and select London.
- Click the blue Apply button.
The entire report will now refresh to show you data only for sessions that originated from London. You can now analyze the performance of 'Organic Search' for this specific segment. Are London-based users more or less engaged than your overall average? Do they convert at a higher or lower rate? This insight helps you understand your most valuable audience and tailor your content to them.
Using the Demographic Details Report
Another way to see where your traffic comes from is the Demographic Details report. This report is great for comparing how different cities perform against each other.
How to find it: Reports > Demographics > Demographic details.
By default, this report probably shows data by Country. Click the drop-down menu above the first column of the table and change the primary dimension from 'Country' to City.
Now you have a league table of your top cities. You can quickly see where London ranks. From here, you can add a secondary dimension like 'Session default channel group' to see which channels are driving traffic from each city, validating how important Organic Search is for your London audience compared to Manchester, Birmingham, or elsewhere.
Identifying Your Most Successful SEO Landing Pages for a London Audience
Next, you need to understand which pages on your website are acting as the primary gateways for your organic search visitors from London.
Navigate to the Landing Page report by going to Reports > Engagement > Landing Page.
A landing page is the first page a user 'lands' on during their session. To make this report useful for an SEO review, you need to apply two filters:
- First, add a filter for organic traffic: Dimension = Session default channel group, Match Type = contains, Value = Organic Search.
- Next, click Add new condition to layer on your location filter: Dimension = City, Match Type = exactly matches, Value = London.
The updated report now shows the most popular entry pages for users who found you on Google (or Bing) and were searching from London. This data is pure gold. Ask yourself:
- Are my most important service or product pages on this list? If not, why?
- Is a forgotten blog post from three years ago bringing in most of my London traffic? This could be an opportunity to update it with more relevant call-to-actions.
- Do any key pages have a very low average engagement time? This indicates visitors are clicking and bouncing right off, signaling a content or user experience issue that needs fixing.
What Keywords Are Driving London Traffic?
Thanks to the Search Console integration we set up first, you can get keyword data right inside GA4. You may need to add the report to your navigation menu first.
How to enable the reports: Click Library in the bottom-left menu. In the 'Collections' card, find 'Search Console' and click the three dots to 'Publish' it. It will now appear in your main left-hand navigation.
Go to Reports > Search Console > Queries.
Here you will see a list of the actual Google search terms that users typed to find your website, along with clicks and impressions data from GSC. You can apply a 'Country' filter here to 'United Kingdom' to zero in on UK performance.
While this specific report doesn't let you filter down to the city level, you can connect the dots. Take the top landing pages for London traffic that you identified in the previous step, and use the filter on the Queries report to see which search terms are leading people to those specific pages. This helps you understand an entire user journey: a user in London searched for Query X, found Page Y, and then (hopefully) converted.
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Are Your London SEO Efforts Actually Driving Business? (Tracking Conversions)
Traffic and engagement are good indicators, but conversions are what really move the needle. Your final check is to circle back and confirm that your London-based organic traffic is generating valuable actions.
Make sure you have conversions properly configured by heading to Admin > Data display > Conversions. Important user actions like a purchase confirmation ('purchase'), a lead form submission ('generate_lead'), or an important click should be marked as a conversion.
Now, go back to your trusty Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition report. Add the 'London' city filter just as you did before. Scroll the table to the right until you see the Conversions column.
You can now see, in plain numbers, how many conversions came directly from users who found you on Google while in London. This metric is the single most powerful way to measure your hyperlocal SEO ROI and make the case for continued investment in your search strategy.
Final Thoughts
Reviewing your Google Analytics for London SEO isn't about looking at one magic report. It’s about methodically layering on filters to isolate performance from your Organic Search channel and your specific target city across several key reports - from traffic sources to landing pages and finally through to conversions.
Regularly creating these filtered views helps you turn broad data into specific, actionable insights. However, manually applying filters and jumping between seven different reports just to understand your London performance can become a repetitive chore. This is exactly why we built Graphed. After connecting your Google Analytics, you can skip the manual report building and simply ask, "What were my top converting pages from organic search traffic in London last quarter?" or "Make a line chart showing our weekly organic users from the UK for the last 6 months" and get an instant, real-time dashboard created for you.
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