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What is Behavior in Google Analytics?

Cody Schneider•

Understanding what visitors do once they land on your website is one of the most important parts of improving your content and search engine optimization (SEO). Google Analytics' Behavior reports tell this exact story, showing you which pages people love, where they get stuck, and the paths they take through your site. This guide will walk you through the most valuable reports in the Behavior section and show you how to use them to make smarter decisions.

First, Where Do You Find the Behavior Reports?

Navigating Google Analytics can sometimes feel like finding your way through a maze, but locating the Behavior reports is straightforward. Once you're logged into your Google Analytics account for the correct property (your website), follow these simple steps:

  • On the left-hand navigation menu, look for the "Reports" icon.

  • Under the "Life cycle" group, you will see sections like "Acquisition," "Engagement," etc.

  • Click on Engagement, and then select Pages and screens. This is the new home for what was previously called the Behavior report in older versions of Google Analytics (Universal Analytics). While the name has changed to "Engagement" in GA4, the purpose remains the same: to understand user actions.

For the sake of clarity, we'll continue to refer to these reports in the context of user behavior, as a bridge between the old and new terminology.

Decoding the Most Important Behavior Reports for SEO

The "Pages and screens" section is packed with data, but you don't need to look at everything to get valuable insights. Focusing on a few key areas will give you 80% of the value with just 20% of the effort. Let's break down the most impactful reports.

Pages and Screens: The Heart of Your Content Analysis

This report is your starting point for nearly all content analysis. It lists the pages on your site that get the most views and engagement, allowing you to quickly spot both your high-performers and pages that need attention.

What it tells you:

  • Which of your pages and blog posts are the most popular (Views).

  • How long, on average, people are actively engaged with each page (Average engagement time).

  • The number of unique users who viewed a specific page (Users).

A Practical Example for Your Business:

Imagine you run an e-commerce store selling handcrafted leather goods in the UK. By looking at the "Pages and screens" report, you notice that your blog post, "How to Take Care of a Leather Wallet," gets a ton of views but has a very low average engagement time - just 15 seconds. This is a huge red flag.

People are finding your article, likely through search, but leaving almost immediately. This suggests the content isn't meeting their expectations. Perhaps the page loads too slowly, the writing is confusing, or the layout is poor on mobile devices. This is a direct signal from your users that the page needs improvement. Fixing it could lead to better search rankings, as Google rewards content that satisfies user intent.

How to Action This Insight:

  1. Review the Page: Open the page yourself and be critical. Is the introduction boring? Is the text hard to read? Are there annoying pop-ups?

  2. Enhance the Content: Add helpful images, a "how-to" video, or a bulleted list of care tips to make the information easy to digest.

  3. Check Page Speed: A slow-loading page is a common reason for low engagement. We'll touch on how to check this next.

Landing Pages: Analyzing Your Website's Front Doors

While the "Pages and screens" report shows all page views, the "Landing Pages" report is more specific. It shows you the first page a visitor saw when they arrived on your website for their session. This is incredibly important for SEO because these are the pages that are successfully drawing people in from search engines like Google.

What it tells you:

  • Which pages are your primary organic traffic drivers.

  • How effective these entry points are at keeping users on your site (Engaged sessions, Average engagement time).

  • Which landing pages are leading to valuable actions (Conversions).

A Real-World Scenario for a London-Based Agency:

Let's say you're a marketing consultant offering SEO services in London. You look at your Landing Pages report and filter for "Organic Search" as the traffic source. You see that your blog post, "10 Common SEO Mistakes London Businesses Make," is your #1 landing page.

This is fantastic - your content marketing is working! But you also see that it has zero conversions for your "Contact Us" goal. Visitors arrive, read the article, and then leave. The page is successfully attracting an audience, but it's failing to guide them toward becoming a lead.

How to Action This Insight:

  1. Optimize for Action: Add clear calls-to-action (CTAs) within the article. For instance, "Are you making one of these mistakes? Let us run a free SEO audit for your website."

  2. Improve Internal Linking: Link strategically from that blog post to your main "SEO Services" page. Guide the reader naturally from the problem (the mistakes) to the solution (your services).

  3. Provide More Value: Offer a downloadable checklist or a free guide in exchange for an email address to capture leads from interested visitors.

Utilizing Technology for Site Speed

In older versions of Google Analytics, there was a dedicated "Site Speed" report. In GA4, this data has been integrated differently, but the principle remains the same: page speed is a critical factor for both user experience and SEO. A slow website will frustrate visitors and hurt your rankings. Google has made this clear with its emphasis on Core Web Vitals.

While GA4 doesn't have the same built-in speed report, it pairs perfectly with Google's other free tools.

What you need to know:

  • How quickly your most important pages load for real users.

  • Whether certain browsers or devices are experiencing slower load times.

  • Specific technical issues that are slowing your site down.

How to Get This Information:

  1. Identify Key Pages in GA: Go back to your "Landing Pages" report and identify your top 5-10 pages that bring in the most organic traffic. Those are your priority pages.

  2. Analyze with PageSpeed Insights: Take the URLs of those key pages and plug them into Google's PageSpeed Insights tool. It’s free and gives you a detailed report on both mobile and desktop performance.

  3. Review the Recommendations: The tool will score your page's performance and provide a list of "Opportunities" and "Diagnostics" with actionable advice, such as "Compress images," "Reduce server response times," or "Eliminate render-blocking resources."

Your goal isn't necessarily to get a perfect score of 100, but to address the most significant issues that will deliver the biggest improvement for your users.

Putting It All Together: A Simple Analysis Workflow

Data is useless without a process. Here is a simple, repeatable workflow you can use monthly to get actionable insights from your analytics.

  1. Start with acquisition source: Go to the "Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition" report. Set the primary dimension to 'Session source / medium'. This shows you where your traffic is coming from.

  2. Focus on organic traffic: Click on "google / organic" to filter the data. This now shows you metrics specifically for people arriving from Google search.

  3. Analyze landing pages: Now switch to the "Engagement > Landing page" report. Because you filtered in the previous step, this report will remain focused on your organic search traffic. You’re now looking at your most important SEO pages.

  4. Ask key questions: Look at your top 10 organic landing pages.

    • Which ones have a disappointingly low average engagement time? These pages might not be meeting user expectations.

    • Which ones have the highest engagement? These are your superstars. How can you replicate their success or better monetize this attention?

    • Are there any with a surprisingly high number of conversions? Figure out what that page is doing right and apply it elsewhere.

  5. Investigate site speed: Take the URLs for your top 5 organic landing pages (and any underperformers you identified) and run them through PageSpeed Insights. Fix any glaring speed issues that could be causing people to leave prematurely.

Following this simple process will help you move from just looking at data to making informed decisions that tangibly improve your website and its performance in search.

Final Thoughts

Google Analytics' engagement and behavior reports offer an incredible window into what your audience actually wants. By moving beyond simple traffic numbers and analyzing how people interact with your content - through reports like "Pages and screens" and "Landing Pages" - you can get clear signals on what to update, what to create next, and how to improve your overall SEO strategy.

Of course, manually checking these reports, cross-referencing data, and building a narrative can be a time-consuming ritual. At Graphed, we built a tool to solve this problem by eliminating the manual work. We centralize all your key data sources, like Google Analytics, and let you ask questions in plain English. Instead of clicking through five different reports to find an answer, you can just ask, "Show me my top 10 organic landing pages from last month with the highest engagement time," and get an instant, beautiful chart that updates in real-time. Our goal is to give you back your time so you can focus on making decisions, not wrangling data.