You’re about to lose all your data. Unless you implement GA4. Now.

What Qs are clients currently asking with regards to SEO?
It’s not directly SEO related, as it will impact all marketers, but we are getting a lot of questions about GA4.

To help our clients, we’ve recently put together a GA4 FAQ guide that covers off all of your burning questions about GA4. The most important thing you can do right now is get GA4 set up.
Why is it important to set up GA4?
If you’re a digital marketer who uses Google Analytics to track website performance, you need to make the switch to GA4 sooner rather than later. We recommend setting up Google Analytics 4 ASAP so that when Universal Analytics becomes redundant in July 2023, you will already have collected a year’s worth of data in GA4. That’s why now is the time to make the move!
What’s relevant for clients to know right now about SEO?
Keep an eye on SERP features
Google’s focus on adding new SERP features and layouts present opportunities. Our Senior SEO Strategist Matt Meazey wrote about this recently:

We all know search engines are always testing and changing the ways their search results look. These changes can impact click-through rates; both positively and negatively. Here are some notable changes that have happened recently:

• 🗺 Full-width maps – Local results are becoming more prominent, meaning it is super important your business is within the map results.
• 📜 Infinite scrolling (👋 page 1) – Now, when you reach the bottom of a search results page on your phone, the next set of results will automatically load with relevant information. This could lead to higher click-through rates for results that historically ranked on the 2nd page.
• 🧠 ‘Buying guides’ & ‘things to know’ panels – Google has become very intelligent and can understand the meaning of your content more than ever. These new panels are bringing more of your content to the SERP, so if you get it right, you can boost your business’ visibility dramatically.
  The way search engines display search results varies by device and location. Some of the changes haven’t been fully rolled out, but it’s important to be aware of how these changes will affect your website and what to do to take advantage. So keep an eye on your rankings, but also take note of changes to the SERP too.

Google Search Console & GA4
On July 6th 2022, Google announced that it has added support for sites using Google Analytics 4 to show data in Google Search Console Insights. Previously, if you only set up GA4 for your site, Search Console Insights would show you almost no information, but now that has changed.

What is Search Console Insights?
Search Console Insights is designed specifically for content creators and “can help them understand how audiences discover their site’s content and what resonates with their audiences” according to Google. The Search Console Insights reporting is powered by data from both Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

How can I access Google Search Console Insights?
You can access the Search Console Insights reports at search.google.com/search-console/insights.

What do clients need to action right now to improve their SEO?

Do not neglect zero search volume keywords
According to Internet Live Stats, Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.

This means that the tools we love to use for keyword research will never be able to provide us with completely accurate data on keyword search volume, and might say that a specific keyword has zero search volume, when in fact it could potentially bring you hundreds, if not thousands of visitors to your website.

So, how do you go about finding these zero search volume keywords for your business? There are a couple of nifty tools you can use to find relevant keywords:

Answer The Public – Identify niche topics & long-tail question queries
AlsoAsked – Explore intent within a topic & long-tail question queries

If you get stuck, don’t worry! We are here to help and we LOVE keyword research, so feel free to get in touch.