SEO Speedwagon

Google Analytics is great for assigning goals to certain events, showing you the referring keyword that triggers those events, and displaying what keywords have the best conversion percentage. But how do you determine the exact number of conversions that took place? If G1 is the download of a file, and G2 is the sale of a book, how do you determine the number of downloads or the total number of books sold, sorted by individual keywords?

You can easily determine a hard number of conversions (over a specified date or date range) in the Goal Verification menu:

But assigning raw conversion numbers to specific keywords is a bit trickier. Not rocket science, but it takes a little work. Here's what I do.

1. First, create a Google Analytics keyword report. You have to determine conversions-by-keyword on a source-by-source (i.e., domain-by-domain) basis. So navigate to All Reports -> Marketing Optimization -> Visitor Segment Performance -> Referring Source. Pick a specific source (I chose "google [organic]"), then specify the Keyword report as shown here:

   

   Note: To produce a keyword report, the source must be labeled as [organic] by Google Analytics.

2. Once you've created the keyword report, export it into Excel, which should give you something like this. Note that I've added some column head colors, and that I've replaced actual keywords with "Keyword 1," etc., to protect client privacy:

   

3. So now we know that Keyword 1 converted 1.53% of the time, over 652 visits. But how many raw conversions is that? It's a simple calculation, and we'll add it into the first available column to the right. The following shot gives the formula:

   

   This forumla simply takes the number of visits from each keyword and multiplies by the conversion percentage, then divides by 100 to account for the percent. Note: This specific formula works only if the existing columns appear as shown here. You'll need to change the [-1] or [-3] as necessary if you have more or fewer columns in your spreadsheet.
   

I'm a little surprised that the raw number of conversions isn't already a part of the keyword report. It's valuable data and would be easy to add to the programming. Fortunately, unlike some full referring URL strings, conversion-by-keyword data is available with only a few clicks.