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Maximize Organic Traffic and Paid Ad Performance

As the digital revolution changes the marketing landscape, best practices continue to evolve. Artificial intelligence, including generative AI, offers tremendous potential to uncover new opportunities, including new products and services. It can help us optimize our strategic plans and online performance–the key is data quantity and quality. We must harvest the right data and analyze it in more robust ways to make a meaningful leap to AI. Without the right data, AI is just a pipedream and a waste of our resources.

For example, AI can improve SEO and make paid digital advertising even more cost-effective. Although the big search engines, especially Google, have been injecting AI into the process for the past several years, now Gen AI is part of the equation. As you know, data is the foundation of evolution in the digital world. Better data means better decisions–with or without AI.

digital marketing best practices

Data Collection, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Marketing

Google offers two software platforms to help online marketers capture critical data, while optimizing your online presence. Failure to capture search and user data is a critical mistake today.

In addition to other databases that you are building for your company, Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA4) can both help build website performance and market insights. AI can help refine both services even more in the future, but both should be installed connected to your website now—even if you are not running Google Ads. Without each, you are missing valuable optimization data from Google.

GSC is a free service that helps users monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their website’s presence in Google Search results. GSC provides insights into search-related traffic, including clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and average search position. GSC can also help site owners improve their visibility and presence in the SERPs.

GA4 is user-oriented and provides data related to people who visit and interact with your website. GA focuses on user behavior and engagement metrics, such as visitors, pages viewed, bounce rates, and conversion tracking (clicks, calls or purchases). GA4 can help you analyze multiple digital marketing channels that are generating your web traffic.

GSC offers feedback about what Google sees on your website. GA4 provides feedback about how people see and interact with your website. Both tools are essential for website optimization. Use GSC for SEO and technical optimization, and use GA4 for user insight and conversion analysis.

GSC can be integrated with Google Analytics to share Search Console Insights. However, GSC data is incompatible with Google Analytics “segments.”

GSC helps you monitor your website’s performance across many metrics, including search engine results. Google Analytics helps you learn more about your users, including who they are, how they found you, and how they interact with your website.

Combining GSC with GA4 unlocks valuable insights into how users discover and interact with your website through organic search. Harnessing as much data as possible can help in many ways:

See which keywords drive traffic: Identify the exact search terms users are using to find your website and analyze their performance.

Understand user behavior after search: Go beyond clicks and see how users engage with your site after landing from Google search. You can analyze metrics like bounce rate, conversion rate, and more.

Optimize content for better rankings: Gain insights into which pages rank well for specific keywords and identify areas for improvement. GSC helps webmasters check the indexing status of each page, category and tag. It also finds crawling errors, including redirects, and missing links (404) that need your attention. Fixing these errors can improve your Google ranking.

Submit a sitemap.xml directly to Google. A sitemap.xml file helps search engines detect your web pages faster and easier. Don’t count on third-party services to get your pages indexed. Take charge of this step and submit directly to Google and Bing and beyond. If your pages are not indexed, they aren’t serving on search results.

Track progress and measure SEO success: Monitor key metrics over time to assess the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and adjust your strategy accordingly. Use the combined data to identify high-potential keywords, optimize content for better rankings, and improve user experience.

Build Databases & Models For AI: Better data means better models and more opportunity.

GSC and GA4 are different tools despite both being valuable for website analysis. GSC focuses on SEO and your website’s visibility in search results. It shows data like clicks, impressions, ranking positions, crawl errors, and mobile usability issues.

GA4 focuses on user behavior across your website, including conversions. It tracks metrics such as page views, user engagement, bounce rate, conversions, and user journeys.

GSC provides data directly from Google Search Engine, focusing on organic search traffic. GA4 tracks data from all traffic sources, including organic, direct, referral, and social media.

GSC generates insights into keyword performance, backlinks, site health, and technical SEO issues. GA4 focuses on user behavior, engagement, conversions, and audience demographics.

GSC offers reports on search queries, ranking positions, mobile usability, and index coverage. GA4 provides reports on user journeys, page views, conversions, site speed, and audience analysis. GSC and GA4 can be linked, allowing you to see keyword data from GSC within GA4 reports for deeper insights.

GSC is best for identifying SEO opportunities, improving search rankings, and fixing technical issues. GA4 is best for understanding how users navigate your website, optimize user experience, and increase conversions.

Remember, connecting GSC and GA4 is just the first step. The real power lies in analyzing the data and using it to inform your SEO and website optimization strategies. GA4 doesn’t give you any information about keyword rankings on your website. In Google Search Console, you can look them up for your pages, images, videos and news rank on Google. To find your ranking keywords, open the Performance report in the menu on the left.

You can load some data from Google Search Console data into Google Analytics. Follow the step-by-step guide on how to connect Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4.

Yes, data is the new gold and AI is a new form of alchemy for some organizations and industries. One thing that won’t change regarding data management is quality control and the human touch. Garbage in is garbage out, so we must do everything within our power and within the law to assure that our data is accurate, accessible and rich with meaningful detail. GSC and GA4 can help us all and the price is right.

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Crossbow Communications is a record-setting and award-winning consulting firm, with capabilities in marketing, public affairs and issue management. We have influenced public opinion, public policy and business decisions around the globe. We are a Colorado-based corporation. We  serve the world.

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Author: Gary Chandler