Are you tired of the majority of your website traffic being attributed to “unknown keywords?” Yeah, so are we! Thankfully our Principal, Chris Strom, has found a nice little workaround to help solve the mystery of these unknown keywords.
We all know successful inbound marketing is dependent on creating high-interest content for your audience. Keyword search data is an important metric in helping us determine what content will be interesting to our audience. But that metric is pretty useless when over 95% of organic search traffic has the keyword data encrypted in it. This causes reports from HubSpot and Google Analytics to continually show the majority of organic traffic is from unknown keyword searches. However, if we dig a little deeper into these reports, we can find the useful data that we need by taking a closer look at our landing page activity.
Steps to Find Organic Unknown Keyword Searches in Hubspot
Here’s a few easy steps to help you uncover the unknown keyword data through your landing pages in HubSpot.
- Run your sources report for the desired dates you want to view
- Select Organic Search to view the details
- Select the number of contacts in the Unknown Keyword row
- Select the name of one of the contacts listed
- Scroll down to see which page they viewed first
By taking a look at a contact’s first viewed page, it gives us an idea as to what they were searching for online and what keywords they may have used. Keep in mind that this information in HubSpot is limited to only converted organic traffic, and does not provide details for all organic traffic.
Steps to Find Organic Unknown Keyword Searches in Google Analytics
Here’s a few easy steps to help you uncover the unknown keyword data through your landing pages in Google Analytics.
- Select Behavior in the left column
- Select Site Content
- Select Landing Pages
- Select add segment
- Scroll down and select Organic Traffic
- Remove the All Users segment
Now you can see more detail of which landing pages had more sessions (views), which can help you determine what keywords brought the most traffic to your website. The nice thing about viewing your landing page activity in Google Analytics is that it provides a full overview of all your web traffic, not just your conversions.
Landing Page: One Term with Two Meanings
Don’t be alarmed if your landing page data doesn’t match between HubSpot and Google Analytics for a specific date range. These two just have a difference of opinion when it comes to the definition of a landing page. HubSpot defines a landing page as a webpage with a form where visitors can convert to customers. Google Analytics defines a landing page as an entrance page, or the first page that someone views on your website.
Give it a Try
Now that you know the easy work around for cracking the code on encrypted keywords, give it a try and see what keywords are really bringing people to your site. Then turn around and use that data to create interesting content to excite and delight your audience.
