Search Queries in GWT – Creating Filters and Viewing Top Pages

Google Webmasters tool provides options for viewing the search queries that are bringing in traffic to your website. You may see the top pages that are viewed the most by your site visitors and also filter the top search queries as per the your target markets.

Search Queries in GWT

You may find the search queries page listed under search traffic tab after logging in to your webmasters account. This page displays the top queries that people are entering on Google and finding your website. You can see the query, impressions, clicks, CTR and average positions.

Query lists the specific user queries for which your site appeared in Google search results.

Impressions is the number of times your site was displayed in the search results.

Clicks shows the number of times users clicked on your site listing.

CTR shows the value returned after comparing the actual CTR with to the previous period.

Avg position indicates the difference between the average top position compared to the previous period.

Creating Filters 

Filters allows you to find specific search queries on the basis of three main divisions:-

Search – This option allows you to filter queries on the basis of image search, mobile search, video search and web search.

Location – This option allows you to filter queries on the basis of user location.

Traffic – This options allows you to filter queries having impressions fewer than 10 or more than 10.

Viewing Top Pages

Clicking on the top pages option from the search queries page displays the top pages on your website that has achieved the maximum number of impressions and clicks.

This data also displays four different columns of impressions, clicks, CTR and avg position.

How to Use Search Query Data to Optimize Your Site Performance

You can use the search query data to optimize your website. Here are some points:-

1- Locate the top pages on your site that are getting the maximum impressions and clicks. Check on what changes you did recently on those pages and use them as a base to improve the performance of the other pages on your site.

2- Identify the pages whose clicks are on decline and try to fix the issues. Many times, only simple tweaks can help in getting the lost traffic.

3- Identify pages that are getting the maximum impressions but no clicks and fix those in order to start generating more clicks. This process requires proper analysis but once done properly can result in massive improvement of traffic because your site is already getting an impression for the keyword.

4- Find out the percentage of mobile vs web users and try to optimize your content accordingly.

5- Find out the top queries that are generating more than 10 clicks by applying proper filters.

6- Identify queries where your site is close to making on the top 10 positions and try to optimize those queries. Less effort will provide more results if you constantly monitor the search query page offered under GWT.

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