Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is rolling out at a rapid rate (since the announcement of the end of Google Universal Analytics (UA/GA3)). Marketers and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals are starting to discover that many of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that they took for granted as being available out of the canned UA reports are simply not there.
For SEOs the biggest complaint, is they can’t generate a report showing conversion by landing page by channel. SEOs want to see conversions (including revenue) by the search engine the user came from broken down by landing page. GA4 still shows you conversion by channel (including organic search). However, if you add the dimension “Landing Page” there is a disconnect.
This Google Analytics 4 implementation guide is for Google Tag Manager and GA4 users. It complements the official documentation and provides a guide on how to attribute conversions to specific landing pages by the default channel group.
This guide, shows you a simple solution to solve the problem and how to create a conversions by landing page by channel report. You require Admin level access to the Google Tag Manager (GTM) account.
How To GA4 Guide: Conversions by Landing Page & Channel
Step 1: Referrer Variable
Ensure the GTM Variable “Referrer” is enabled. If it is not, add it.
Step 2: External Pager Referrer Trigger
Create a trigger in GTM that fires every time a page loads if the referring site’s domain is not your site (traffic referred from another site). For example, if your site’s domain is “mysite.com” set the trigger to fire on Window Load where “Referrer” “does not contain” “mysite.com”.
Trigger Name: Landing Page – External Source
Trigger fires on: Set to Some Windows Loaded Events
Condition: Referrer “does not contain” the domain of your site
Step 3: Tag to Capture Landing Page
Create a GA4 Event tag “Landing Page” and set Triggering to “Landing Page – External Source”
Name the event. We named it “landing_page”. You can name anything your prefer, just ensure it meets GA4 naming conventions.
Verify you have the correct Configuration Tag set as well.
Step 4. Test Your GTM Set-up
From GTM enable Preview and then open your GA4 account “DebugView”.
In your GA4 account select “DebugView” under the Configure group.
You will see all the initial events that fired in GA4
That’s it! GA4 automatically associates the “page_location“ (aka “landing page”) to the event “landing_page” as well as the source and medium.
Step5: Configure your Report
Within GA4 Explore configure you report as follows
For the columns setting, you can choose any conversion event (i.e. event count) you are tracking or revenue.
This generates the following:
If you prefer you can use the Ecommece Revenue variable
This generates the following report (Revenue by Default Channel and Landing Page) :
Use the filter option (SEOs) to see only traffic from Organic Search and assoicated landing pages from organic search.
Add the dimension of source to see which search engines are driving traffic to which landing pages and how much revenue etc. they generate. This produces the following report: Revenue by Organic Search Source and Landing Page
Once you’ve captured and tied a landing page to a specific source, you can explore a lot of different options for your reporting.
Summary
We know Google Analytics 4 has put much of the reporting requirements on its users and provides fewer reports. The above guide provides the solution for one of the most common Google Analytics reports requested by SEOs that of Conversion by Organic Search Landing Pages.
Hope you found this helpful. If you need any help with UA to GA4 migration or configuring GA4 reports feel free to contact us.
The above solution was researched and developed by Alan K’necht (K’nechtology Inc.) in partnership with Anil Batra (Optizent Academy).
