- Mark your leads and purchases as key events in GA4.
- Use the Organic Search channel to see what SEO brings in.
- Link Search Console to GA4 to see queries next to on-site behavior.
- Track referrals from AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Step 1: Track what matters with key events
In GA4, the actions that matter to your business are called key events (previously “conversions”). Typical key events are:
- Contact or quote form submissions
- Clicks on phone numbers and WhatsApp links
- Booked appointments
- Purchases (for ecommerce, with revenue)
Create these events through Google Tag Manager or your website platform’s integration, test them, and mark them as key events in the GA4 admin.
Step 2: Look at organic search on its own
Open the Traffic acquisition report and look at the Organic Search channel. Compare sessions, engagement and key events with other channels and over time. To see which pages bring organic leads, add a filter for the Organic Search channel in a landing page report.
Step 3: Link Search Console
Linking Search Console to GA4 adds reports that show the Google queries and landing pages that bring visitors, side by side with what those visitors do on your site. It connects “what people searched” with “what happened next”.
Step 4: Track AI referral traffic
Visitors who click links in AI answers usually arrive as referral traffic. Check referrals from domains such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com. You can create a custom channel group named “AI assistants” to see them together. Note that some AI visits arrive without referrer information, so this number is a minimum.
Common tracking mistakes
- Counting thank-you page views twice, or tracking form clicks instead of successful submissions.
- Your own team’s visits polluting the data. Filter internal traffic.
- Missing consent mode setup where privacy laws require consent.
- Not annotating website changes, so you cannot explain changes in the data.
Understand attribution
GA4 credits key events to channels using an attribution model, and the default model spreads credit across the touchpoints that led to a conversion. Many customers find a business through organic search, leave, and come back later directly or through an ad. Look at both the session-level reports and the conversion paths to understand the full role SEO plays, rather than only counting last clicks.
Connect online and offline leads
For many service businesses the real conversion happens on the phone or in person. Use call tracking where appropriate, record lead source in your CRM, and ask new customers how they found you. Compare these numbers with GA4 every month. Even a simple spreadsheet that connects organic leads to closed deals is far more useful than rankings alone.
A simple SEO dashboard
- Organic sessions and engaged sessions, month over month and year over year.
- Organic key events and conversion rate.
- Top organic landing pages by key events.
- Search Console clicks and impressions for your most important queries.
- AI assistant referral sessions.
Keep it short. If a report takes more than a few minutes to read, it will not be read.
What a good SEO report shows
Organic sessions, organic key events and revenue, the landing pages that drive them, and the queries behind them, compared month over month and year over year. That is the standard we use for client reporting, alongside lead generation SEO work focused on turning traffic into enquiries.
MD. TAMZID ULLAH is the Founder & CEO of ITCore and a Top Rated SEO expert and AI search visibility (AEO & GEO) strategist with 6+ years of experience. Meet the team.