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Search queries yearly trends

Look at a 3 month time range, and then keep track of your queries over time. To see yearly trends requires downloading the information in csv format.

Researching and Investigating "Top Queries"

Questions to ask yourself as you investigate are:
  1. Are these the queries I would expect?
  2. Does it seem like these clicks would be qualified traffic?
  3. Can the display of my page in search results be better optimized for this query?
As you investigate the queries that bring your website the most traffic, simulate the entire searcher experience, from their possible location and motivation, to the simulation of them
  1. performing the query,
  2. viewing the search results display,
  3. to clicking on your site and experiencing your website
Note: More Advanced Google Analytics users can tie in their knowledge with respect to engagement metrics.

Art of SEO
Proof by Contradiction
If you click the query, you will see the pages that appear in results for the query. Hovering on the arrow provides a preview of the page. If there are different ranking pages / URLs with duplicate content, improve your site by consolidating this information,
  1. 301 redirect to the preferred version, or
  2. rel="canonical" to preferred version to consolidate indexing signals.

Unexpected ranking for search queries of your website

If there are pages that you would not expect to rank for the search term, determine how many clicks that page has. If you feel that it is significant, examine the page, take notes, because after reviewing more of your queries and more of your result pages, you will need to determine for which pages and for which user experiences, you would like to prioritize improvements.
Task: Figure out why your website pages are ranking for that content.