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Expanding and growing in new international markets is a challenge for many businesses around the world.
Often, significant effort and resources are dedicated to international strategies, whether through PPC campaigns, social media, or SEO. But do we analyze the results of these actions effectively?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can be a useful tool for analyzing and optimizing international SEO strategies.
By using GA4’s features effectively, businesses can analyze actionable insights to refine their approach and better connect with their audiences.
Relevant Metrics And Dimensions For Analyzing International SEO On GA4
To better understand user behavior and interactions when implementing international SEO strategies with GA4, it’s important to be familiar with a series of metrics and dimensions provided by this Google tool:
- Continent: Provides an overview of the performance of users across continents.
- Continent ID: Offers the UN M49 ID associated with the continent from which user activity originated.
- Subcontinent: Offers more detailed analysis within each continent. For example, South America.
- Subcontinent ID: Shows the UN M49 ID associated with the subcontinent from which user activity originates.
- Country: Shows from which user activity originated. This is the most used dimension for comparing the performance of each market in different countries.
- Country ID: Displays the ISO 3166 ID associated with the country from which user activity originated.
- Region: This is the geographic region from which user activity originated. It is used to understand user behavior in particular areas within a country.
- Region ID: An ID for the geographic region from which user activity originates.
- City: Shows the city or town from which user activity originates.
- City ID: An ID associated with the city from which user activity originated.
Additionally, for analyzing international SEO campaigns, you can examine the following dimensions:
- Language: Indicates the language of a user’s browser or device. This is a key metric for developing multilingual content strategies.
- Language code: Represents the language setting of a user’s browser or device, displayed in ISO 639 format (e.g., en-us for U.S. English or en-gb for UK English).
All of these metrics and dimensions will help us properly analyze our international SEO strategies, in combination with other relevant metrics, to better understand our campaigns.
Key Reports For International SEO Strategies On GA4
Geographic Filtering On The Acquisition And Engagement Reports
Filtering reports by geographic dimensions, such as country or region, enables a detailed analysis of user behavior.
This segmentation is especially useful for identifying high-performing regions and optimizing strategies for areas with lower performance.
GA4 allows you to filter geographic dimensions depending on what you want to analyze:
- Acquisition Report: This report shows how users from different regions discover and arrive at your site. Filtering by geographic dimensions, such as country, region, or city, enables the analysis of traffic across key markets.
Screenshot from GA4, December 2024
Source: Demo Google Merchandise Store, December 2024
- Engagement Report: On the other side, this report reveals how users interact with your site. Metrics, such as average engagement time per session and engaged sessions, offer a deeper understanding of how your content performs. By applying geographic filters, you can analyze content performance across different regions.
Source: tiodenadal.online, December 2024
User Demographic Details Reports
These reports provide detailed insights into your audience by combining geographic data with attributes such as age, gender, and interests.
This information helps you understand who your users are within specific regions, making it easier to identify the most relevant demographic groups in various areas and adjust your content and strategies to better align with their needs and preferences.
Image from author, December 2024
Image from author, December 2024
Search Console Integration On GA4
GA4’s integration with Google Search Console is very useful for analyzing international SEO strategies.
Reports, such as Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic, provide insights into search terms and the organic performance of URLs, which can be filtered by specific countries.
This data helps refine content optimization to better target local search behaviors.
Screenshot from Google Search Console, December 2024
Leverage Events And Parameters
In GA4, events capture specific user interactions on your site, such as clicks, form submissions, or downloads, while parameters provide additional details about these actions, like location, language, or device type. Together, they offer a clear view of how users engage with your content.
We can leverage them in order to analyze international SEO strategies:
- Enhanced Measurement Events: Enabling enhanced measurement in GA4 allows you to automatically track key actions, such as scroll depth, clicks on region-specific links, or interactions with videos targeted at specific countries. These pre-configured events simplify the process of analyzing international user behavior, offering useful insights without the need for complex tracking setups.
- Custom Events: Additionally, you can create custom events to track interactions specific to your international audience. For example, monitor clicks on country-specific CTAs, downloads of localized content, or searches performed using region-specific keywords on your site’s internal search function.
Screenshot from GA4, December 2024
- Explanation: For example, filtering by country allows us to analyze the most popular search terms users use on a site’s internal search feature. By filtering by country or other relevant dimensions, this data can help design more effective content strategies and even restructure the site architecture to better align with the needs of specific regions.
- Custom Parameters: Parameters let you gather information about user behavior that is important for improving international SEO strategies. For example:
- Capture user language preferences using the language parameter.
- Track interactions with content variations, such as videos or forms, designed for specific markets.
By using custom parameters, we can obtain relevant information that will be useful to further analyze strategies.
Google also provides a list of recommended custom parameters to help you implement them effectively.
Creating Audiences For International SEO
GA4’s audience creation tools allow companies to create highly segmented groups of users based on geographic and behavioral attributes. For instance:
- Geographic Audiences: Create audiences based on location, such as country, region, or city.
- Behavioral Audiences by Location: We can build relevant audiences when combining these geographic audiences with other specific characteristics that we want to study – for example, users who purchased, those who interact with localized CTA, or more engaged users. These groups can be used to identify trends in specific regions.
Screenshot from GA4, an example of an audience called ‘Users in San Francisco’
Advanced Analysis Into User Behavior With Explorations
The Explorations reports in GA4 provide deeper insights into user behavior. These reports allow you to understand how user behavior changes by region and adjust the user experience accordingly:
- Path Exploration Reports: This report maps user journeys across your site. By analyzing paths in specific regions, you can identify unique opportunities to improve user experiences for international audiences.
Source: Path Exploration Report U.S. Users, December 2024
- User Cohort Analysis: Tracks how users from different countries engage with your site over time. This helps identify patterns like retention, drop-offs, or the long-term success of localized strategies.
Source: Cohort Analysis report U.S. Users, December 2024
- Segment Overlap: Compares multiple audiences and highlights where they overlap. For international SEO, this report is particularly useful for identifying shared behaviors or interests between users from different or similar regions.
Source: Segment Overlap Report U.S. + California users, December 2024
Best Practices For GA4 Configuration In International SEO
In order to do all of this analysis, it is very important to have GA4 Configuration properly set up:
- Define your international SEO objectives: Start by identifying what you want to achieve. Whether it’s increasing traffic from specific regions, boosting engagement on localized content, or improving conversions in targeted countries, setting clear goals helps align your GA4 setup with the data that matters most.
- Set up geographic dimensions properly: Review that key dimensions like country, language, and city are configured accurately in your reports.
- Leverage custom events: Design custom events to track region-specific interactions, such as downloads of localized guides or clicks on international shipping information.
- Utilize enhanced measurement: Activate enhanced measurement features to capture relevant interactions automatically, such as outbound clicks to region-specific pages.
- Integrate Search Console: Link GA4 data with Google Search Console to analyze target market organic search performance.
- Create audiences: Group users based on location, language, or interactions, such as those who engage with multilingual content or region-specific goals. Use these audiences to analyze trends and international user behavior and interactions with your site.
Expanding into international markets is a complex but potentially rewarding challenge for companies.
By effectively leveraging GA4’s features, such as geo-filtering, events, metrics, and audience-building tools, companies can obtain powerful insights to better analyze user behavior and optimize their SEO strategies.
More Resources:
- How To Use Market-Specific Conversion Tracking To Drive International SEO Success
- Essential GA4 Reports You Need To Measure Your SEO Campaigns
- PPC Expert Tips: Budgets, Testing & Optimization
Featured Image: insta_photos/Shutterstock
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