Annoying SEO Encounters #1?-?When you are not granted Google Analytics access

Depending on how this goes, this will be the first in a series of articles about common roadblocks that SEO specialists tend to face in their day-to-day jobs, some of which can be easily avoided, some of which are complex and require a nuanced solution. The general aim is to get people talking about the quirks of the job and think about different approaches to problem solving. As I once heard a wise woman say, “technical problems are people problems” (see also - "SEO problems are people problems"). So often we face roadblocks in our job that are caused by conflicting priorities in an organisation, a lack of understanding of the benefits of certain work, or just general office politics. It’s endlessly fascinating, but it can stand in the way of your objectives, which is obviously not ideal.

I’m starting with something that may on the surface appear to be a basic issue, but I’ve actually faced this more times than I can count. You will occasionally come across an SEO project where you have not been delegated the appropriate Google Analytics access, despite requesting it. The causes of this range from:

1. The business not taking much interest in data or digital marketing — and you wonder how/why they’ve engaged an SEO specialist in the first place
2. The Google Analytics account access being held by someone random in the business who is not your point of contact, who either loves the power they wield, or is JUST TOO BUSY, but for whatever reason, delegating access to you, the outsider, is not their priority
3. Bureaucracy and red tape meaning that any requests for access need to go through several people to approve it
4. When they believe SEOs should just be using Search Console
5. When they use other Analytics platforms more frequently in the business — I’ve found getting access to these to often be even trickier
6. The Analytics account is actually owned by the previous agency and they are holding it hostage — in this case the solution is usually set up a new Analytics account, but keep pressing for access to the legacy data. Edit: Kudos to Sarah Mackenzie who alerted me to Google's Analytics access troubleshooting options. It used to be the case that the Owner of an Analytics account could withhold this data from you, if for whatever reason you did not also have admin privileges, but these days, providing you can prove ownership of the site, you should be able to reclaim your data
7. ?Other unnamed office politics issues which shouldn’t be your problem but somehow end up being

The solution to this problem is to be assertive and persistent in asking for what you want, and to build relationships with other people in the business who will help you reach your objective outside of your main point of contact, if necessary / appropriate. Assertiveness and persistence, as a business skill set, likely warrants a deeper discussion, which I guess I will touch on in future. I do know from experience that it can be quite demoralising and hard to push for what you want if you regularly face rejection. However, from a purely rational point of view, the best thing to do here is explain the benefits of an SEO specialist having access to this information and the potential costs if you don’t, e.g.

1. Without Google Analytics access, you will be unable to see goals and e-commerce data, and will struggle to demonstrate SEO’s impact on the bottom line
2. Although Search Console gives you click data, this data is divorced from information about the entire user journey, and you may be driving lots of traffic that results in a high bounce rate
3. You will not be able to see SEO’s contribution to overall traffic without Analytics data, or see the impact of other channels on SEO traffic. It is important to analyse SEO performance in the context of the brand’s overall marketing efforts. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

It’s rare that I have not been able to convince a business to delegate Google Analytics access eventually, it has happened but persistence usually pays off. But in the meantime, whilst you do not have Analytics data, what can you do??

1. Use Search Console data — I personally feel a lot more at home within Google Analytics (Universal — GA4 is a whole other story…) and up until recently, mostly used Search Console performance data integrated within Google Analytics, mainly because it was an easy way of receiving all query and landing page data and bypassing the 1000 result limit that you get in the Search Console interface. However, there are other ways of getting to this data through the Search Console API. One of the best Google Sheets add-ons is Search Analytics for Sheets which will easily give you all the performance data you need with no limits. With Search Console, you can generally monitor the success of your SEO campaign by using clicks and impressions as your main metrics, but it is important to note that clicks do not equal sessions, and you are essentially only viewing one piece of the puzzle if you continue to monitor performance using Search Console only. Also, if you don’t have access to Search Console either, I feel for you. If lack of access to at least one of Google Analytics or Google Search Console went on for too long, this would be a deal breaker for me.?
2. Use third-party tools — choose whichever one-stop shop you prefer, I am generally quite agnostic here. But I would caution against using the “traffic” data provided by these tools as absolute truth as it is typically based on search volumes and typical click through rates and can sometimes be quite misleading. In a lot of cases, Semrush and Ahrefs for example can tell a completely different story about the “traffic” a site is receiving, and it is almost always way off what is being reported in Analytics. However, this may be something marketers are going to have to get used to, what with the shift to GA4 and Google’s plans to stop relying on cookies to track user data. It may be that the third-party tools end up giving a more reliable picture of user behaviour than GA itself. But for now, err on the side of caution when relying on this data. I would always definitely use Search Console data alongside this.

Some people may be reading this and thinking this scenario is completely unacceptable, and that they’d not proceed with the work if they didn’t have the appropriate access. Others may have simply gotten used to SEO management using Search Console data only. I am frequently seeing Google Analytics setups that have so many data integrity issues that it’s hard to know where to begin with deciphering the data, which again, is a topic for another time. In any case, I’d be interested in people’s views on all of this. As an SEO, is Google Analytics crucial to your work? Is Search Console more important? Am I writing about a complete non-issue?