Organic search and keywords

In the "Basics" and the SEO classes I always emphasize that if you take one thing away, it should be signing up for Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools lets you see (with as much detail as Google will allow) your site the way Google sees it: when it's getting indexed, what pages are found and so on.

Now it's even more important, as Google made a change to its search engine last year that encrypted all searches. It's a wonderful privacy enhancement, but it also makes it harder for site owners to understand which keywords a user typed in to reach their site. In fact, in Google Analytics, the excellent (and free) web metrics product from Google, normal organic searches no longer provide keywords. That means that if you're trying to discover whether a user used "Austin hair salon" or "Austin day spa" to find and reach your site, that kind of detail is no longer available in Analytics.

However, that data does remain available in Webmaster Tools, so the simplest (and free) way to discover these keywords is just logging into Webmaster Tools and clicking on Search Traffic, then Search Queries. You'll see a list similar to this one:

For more insight on this change as well as some other options for viewing keywords that lead to your site, check out this excellent and thorough piece over at Search Engine Watch.