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How to Do Category-Level SEO Analysis Using GSC

Kong Metrics Team · · 2 min read

If you manage an e-commerce site, a large publisher, or a complex SaaS marketing site, analyzing individual URLs isn't enough. You need to know how entire sections of your website are performing.

Is the "Men's Shoes" category driving more organic revenue than "Women's Apparel"? Is your "Engineering Blog" traffic decaying while your "Marketing Blog" grows?

To answer these questions, you need to perform Category-Level SEO Analysis.

Page vs. Directory Analytics

Google Search Console defaults to showing you either site-wide data or data for individual URLs. It does not naturally group your data by directory or category.

To achieve category-level analysis natively, you are forced to use the GSC filter bar.

For example, to analyze a blog category, you must create a "Page" filter and either type the exact path (URL containing /blog/) or write a Custom Regex (.*\/blog\/.*).

While this works for quick checks, it is incredibly tedious. You cannot save these views, and GSC does not allow you to compare the /blog/ Regex group side-by-side with the /products/ Regex group on the same chart.

Using URL Clustering with Kong Metrics

To elevate your reporting from micro (page) to macro (category), you need dedicated URL Clustering.

Kong Metrics is built to handle this out of the box. Instead of wrestling with Regex strings every time you need a report, Kong Metrics automatically groups your URLs based on your site's architecture.

Measuring Section Performance

Once your clusters are established in Kong Metrics, you can perform deep macro-analysis:

  1. Side-by-Side Comparisons: Compare the total clicks, impressions, and average CTR of two different clusters directly on the same graph over time.
  2. Cluster-Level Decay: Use the Content Decay tool at the cluster level. Find out if an entire section of your site is systematically losing impression share, indicating a broader technical or architectural issue.
  3. Intent Grouping: Create custom clusters based on intent (e.g., tag all URLs that contain "review" or "vs" into a "Bottom of Funnel" cluster) regardless of their actual folder structure.

By clustering your URLs, you generate insights that actually matter to your business stakeholders, shifting the conversation from "this blog post dropped" to "this product category is driving Q3 growth."