SEObolt Quick Start
A five-step walkthrough to get your SEObolt Pro Analytics tabs populated with data from Google. Steps 1 and 2 connect Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 (both use one-click OAuth). Steps 3 through 5 tour the Analytics dashboard, explain what each tab actually shows, pull the first batch of data, and confirm everything lands. If the shipped Quick Start walkthrough inside your plugin admin (SEObolt → Help → Quick Start) is what brought you here, this doc is the deeper version with correct tab descriptions and the same fix guidance.
The 5 Steps in Order
The whole walkthrough is about 5 minutes of clicks (both connections use one-click OAuth) plus first-fetch wait time (~20-60 seconds per Google API on first pull). Once done, your Analytics dashboard is populated and every subsequent visit is near-instant thanks to caching.
- Connect Google Search Console — authorizes SEObolt to read your organic search performance data.
- Connect Google Analytics 4 — authorizes SEObolt to read GA4 report data and unlocks the built-in gtag.js tracker installer.
- Learn what each Analytics tab actually shows — the 5 tabs each answer a different question about your site.
- Refresh to pull the first batch — one click, one wait for Google to build the initial reports.
- Verify data appeared — confirm your Dashboard tab shows real clicks and impressions.
SEObolt Pro active on this WordPress install (any tier connects GSC; GA4 needs Pro or higher). A Google account with (a) verified ownership of this site in Search Console, and (b) at least Viewer access to a GA4 property tracking this site. If either is missing, set it up on Google first — SEObolt reads from Google, it doesn't create these accounts for you.
Step 1: Connect Google Search Console
Go to SEObolt → Settings → Connections. Click Connect with Google on the Google Search Console card, pick the Google account that owns your site's GSC property, get past the "Google hasn't verified this app" warning, approve the read-only scope, and pick your site from the property picker that appears on the Connections tab after OAuth completes.
The card ends in a green Connected state with your Google email and the selected site. That's Step 1 done.
Every screen in the OAuth flow (choose account, unverified-app warning with Advanced → Go to Royal Plugins (unsafe), scope approval, property picker) is documented step-by-step in the Connect Google Search Console guide. If anything on your screen doesn't match this summary, follow the full guide.
The Royal Plugins OAuth app is pending Google's formal app-review process. On the warning screen click Advanced at the bottom-left, then the Go to Royal Plugins- (unsafe) link to continue. Your Google credentials never leave Google — SEObolt only receives a read-only access token scoped to the surfaces you approve.
Step 2: Connect Google Analytics 4
Still on SEObolt → Settings → Connections. Click Connect with Google on the Google Analytics 4 card (below the GSC card). Same OAuth flow: pick your account, past the unverified-app warning, past the identity-grant screen, approve the read-only Google Analytics scope, and pick your GA4 property from the picker that appears after redirect. Search Console covers pre-click (queries, impressions, clicks); GA4 covers post-click (sessions, engagement, on-site behavior).
The card settles into a green Connected state with your Google email and property name. Both connections are now live.
The GA4 flow has one extra screen compared to GSC (the identity-grant confirmation before scope approval). Every step is documented in the Connect Google Analytics 4 guide, plus GA4 property picker guidance (account vs property vs data stream) and the optional gtag.js tracker installer.
Right below the connection card is GA4 Tracking Code. If you don't already run gtag.js via Google Tag Manager or another plugin, paste your Measurement ID (starts with G-) here and check Enable Tracking. SEObolt outputs the snippet on all frontend pages with built-in duplicate-tracker detection so you don't accidentally double-count events. Skip this if GTM or another plugin is already running gtag.
Step 3: What Each Analytics Tab Shows
The Analytics area lives at SEObolt → Analytics. Five tabs each answer a different question. Understanding what actually renders where saves you clicking around looking for data that's on a different tab.
| Tab | What it shows | Data source |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | Single-glance overview: SEO score donut chart, quick stats with sparklines, and top keyword positions. This is where your GSC rollup lives. | GSC (cached) |
| Site Analytics | Content-audit view: per-post SEO score distribution, schema types present, internal / external link counts. Answers "which of my posts are optimized", not "how many visitors came today." | Local content analysis |
| SEO Performance | Search performance over time: multi-line chart of clicks, impressions, CTR, position, plus stat cards and a top-performing-posts table. | GSC (cached) |
| Keywords | Query-level performance: every search query bringing visitors, position distribution, winning / losing keyword analysis. Business tier adds Keyword Tracking on this same tab (daily-tracked target keywords, merged from the standalone page). | GSC (cached) + Business-tier tracker |
| Rank Tracker | Business-tier feature. Track specific keywords over time with position trends and keyword-management tools (per country + device). | Business-tier tracker |
Common trip-up: Site Analytics sounds like it should show sessions / users / pageviews from GA4. It doesn't — Site Analytics is the content-audit tool. GA4 data currently powers one specific card: the Avg Time on Page stat on the SEObolt widget on your WordPress main Dashboard (/wp-admin), pulled fresh via GA4's averageSessionDuration metric with a 30-days-vs-previous-30 change indicator. If you enabled the GA4 Tracking Code option in Step 2, GA4's gtag.js is also outputting on every frontend page. A full in-admin GA4 traffic dashboard (sessions / users / pageviews / top pages / sources) is not yet in the plugin — the connection you set up here is what will drive it when it ships. See the GA4 connection guide for the full picture.
Step 4: Refresh to Pull the First Batch
The Analytics page has one shared Refresh button at the top of the page header row, next to the date-range selector. It's not per-tab, there's just the one. On a fresh install, data auto-loads for the tab you're currently viewing; clicking Refresh forces a fresh pull from Google for that tab.
Also in the header row: the date-range selector lets you switch between the last 7, 15, 30, 60, 90, or 180 days for the currently-visible tab.
Google Search Console and GA4 both need 20-60 seconds to build the initial report for a property that hasn't been queried before. Subsequent visits are near-instant because SEObolt caches the response in your WordPress database. If your first Refresh feels slow, that's the expected first-fetch behavior.
Step 5: Verify Data Appeared
Two places to check once both connections are live:
- SEObolt → Analytics → Dashboard: SEO score donut populated, recent clicks + impressions in the quick-stat cards, top-keyword-position mini-list. The SEO Performance tab should show the multi-line chart drawn with real data. The Keywords tab should list your top queries.
- WordPress main Dashboard (
/wp-admin): the SEObolt widget renders GSC's clicks / impressions / CTR / average-position stats, plus an Avg Time on Page card pulling live from GA4. If GA4 isn't connected yet, that card shows a "Connect GA4" link instead of a value.
If any of those tabs or the widget stat cards are still empty, work through the diagnostic tree at Analytics not populating. It covers the most common causes (browser blocked the OAuth callback, GSC data lag on brand-new sites, property URL mismatch, ad-blockers stripping the return URL, and rate limits).
If a tab is loading (spinner visible), wait for it to finish before flagging it as empty. GSC data has an inherent ~2-day lag, if you connected this morning, today's clicks won't be there yet. Give it 48 hours before assuming the connection isn't working on a low-traffic or brand-new site.
Troubleshooting
If you get stuck at any step, the full diagnostic guide is at Analytics not populating. Quick hits for the most common Quick Start blockers:
Stuck on Google's "Choose an account" screen
You're signed into multiple Google accounts and Google is asking which one to use. Pick the account that owns / has access to your GSC or GA4 property. If you accidentally picked the wrong one, hit the browser back button and pick again, or disconnect from Settings → Connections and restart the flow.
OAuth completed but the card still says Not connected
Your browser blocked the callback redirect from Google back to WordPress. Common causes: strict tracking-protection settings (Brave, Safari), an ad-blocker rewriting the callback URL, or a proxy stripping OAuth state parameters. Retry from a different browser (or an incognito window with the ad-blocker off), or temporarily whitelist your admin URL in your browser's tracking-protection settings.
Property picker shows no properties
The Google account you approved doesn't have access to any GSC or GA4 properties. Confirm at search.google.com/search-console and analytics.google.com that the account has at least one property listed. If you have properties but they don't appear in SEObolt's picker, disconnect and reconnect.
Data still empty after 5-10 minutes
Head to the full diagnostic tree at Analytics not populating. It walks through the ~7 most common reasons (from the ~2-day GSC lag on new sites, to property URL mismatches, to API rate limits).
What's Next
You've got the data flowing. A few natural next steps to get the most out of SEObolt:
- Run SEO Analysis on your top posts. The Site Analytics tab shows your per-post SEO score distribution, work through the "Poor" and "Fair" posts to bring them up.
- Set up email reports (Pro tier and above). SEObolt → Settings → Connections has the SEO Reports Email section where you schedule weekly or monthly summaries.
- Review the Agent Readiness scorecard on your Dashboard. It's the 2.4.168 addition covering how well your site declares itself to AI agents / crawlers, 7 signals with click-to-fix deep-links.
- Explore the module toggles. Every SEObolt feature is on / off via the Modules grid on your Dashboard. Disable ones you don't need for a leaner install.