SEO Monitoring Tools for Nuxt Sites

Once your Nuxt site is live, you need data. Traffic numbers, keyword rankings, and technical issues don't surface themselves—you track them with the right tools.

Start with Free Tools

Google Search Console

Search Console shows you what Google sees. Add your property, verify ownership, submit your sitemap, and check back in 48 hours.

Track these metrics:

• Impressions - How many times your pages appeared in search
• Clicks - Actual traffic from Google
• Average position - Where you rank for queries
• Coverage errors - Pages Google can't index

Check the Performance report weekly. Sort by pages with high impressions but low clicks—these need better titles or descriptions.

GA4 for Organic Traffic

Google Analytics 4 tracks user behavior and traffic sources. The advantage with Nuxt: SSR means initial pageviews work out of the box, but client-side navigation still needs tracking.

Setup with Nuxt

Add the GA4 script to your app.head in nuxt.config.ts with send_page_view: false to prevent double-tracking:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  app: {
    head: {
      script: [
        {
          src: 'https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XXXXXXXXXX',
          async: true
        },
        {
          innerHTML: `
            window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
            function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
            gtag('js', new Date());
            gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX', { send_page_view: false });
          `
        }
      ]
    }
  }
})

Track route changes with a plugin:

// plugins/analytics.client.ts
export default defineNuxtPlugin(() => {
  const router = useRouter()

  router.afterEach((to) => {
    gtag('config', 'GA_MEASUREMENT_ID', {
      page_path: to.fullPath
    })
  })
})

Track Organic Traffic

Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition in GA4. Filter by sessionDefaultChannelGroup == Organic Search to see your Google traffic.

Link GA4 to Search Console for keyword data. Navigate to Admin > Property Settings > Product links > Search Console links. Data appears 48 hours after linking.

Privacy-Focused Alternatives

GA4 requires cookie banners in the EU and collects more data than most sites need. Three alternatives give you clean analytics without privacy headaches.

Plausible

Plausible is lightweight (under 1KB script) and GDPR-compliant without cookies. No cookie banner needed.

Add the script to your nuxt.config.ts:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  app: {
    head: {
      script: [
        {
          'defer': true,
          'data-domain': 'yourdomain.com',
          'src': 'https://plausible.io/js/script.js'
        }
      ]
    }
  }
})

Plausible automatically tracks single-page applications using the History API—works seamlessly with Nuxt's client-side navigation.

Dashboard shows:

• Real-time visitors
• Top pages and sources
• Referrers and countries
• Bounce rate and time on page

Pricing starts at $9/month for 10k monthly pageviews. Self-hosted version is free.

Fathom

Fathom focuses on simplicity. No cookies, GDPR-compliant, Canadian company with strong privacy stance.

Install via nuxt.config.ts:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  app: {
    head: {
      script: [
        {
          'src': 'https://cdn.usefathom.com/script.js',
          'data-site': 'ABCDEFG',
          'defer': true
        }
      ]
    }
  }
})

Fathom tracks SPAs automatically. Dashboard is cleaner than GA4—fewer metrics, faster insights.

Starts at $15/month for 100k pageviews. No free tier, but 30-day free trial available.

Umami

Umami is open-source and self-hosted. Free if you run it yourself, or $9/month for cloud hosting.

Deploy on Vercel/Railway, add the tracking code:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  app: {
    head: {
      script: [
        {
          'defer': true,
          'src': 'https://analytics.umami.is/script.js',
          'data-website-id': 'your-id'
        }
      ]
    }
  }
})

SPA tracking works out of the box. Umami's Vue integration lets you track custom events:

// Track button clicks
umami.track('signup_button_clicked')

Best choice if you want full data ownership and don't mind managing infrastructure.

Paid Tools (When You Need More)

Free tools show what's happening. Paid tools show why and what to do about it.

When to Upgrade

Upgrade when you hit these signals:

• Traffic plateaus after 6 months
• Competitors outrank you for target keywords
• You need backlink data to build authority
• Manual SEO audits take too long

Don't pay for tools on day one. Start with Search Console and free analytics. Upgrade when revenue justifies it—blog earning $500/month can justify $100/month tools.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs excels at backlink analysis and keyword research. Use it to:

• Find who links to competitors
• Track keyword rankings daily
• Discover content gaps
• Run site audits for technical issues

Rank Tracker shows click potential—how many actual clicks a keyword generates after SERP features take their share. More useful than search volume alone.

Ahrefs doesn't provide daily ranking updates by default—manual refreshes cost credits. Still worth it for backlink database, the largest in the industry.

Starts at $129/month (Lite plan). Use the $7 7-day trial first.

SEMrush

SEMrush is better for full campaign tracking. It sends daily ranking updates via email and includes:

• Position tracking for 500 keywords (Pro plan)
• PPC competitor analysis
• Local rank tracking with heatmaps
• Content marketing toolkit

SEMrush's Map Rank Tracker beats Ahrefs for local SEO—see how you rank across cities, not just countries.

Better value than Ahrefs if you need PPC data or manage multiple locations. Starts at $139.95/month.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog crawls your site like Googlebot. Find broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, and redirect chains.

Free up to 500 URLs. Paid version ($259/year) crawls unlimited URLs and integrates with GA4 and Search Console.

Run audits monthly. Fix issues before Google does.

What to Track Weekly

Monitor these metrics every Monday:

From Search Console:

• Total clicks (is traffic growing?)
• Coverage errors (new indexing issues?)
• Core Web Vitals (any pages failing?)

From GA4 or Plausible:

• Organic sessions (week-over-week change)
• Top landing pages (which content performs?)
• Bounce rate (are users finding what they need?)

From Ahrefs/SEMrush (if paid):

• Keyword rankings (any big drops?)
• New backlinks (who linked to you?)
• Competitor rankings (are they gaining ground?)

Don't obsess over daily fluctuations. Rankings shift constantly—weekly trends matter more.

Setting Up Alerts

Alerts catch problems before you lose traffic.

Search Console Alerts

Search Console emails you automatically for:

• Manual actions (penalties)
• Security issues (hacked site)
• Critical coverage errors

Add team members in Settings > Users and permissions so they get alerts too.

GA4 Custom Alerts

Create alerts for traffic drops. Go to Admin > Custom insights and set conditions:

• If Sessions from Organic Search decreases by 30% week-over-week, send email
• If Conversions drops by 50%, alert immediately

Catch issues the day they happen, not two weeks later.

Uptime Monitoring

If your site goes down, Search Console won't tell you. Use UptimeRobot (free) or Pingdom to check every 5 minutes. Get SMS alerts when your site breaks.