Unlock Big Data Vibes For Small Business with Dana DiTomaso

0:00Dana DiTomasoI think it's really important to know that you need to be able to do this early on, that I think that if you're just getting into GA4, you're like crap, I haven't done this.

0:04Can I do anything about it?

0:05The best time to set up would have been at the beginning, but the next best time is right now. So don't feel like you're like, Oh, that ship has sailed, I can't go in and change things. Cause you can certainly constantly be making it better.

0:14There's no one gold standard of how to do things. There's certainly rules about GA4 that are important to follow. But what you track and what's important to you is going to be unique to you and your business and how you do things.

0:27Crystal WaddellWelcome to the third season of the Simple and Smart SEO Show. The podcast dedicated to empathy driven, brand building SEO. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence.

0:43Thank you so much for being here.

0:44Let's jump into another great

0:46So guys, we are in for a very special treat today.

0:49I love to go out and find the best at what they do. And today's guest is no exception.

0:55I've got Dana DiTomaso here with us to talk all things Google Analytics and don't be scared.

1:02I was scared, but don't be scared. It's going to be a great conversation.

1:05So Dana, welcome to the show.

1:07Dana DiTomasoThank you. And yeah, don't be scared. It's just analytics. It's really not life or death. Like we're not saving babies or launching rockets here. It's just marketing analytics.

1:14Crystal WaddellAll right. Deep breath, everybody.

1:16I have a small group where I teach entrepreneurs how to do SEO. But I think I know how people feel when they hear SEO or like search engine optimization. Cause for me, I'm like, this is amazing.

1:29But it's like the same feeling I get when I hear GA4 or Google analytics.

1:34Dana DiTomasoIn the early days, SEO was like this weird little nerd thing that you paid someone to do. And it was like, not a big part of your marketing budget.

1:40And now, entire marketing departments are built around the ideas of SEO and PPC as well.

1:47But certainly, I think PPC has always had a bit more legitimacy because it like it was a natural extension of buying things like newspaper ads and billboard ads. So the people already understood that paradigm, but for SEO was more like, you want to do what?

1:58And we have to do what? I think is because people couched it in this we're going to sprinkle some SEO fairy dust on this.

2:04And it felt very like hacker bro type, culture around it. I think there still is that part of it for sure.

The Evolution of SEOFrom Nerdy Niche to Mainstream

2:09Dana DiTomasoBut I think it's definitely become a lot more grown up and professional.

2:13And I think partly that's, why more women are entering this field because it is grown up and professional.

2:18But also I think it's because it's more accessible just generally. It used to be a lot more technical than it is now. Content did not necessarily used to be the thing.

2:27You could slap the keyword in there 10 times and you'd ranked it up.

2:30You needed to make sure the site was accessible and speed and everything else. When I still do technical audits.

2:34Even now, I've been doing technical audits for a really long time, there's still like some things that are screwed up, but the ways in which websites are screwed up, Google is a lot more forgiving now than they used to be.

2:43And so things that aren't necessarily technically perfect can still rank if other factors are at play.

2:49Including good content, good link building, which traditionally, frankly, has been, where women enter a marketing field. So that's where that intersection has come in. Yeah.

2:56Crystal WaddellSo what do you mean there? Women with link building and-

3:00Dana DiTomasoso I would say because because SEO has shifted from being strictly a bro tech SEO, feeling that women have been entering it accidentally almost being like, Oh, I didn't want to work in SEO because it's just full of dudes. But now I guess I write content for the web.

3:14So I guess I'm doing SEO, and so then it's over time. It's okay, this is actually, part of SEO.

3:19But certainly, there was a time when you would talk to. SEOs and they'd be like, Oh, content SEO isn't a real thing.

3:25Oh, sure. You're not a real SEO unless you're doing technical SEO.

3:27Whatever you have to say to make yourself feel better.

3:30Crystal WaddellThe perspective of a business owner is different, too, and like entrepreneurs. And that's my target, is entrepreneurs.

3:36Dana DiTomasoYou want to hire a professional to do a professional job. And there didn't used to necessarily pay enough professionals.

3:42Like I remember when I first had my agency back in before Kickpoint, like back in Hamilton, where I grew up.

3:48Our competitive difference was that we answered the phone when you called us. That was the level of professionalism that was required. The bar was extremely low. And now I think it's obviously a bit more than that, but there's certainly, man, just like actually being honest about results.

4:03There's a bar, not a lot of agencies necessarily get past.

4:06But I think that as the industry grows and legitimizes. Despite-

4:10you remember Brighton SEO, the jokes about the alligator parties and whatnot, right? Besides those articles, I think that it is an industry that is going in the right direction. And trying to do the right things.

4:21Crystal WaddellThe easiest and most accessible information I feel is about technical stuff.

4:26And so when you first start in SEO, it's Oh, I've got broken links or whatever. Okay. Yeah. That's important to fix. But then there's all this other list and technical.

4:33So it's Oh, then I'll just tell everybody what's wrong with their website.

4:35You know what I mean? And then you realize, Oh gosh, that doesn't actually help their business necessarily.

4:41So it's like that growth that happens. It's almost embarrassing.

4:44Dana DiTomasoAnd I think too, part of it is like this paralyzation that people have where they're like there's all these things we could do. I don't know what to do. So I'm not going to do any of them. Cause I'm stuck here.

4:51And as someone who like, like I have ADHD and certainly I'm very familiar with paralysis analysis for sure.

4:57It's an important part of my life, unfortunately. But I think part of it is like just going in there and doing stuff is really important. And it seems silly to say that, but I feel like people.

5:07Do a lot of analysis, but there's not necessarily a lot of execution. Because people are worried about doing things that will have negative impacts.

5:14Crystal WaddellYeah.

5:14Dana DiTomasoYou hear about this one story where they're like, I changed this thing.

5:16And then the whole site got de indexed.

5:18You only hear about those stories because they're rare and people talk about them.

5:21It's not necessarily what happens on the day to day basis. Most of the time you do some technical changes, things go up or down.

5:27You're like, okay that didn't work. Or that did work. And sometimes the work. It's great.

5:30Like one time we fixed canonical tags on client's website and within two weeks, their organic traffic had gone up by 50%. Great.

5:36Normally we do not get that great of technical changes.

5:39That was pretty spectacular, pretty much cemented us with the client for life.

5:42But I was honest with them. I was like, I have never seen. Recovery this good from making this kind of change before.

5:48And yeah, and it had an outsized impact. Normally it's not like that. You make a bunch of changes and slowly things improve over time.

5:54And when you look year over year, you're like, Oh yeah, great. Things are going. But that kind of rocket ship growth just doesn't happen.

6:00And that's part of it too. Is this is this work I'm doing actually meaningful? Could I just not do anything and things would still increase? Sometimes you feel like that too.

6:07Crystal WaddellYeah. Yeah. That's, Oh my gosh. That's so true. Like getting to the top and realizing, Oh gosh. All of that.

6:13Was it for what? I don't know. So.

6:15Dana DiTomasoDid I actually need to write all those blog posts? Did I actually need to stay up till 2am figuring out this thing? No, probably not.

6:19But or did you? And this is the thing we'll never really know. Yeah. We know that doing things helps more than not doing things.

6:26But that's all we got.

The Right ThingAccessibility and SEO

6:27Crystal WaddellOne thing I have come to learn, There's some things that I've heard to do that are like the right things. Whether or not they're SEO specific. Or just think about user experience for people using screen readers or whatever.

6:40There's certain things that you do that are the right thing.

6:43And eventually they do get rewarded. In one way or the other. And I'm, so I'm a big believer in that. If it's like common sense or it's the right thing, there will be a benefit.

6:53Dana DiTomasoSomething like relatively new that you know, isn't going to necessarily be an impact yet, but we're here and we're in here fixing stuff.

6:58So let's do it. So accessibility is a great example, right? Of we know that, the Americans with disabilities actually work. A lot of American clients is a big deal.

7:05People can get sued if their sites aren't accessible. Period. So it's important to do from just a we don't want to pay these enormous fines perspective.

7:12But it's also important to do from a it's just a nice thing to do perspective.

7:15And it's a nice thing to do from a people want to engage with your website in the way in which they can engage with websites perspective.

7:21And because it has those multiple positive impacts, it's a much easier thing to sell now. But normally, when we're, working with a client, like making them a new website or something, we're like, we're going to do this.

7:30And this is why. And they may not get it. But it's we're already in here. Yeah. We're just going to change this thing and FYI.

7:36And then later on, a couple of years from now, we're like, Oh, actually now this is part of the WCAG or whatever it might be.

7:41And so it's good that we did this and we don't need to go back and do it again.

7:44The client's Oh really thinking about that ahead of time. So it's a matter of how you position it, where it's we're already in here doing this.

7:49We're just going to do this anyway, because it's a nice thing to do.

7:51Or we're going to do this because we think in a couple of years, this is going to be a thing and we should just take care of it at this point.

7:56Things like schema, for example. Maybe at the moment, FAQ schema.

8:01Does that mean we're going to stop adding FAQ schema to our pages or remove it from our pages?

8:05No, because schema is good for a number of different reasons, not just Google ranking. And so by not having that super narrow focus on Google says it's not a ranking factor.

8:13So I'm going to remove my FAQ schema. That is the wrong way to approach SEO. You can't just be choosing what Google says or doesn't say because also, they say things in a very limited specific way because they don't want to obviously tell. All the secrets.

8:25There's more to SEO than just doing things to make your site rank on Google.

8:29Crystal WaddellI used to teach autistic students. And one thing I learned with them is that give one direction at a time.

8:35And even now, like when you're speaking the computer language and trying to translate or whatever. One thing at a time is so key. Otherwise it gets convoluted.

8:44Dana DiTomasoYeah. It's like that for clients too. It's it's really.

8:47This is something, too.

8:47If you're doing a technical audit or content or anything else and talking to a client about or your boss.

8:52If you go through and you're like, here's the 38 things that we found, they are just going to gloss right over and not do anything on it because it is way too much information.

8:59But instead, you got to present it as a staged, small, we're going to do this, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do this.

9:05And mark things with like urgency and timeframes. And yeah, it's more work to present your audit, but it also means it's more likely to happen.

9:12Because there's so many audits, I'm sure more audits don't get implemented that do get implemented because the default action is not to do anything.

9:18So if you're not presenting a compelling case, for that default action of inertia, then it's just not gonna happen.

9:25And you're like this client didn't go for the thing. Yeah, because you could have presented it in a different way. Or sometimes, clients just don't want to do things, which is fine.

9:31You know what, that's their prerogative.

9:33But certainly it's a lot easier to get stuff done if you're able to present it in a way that feels manageable and step by step. As opposed to, here's the 8, 000 things now grab one out of the bucket and here we go.

9:43It's not how that works.

9:45Crystal WaddellI feel so convicted right now. Because I was so proud of myself.

9:48I just sent a proposal yesterday to someone. We'd had a great conversation and I was like, this time, we're speaking specific business objectives.

9:57But I didn't add in what you said about the timeframes. Or, I did put the urgency.

10:02I put it, in order like one to five or whatever it was.

10:05But I'm just, as you're talking, I'm like, I made that so much better.

10:08Dana DiTomasoThey can still go for it though. And it's, I think that the fact that you presented it as the steps, I think is really key. And that's something, more than what we've seen in other audits.

10:16It's just, Oh, there's so many bad audits that I see that clients have sent us that other agencies have done.

10:21And they're just like exporting whatever it says in SEMrush or whatever.

10:25It's so frustrating.

10:26It's like, why am I not, why do I have so many ethics? If I had less ethics?

10:29But those kinds of audits are just like people getting money for no action. And it's also providing a disservice to the industry as a whole because they're like I had an SEO audit once. It was crap. And it's that's not representative of what you should get. Yeah. In the industry.

10:41Crystal WaddellYeah.

10:41My dad is my biggest fan. And when I showed him all these things I was learning early on.

10:45He was like, Oh my gosh, you should charge for this and this. And I'm like, dad, you don't understand like that right there.

10:50Everybody can do that.

10:51Like I just realized like everybody is doing that. Because you can just download it.

10:55It's like finding the value, like really communicating the value was so important to me. And when I realized I couldn't fully communicate the value, I couldn't sell.

11:04I couldn't sell anything until I could, like you said, ethically say this. These are the outcomes that I can, At least forecast for you that are possible versus here's just a list of things you can do and fix.

11:14Dana DiTomasoAnd there's still some clients that are going to go for, the convincing snake oil salesman for sure. That's just going to happen.

11:20Those kinds of clients, I tell people all the time, like you didn't want that client anyway, because if that's the kind of sales pitch they wanted and it isn't this kind of sales pitch you provide.

11:28Then that client wants a different experience than what you're going to provide. Because you don't provide that kind of sales pitch.

11:33They want that kind of sales pitch. They want that kind of experience where it's like all mad men and everything else.

11:38And if you're not providing that, then don't pretend that you're going to provide that in your pitch.

11:43And the same thing too, with there are agencies out there who do that and those kinds of clients can go to those agencies.

11:48And that's also a perfectly valid way to run your business.

11:50But if that's not what you do, don't try to force yourself to be that. Because there are clients who just want more chill, honest advice.

11:58From someone who's, a solo practitioner. Or a small agency. And has, it's not necessarily flashy, but just, heads down gets results.

12:06There's lots of people like that out there in the world.

12:08Crystal WaddellYeah, that's awesome. It's great to hear. So I didn't realize I know you as like a, Analytics guru,.

12:14But can you tell me about your agency?

12:16Because I didn't realize that you built websites and all the things that you've been mentioning .Please tell me all about your business.

12:22Dana DiTomasoIt's so funny. Cause it's I reinvented myself with regards to my Focus in the industry starting around 2017, which is how I got into analytics. But back to the beginning.

Dana's JourneyFrom Geography to SEO Guru

12:29Dana DiTomasoSo I early on, I have a degree in geography, which I do not use, obviously. And I was working in software, which is not a career one takes after geography.

12:38And then I got laid off and I used my layoff money to teach myself how to make websites.

12:42And I've been tinkering with websites on the side, but I actually said, there's my six month severance.

12:45It was very generous. I'm going to take this time to really learn how to make websites properly using Dreamweaver, which is what used in 2000.

12:51And and there wasn't even analytics yet. Google analytics didn't exist. Google ads, AdWords didn't exist. It wasn't a thing.

12:57There was no local, there was just like the 10 blue links that, does not exist anymore.

13:01And and that's what I did for six months. And then I got my first client.

13:04And my very first client after I launched your website said to me, okay, how do I get on Google? And I said, I do not know. I will get back to you.

13:10And then I found Rand Fishkin's blog. And. He was one of the first people I met in the field.

13:14Actually, I met him in person at SES Toronto 2004, which is not a conference that exists anymore.

13:19And Jill Whalen, who's also left the field.

13:22I won that ticket to SES Toronto from her. She was a copywriting person who I also got to know early on in SEO. And so it turns out it was way better at SEO than I was at building websites, personally.

13:32We have a team who builds websites. I'm not involved. I'm not very good at it.

13:36But back then it was like, you didn't have to, you It wasn't as hard as it is now, for sure. The complexity of websites has obviously grown exponentially since I was making little flat files in Dreamweaver.

13:44And then I focused entirely on SEO.

13:46So I had an agency in Hamilton, which I then sold when my now wife and I moved to Edmonton, freelancing for a while.

13:52And then I started Kickpoint with a business partner, Jen, in 2012.

KickpointA Full-Service Digital Agency

13:55Dana DiTomasoAnd so at Kickpoint, we started just doing SEO, but then eventually brought on designers, developers, and so now we do SEO, PPC, building websites, content, the whole shebang.

14:04We have a team of 17. So yeah.

14:07Crystal WaddellOh my gosh, that's amazing!

14:09Dana DiTomasoAnd so a couple of years ago actually more than a couple of years ago.

14:12Time has lost all meaning with COVID.

14:13But in 2020, which was more than a couple of years ago, LinkedIn learning approached me about doing a course on their platform.

14:20technical SEO. It's yeah, absolutely. Cause I, I love teaching. I was starting to do some workshops a little bit. And I started to push more into analytics, but I was still like half and a half SEO and analytics.

14:29And so I did technical SEO course. Then I did a course on transitioning from universal analytics to GA4, advanced GA4.

14:34And another course in building websites.

14:36And then from that experience we decided to launch Kickpoint Playbook. Which is the learning companion site, which is what you have the stickers for, at Brighton SEO, yeah.

14:44And so we have two courses on there. We have Analytics for Agencies and Practical GA4. And we have more courses coming out later this year and next year.

14:51And that learning platform has been really interesting.

14:54And I think it's interesting that's what people are starting to get to know me for. Like their first introduction to me.

14:59Because this was like part of the brand was, how are we going to shift from me being known as Kickpoint to me being known as like part of the playbook.

15:06But still have, the agency stuff going on. That's been an interesting, challenge for the organization. But I think, the team that built the playbook site and like the people that I work with on playbook are so good.

15:15And yeah, I'm just really proud of the work that we've done there.

15:19And we have lots of people taking our courses. And part of what makes the courses good, in my opinion, is that I have regular communication with people taking the courses. You get access to a community when you buy the course.

15:29And there's office hours for analytics for agencies, and then I can get, the questions that they get, which often turns into pieces of content that we publish or new lessons or new courses which has also been a really valuable thing as well, because then I can find out what people are really struggling with.

15:43Yeah. . Yeah.

15:44Crystal WaddellSuper smart. I think your transition and rebranding, or co-branding, I don't know exactly how you'd call that.

15:50But speaking is obviously a great way to do that because that's how I found you.

15:55Dana DiTomasoYeah. I've been speaking since my first speaking engagement was SMX West 2012.

15:59And that's actually where I met a whole bunch of people I'm still good friends with now.

16:03My conference friends.

16:04I got that conference because Matt McGee was running that particular panels on local SEO, which is what I was doing a lot of at the time.

16:10And he had Blog post on his website on how to pitch a conference.

16:14And so I was like, I wanna speak at this conference. I'm living out west, I can go to SMX West, it won't cost me a billion dollars.

16:20And I read through how to pitch .And I pitched it and it was like super detailed. And I got in, I was very stoked.

16:25But that opened so many doors, that panel.

16:28Because someone from Moz was in the audience. Then they asked me to do a webinar with them. And then they asked me to speak at MozCon.

16:32And then MozCon opened doors. So that's where that came from. And back when I was working in software, I did software training.

16:38That was my main thing. So I'd fly all over the states and train people on how to use customer relationship management software.

16:43Which no one is stoked to ever use. So that's part of where the humor comes in, is no one is ever excited, especially salespeople, to sit down and use software, right?

16:52It's not what they want to do. More than once I'd show up somewhere. And they'd be like, Oh, it was a nice day today. So the salespeople went golfing.

16:57So maybe you can just sit down with the IT people and talk to them about it. Like, all right, cool. One time the client's it's a nice day. Let's go to a Cubs game.

17:03Okay. You don't want to learn about the thing that I've flown all the way out here to teach you?

17:07Of course I'll go to the Cubs game.

17:08But it's just like people do literally anything other than learn CRM software. And so I feel like a lot of that expertise lends itself to GA4 because people will do literally anything other than learn.

17:17Crystal WaddellYeah, you're exactly right. And I'm a lifelong learner. I love to learn things.

17:21That I have honestly, as I was preparing for this, I was talking to myself about my attitude.

17:26I was like, you've got to change your attitude because if you want people to learn about SEO, you've got to figure out a way to get excited about this.

17:32So I did. But I, I am afraid a little bit that my questions might be a little elementary. Or they may not be the right questions. But I feel like you're the best person to ask.

17:43Dana DiTomasoThere's something you forget after you've been doing this for awhile. Everybody's entering the industry at this moment.

17:47There's always someone new coming in and there's always someone who's leaving. And so I think it's important to not be like, Oh, everyone should know this by now.

17:54Because definitely not everyone knows this, by now.

17:57And there's still things in GA four to even though I am an expert at GA four, there are still things that I'm like, Oh, really, that's a setting? Or this is a thing that's going on?

18:04Because it's such a complex piece of software with lots of moving parts and lots of changes happening all the time.

18:10No one person can know absolutely everything.

18:12Crystal WaddellOkay. And I'm glad you said that because even for my small group, I always try to say, Hey, how can we get to where we're trying to get to the fastest?

18:21And we don't have to know everything about everything.

18:23We just need to know the most important pieces.

18:25So Like just from an overview perspective, why is it important like for an entrepreneur or small business to have some GA-4 knowledge or implementation in their business?

18:37Dana DiTomasoYeah, I think it's really critical because otherwise you're not going to know how your marketing efforts are going.

18:42And I think that's a really fundamental thing is you're spending money on either ads. Or, you've spent money as an effort on SEO.

18:50You've spent resources in some way to market yourself. You want to know how those ways are paying off. And I think it is difficult to just open up GA4 and go in there and be like, Oh yes, this is making money.

19:00GA-4 has a lot more options than it used to with universal analytics. You get more events out of the gate.

19:05It tracks some form fills, not necessarily well, but it tracks something. It'll track video plays of YouTube videos. Cause there's no other video platform other than YouTube, right?

19:13It tracks many scroll depth, right? That it tracks like file downloads and external links. All things we would have had to set up separately in universal analytics.

19:20So I'm happy that it tracks that stuff by default. But it also requires a bit of preparation times. It's what is a key event?

19:26If I want to look at this extra piece of data that I'm looking at in GA4, it's not available everywhere. I have to register it as custom dimension or custom metric.

19:34You got to do that in advance because it's not going to backdate.

19:36You want to create an audience of people you want to remarket to in ads, you got to create that audience right away because it's not going to backdate, right?

19:42So there's lots of things that you need to do planning wise. I think it's really important to know that you need to be able to do this early on, that I think that if you're just getting into GA4, you're like crap, I haven't done this.

19:50Can I do anything about it?

19:51The best time to set up would have been at the beginning, but the next best time is right now. So don't feel like you're like, Oh, that ship has sailed, I can't go in and change things. Cause you can certainly constantly be making it better.

20:00There's no one gold standard of how to do things. There's certainly rules about GA4 that are important to follow. But what you track and what's important to you is going to be unique to you and your business and how you do things.

20:13So if you don't sell stuff online, do you need those monetization reports? Nope. Just remove them from the navigation.

20:18You don't need revenue in every single report because you don't have revenue online. People fill out a form. They go with you or they don't go with you.

20:25Are there ways that you can push that revenue data back into GA4 once someone signs up with you?

20:29Yeah, for sure. Is that accessible for many small businesses? No, absolutely not. And so it's a matter of thinking about these are what's possible, but also what's the scale of my implementation according to the scale of my business?

20:41Crystal WaddellYeah.

20:41Dana DiTomasoAnd I think that's where GA4 really is a struggle because it is more built for analysts than normal human beings, unfortunately.

20:48Crystal WaddellI actually feel really good about that. That makes me feel really good about myself as just a normal human being.

20:53Dana DiTomasoHonestly it's a great, it is a huge improvement over universal analytics in terms of how it captures data. The way the data model works in GA4 is significantly better.

21:03There's been some really smart choices made on how things like engage sessions.

21:07Huge, massive improvement. Like bounce rate on universe analytics was total BS. No one should have put any stock in it at all. It was never measuring what you thought it was measuring.

21:14Engagement rate in GA4 is better because it measures by default. If someone has kept the active tab as their open tab for at least 10 seconds, they've gone to a second page or they've converted.

21:24Those are all engaged things. So you can tell the quality of your traffic by the percentage of engaged sessions that come in from that channel.

21:30That report alone is a really useful thing to look at. But then once you start to get deeper into it and you're like this percentage of sessions was percent engaged and this was 80 percent engaged.

21:40That's a pretty clear thing. But it's this is 68%. This is 67%. That 1 percent is meaningless.

21:45You're really looking again at directional trends.

21:47What are the big swings that are happening?

21:49And we've seen this too, with like where people buy ads, say on third party websites, and then the engagement rate from those ad clicks is like 20%.

21:55That's bots. It's just bots coming to your website. You should shut off those ads, right?

21:58That's one of the things where engaged sessions really shines.

22:01Crystal WaddellAnd that was one of my questions.

22:02Let's say like through a Shopify traffic report.

22:05And it's impacting like the conversion rate of all these visitors. That don't seem to be actual visitors.

22:11And I installed Microsoft Clarity and it was excluding-

22:15Dana DiTomasogreat product and not used enough.

22:17Crystal WaddellOkay, awesome. I had Celeste Gonzalez on a few weeks ago and she came and gave us a lesson. Yeah. Yeah.

22:23But it showed like an exclusion of traffic and I was like, this is great. I'm looking for this. Like, how do I get that data?

22:29Because I felt like my data was dirty. Like it, there wasn't an accurate representation of the actual people who were coming. And the actual people that we're converting.

22:38I wanted to know that number. It's like how do you clean your data?

22:42Dana DiTomasoAnd the thing is, you're never going to actually know that number, but it's never going to be a number.

22:46And this is where, again, like that post I shared with you.

22:49One of the things we're really trying to do is de emphasize the actual numbers and instead focus on percentage relative to each other.

22:55So let's say, for example, you're looking at like sessions and key events by landing page. And you know that one landing page gets 26 percent of the sessions overall.

23:03And 5 percent of the key events. Hey, you know what that page might be, we can do a better job of converting it. But if I say that this landing page got 1500 sessions and eight key events, are you like, what?

23:13Is that good or bad?

23:15But if I tell you those percentages where it's 26 percent of the sessions and 5 percent of the key events, that's much, much clearer.

23:20Basically I call it the punching above and below your weight. And so I think that's where changing the types of reports you provide to think about it in those percentages, which you can't actually do, unfortunately, within GA4.

23:30You have to use a tool like Looker Studio to provide that kind of information. But I think that, especially when you're talking to like clients, is a much better way to present that data.

23:39Because it de emphasizes the actual numbers and instead emphasizes the directionality of the data. Does this page do better or worse than this?

23:47Is organic traffic increasing or decreasing, right?

23:50If people watch this video, does it help them buy something? Those are the kinds of things where you don't need to know the number of people, you just need to know the percentages.

23:57That's where if you focus on the percentages over the actual values, you can make much better decisions because then you're not over focusing on the actual numbers and losing your way in the, yeah, this says I had 10 sales, but I have 20 in Shopify.

24:08What's going on? Ad blockers, probably.

24:10You can't do much about that unless you want to get into an expensive world of server side tracking.

24:14So instead, let's focus on the data that we do have and parsing that.

24:18Crystal WaddellSo that, that brings up another question of, say Apple.

24:21When they implemented those privacy changes. How did that impact the data that is picked up by something like Google Analytics.

24:28Dana DiTomasoSo what happens in Safari and also Firefox as well as the technology called ITP, intelligent tracking prevention. And so every seven days, any third party tracking cookies, and sometimes after one day in some cases, but most of them in seven days.

24:42Your cookies are cleared.

24:43So I come to your website today and then say I'm using Safari. And I come back to your website 10 days later, I'm going to look like a brand new person in GA as far as that is concerned.

24:52Because my cookies are gone.

24:54So your GA4 account has no idea that I was on the site before, because There's no cookies to show that evidence because this cookie has been wiped.

25:00The number of new users is going to look significantly higher for Safari visitors, potentially. Depending upon how often they come to your website.

25:07And this is really only necessarily a problem though, where you have people like coming to your website lots of times before they decide if they're going to go with you or not.

25:14Which is, may not Depending upon what you sell may or may not be a problem. If you're selling t shirts, people are going to decide or they're not, right?

25:20If you're selling boats, yeah, there might be, a few visits before they go ahead and do a purchase. And even for us, for example, like selling courses, people make lots of visits before they go ahead and purchase.

25:29And certainly, there's some data that we can do.

25:31If you join our mailing list, I can save a cookie. That's independent of the GA cookie, which sometimes will persist. And then I can actually know that you're you when you come back again later.

25:40Or if you come to our website via our email newsletter, then I know your subscriber ID, and then I can tie that to your sessions as well.

25:46But like a lot that requires advanced analytics set up. And a lot of that is not accessible to a lot of people. And a lot of people don't necessarily have those kinds of newsletter signups. Maybe. People call you. Especially small business clients.

25:57Most of the time it's the phone. And that is just yeah, I know they called me, but that maybe they never went to my website.

26:03Maybe they've never been cookied.

26:04Maybe they called me directly from the Google business profile listing. And so it's I can't do much with this person. It was a retargeting remarketing.

26:11Crystal WaddellLet me go back to that very beginning piece then. So regardless of what you, what'd you call that? ITP?

26:18Dana DiTomasoITP is what the technology is called..

26:19Crystal WaddellOkay. They still are cookied for seven days at least?

26:23Dana DiTomasoYeah.

26:24Crystal WaddellOkay. That's good to know because I didn't realize that.

26:26And I fall in that category of people coming back to my site multiple times.

26:31Number one, because a lot of times they come when they're looking for ideas. And I sell a fairly expensive product.

26:36So they don't usually pull the trigger right away. Sometimes they do, but I've had Shopify data. I don't know whether it's true or not! But this is what Shopify told me.

26:43That maybe they might come back like seven or eight times over a 21, 31 day period.

26:49Dana DiTomasoAnd those probably seven or eight times they might be, if they come back every six days.

26:54Then the cookie will refresh and start at zero again. So then you'd be okay for another seven days. It's not seven days, period.

26:59If I come to your website six days, now I'm back at day one again.

27:02And then I come to your website, technically twelve days after my first visit, but six days after my last one, the cookie resets to one again.

27:09But most of the time too it's looking at your browsers and seeing, what are people using when they access my website?

27:13If they're using mostly Chrome, probably well, okay in terms of, first visit tracking. But if you're using Safari, just maybe don't look at that for multi touch.

27:22Crystal WaddellWhat about like creating a specific key event? Is that what I would need to do to be able to track those say, Safari users?

27:30Dana DiTomasoNope. Nope. Key events are just like X events that you've promoted into being something, used to be called a conversion. Okay.

27:36So in that case, I would make a segment.

27:39Yeah, you can make a comparison now, a saved comparison. And so make a comparison of Safari users and of Chrome users and just see if the relative percentage of Safari users who are first visitors and Chrome users who are first visitors.

27:51Because first visit is an event that is captured in GA4.

27:54So just, yeah. See if if you have a lot more proportionally first visits with Safari.

27:59And then you would know if that ITP issue is causing problems or not.

28:03Crystal WaddellWhat if you people visited your site and then you wanted to retarget them with ads?

28:08What's that called?

28:09Dana DiTomasoSo any retargeting cookie if you're using Google ads, for example, that's a first party cookie.

28:13So it's, you can do that.

28:15But something to keep in mind is if you are targeting people in Europe, there are privacy and California as well has some consent management stuff going on.

28:22So it's where you probably will need some sort of consent management product and not being a privacy expert.

28:28I'm not going to speak too deeply on the ins and outs of that.

28:30If you're not sending any consent signals at all, which some people do, it just means that people aren't going to show up in your remarketing audiences. If they're located in the European economic area, they just won't exist.

28:40So you could see a difference in size between your audience and GA4 and your audience and Google ads.

28:44There's other reasons why the would differ, but that's a major.

28:47But besides consent, if someone comes on your website and you've built an audience in GA4, you want to use that audience for remarketing and Google ads, then that's how that's built in. It's through the Google GA4 first party cookie.

28:58But if you're using like a third party advertising network.

29:02Like Taboola or like those kinds of third party tools.

29:04They track you across different websites and they may not be able to track you as well as they used to on Safari. Now we know that Google has said we're not going to get rid of third party cookies at all anymore.

29:13Yeah, we were joking, lol. Honestly, the way it was going so badly, I wondered if they were going to get rid of saying that.

29:18People were very excited when they said, Oh, they're going to keep third party cookies, but it still doesn't change the fact that third party cookies have been gone from Safari for years now.

29:26So you're already missing out on that audience if you rely on third party cookies, but.

29:30Cookies like GA for Google ads, they are first party cookies. And so if you're remarketing to people who have been on your website and did, or didn't do certain things, or just generally have been on your website, That's fine.

29:41That isn't necessarily impacted by that.

29:43Crystal WaddellI didn't realize that about Safari, but was that like back when the whole Facebook issue happened?

29:52All right. So that makes sense now. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs I've said this for a long time, when they build a website, they think SEO is built in.

30:00And I now feel their pain because I thought once you're using Google, that these audiences. We're built in. It's all Oh my gosh, I got to go back.

30:10And that's my number one thing that I've already taken away from today. I do an episode called follow through Fridays after I interview an expert. And that is the first thing I'm going to do is set up those audiences. Cause I thought that was an automatic thing.

30:24Dana DiTomasoOh yeah. So a good audience to set up would be people who have converted.

30:28And so anyone who's had a key event. Another good audience would be people who've never. People who have, for example, I looked at a really critical page, looked at your purchase, the product page, but never actually had a purchase event, for example.

30:39That's a good remarketing audience. And I think exclusions are just as important as inclusions when it comes to any audience.

30:44You're going to use for marketing cause you don't want to waste money on people who've already bought the thing.

30:48For example, on kick point playbook, if you come and check out or course page, you add it to your cart, we don't see a purchase event.

30:55That doesn't necessarily mean you didn't purchase on another device.

30:58Totally possible that you did. So one of our exclusions is that you actually saw the behind, behind the login pages. And then we would exclude you from the audience.

31:06But you could still be on your phone and maybe you only use your desktop to access courses. And on your phone, you just read blog posts and you could see a remarketing audience on your phone.

31:14It's there's not much I can do about that.

31:16There's only so many ways I can try to exclude people out of here.

31:18And not being an ads expert, there's like extra stuff you can do with email addresses and everything.

31:22But that requires you to like opt into Google tracking you by your email address, which not necessarily everybody does.

31:28So it's just exclusions aren't perfect. But even though they're not perfect, you should still set them up for sure.

31:33Crystal WaddellYeah. And I feel like with Shopify and GA4, I may be wrong, but it felt like they set up some preexisting events.

31:41And maybe some stuff came over from Universal analytics that I'd signed up for a long time ago.

31:46But one of the things I really, I thought G4 was cool because it would show you like, these are the touch points that your user has taken or, and this is, yeah.

31:55Dana DiTomasoYeah. And that is valuable data. And it's based on the, people engaging with you.

31:59And one of the things that Shopify does well is, and we have a few clients using Shopify as well, and they do set up events really well for e commerce. For a long time, Shopify.

32:08Shopify didn't add GA4 until way too late in the process. Yeah, that was like, time's a ticking, guys. You got to add GA4 on here. This is wild.

32:17So we had some sort of hybrid implementations where we're using Google Tag Manager to push GA4 into a Shopify website.

32:23Until they got their poop in a group to fix that up.

32:25But they finally got there, it's great. Do I have a full year of comparison data for some people? Like barely, but it's better than nothing.

32:33Yeah, I would find that with Shopify, they did implement the GA4 eCommerce data layer.

32:37And that's another thing actually that's great about GA4 is that the e commerce implementation is also significantly better than it was in Universal Analytics.

32:44It was bolted on in Universal Analytics after the fact.

32:47And if listeners aren't familiar with the history of Universal Analytics and how we got here, if you don't mind, I can go into it.

32:51Crystal WaddellPlease, let's go.

32:53Dana DiTomasoUniversal Analytics, it was originally called Urchin Analytics, which is why the code starts with UA dash.

32:58And then Google bought Urchin in 2004. And that's why it's a UTM parameter. Cause it was urchin tracking module was the name of that parameter.

33:05So that's a fun fact you can tell at parties.

33:07Crystal WaddellYeah. I always thought it was something with universal or something like that.

33:11I never knew what it is.

33:12Dana DiTomasoAnd I think that's why they called it universal analytics. Cause originally it was just Google analytics.

33:16And then when they made the switch to how the tracking code worked which was about 2009, I think.

33:21Then they called the original classic analytics and then they switched to universal analytics.

33:25And so really, GA as a tool broke when we got tabs. Because so much of how GA worked was that it was following you from page to page, but now you could open something in a new tab.

33:36Now you could keep tabs open for weeks. And a lot of those things really broke how UA worked.

33:42So one common example I would tell people is, let's say you had a tab open on your browser for, months, which people do all the time.

33:48And, In Universal Analytics, every time your browser would become active again, it would send a zero second page view off to Universal Analytics.

33:56And it would, so you would have these sessions that would show up and it would look like a real page view. But if you looked at the duration of the page, it would be zero seconds.

34:03And that would even happen if I was on my phone and I'm looking, I have an Android device. I'm looking at the Chrome tab list and I just scroll past it.

34:10It would also send a zero second page view in some cases. Even though I didn't engage with the tab in any way, it just flashed by as I scrolled through my list of tabs.

34:17Doesn't matter. One of the things that GA4 does is it doesn't have that problem anymore.

34:22So now, the tab hoarders, you'll still see again normally a tab hoarder problem. And this is what the not set issue in GA4 comes from.

34:31So let's say you're like halfway through my blog post, you go and have lunch.

34:35And then you come back again, you start scrolling. I'm tracking. 100 percent scroll depth, as well as every image that you view. So let's say you view an image, but you haven't reloaded the page.

34:45You haven't started a session as far as GA4 is concerned. So there's no landing page that shows up as not set.

34:51There's no source medium because the session didn't start. It shows up as not set. It's just this random event that's not attached to a session at all.

34:57And so that's where not set was coming from, is those sessions that sort of started after a timeout happened, but you didn't close the tab or. You don't reload it in any way when you came back to restart your session.

35:08Apparently now, I think, was it Friday, last Friday, GA4 just casually mentioned, Hey, we're doing this thing to fix not set. I don't know if it's going to work or not. We'll see. But they are trying to solve that problem.

35:18So that's. That's nice because it shouldn't be not set. I get what the problem is.

35:22The problem is they have an event that didn't have a session start event before it. So they have no session to attach it to.

35:27But you should still be able to pull something from the cookie to realize that someone has timed out and they're starting again.

35:32That's what GA4 is doing, but that's it.

35:34That's why you would see not set data show up in your session, your traffic acquisition, but you wouldn't see it in your user acquisition report.

35:40So it's the first way people got to the website, but your session, your traffic acquisition report is how people got to the site in that particular session.

35:47And a lot of times it would be that they just left a tab open and then came back to it later.

35:51Crystal WaddellSo what about the direct? I'd heard that people that's Oh, when they type in your domain, but then I also heard that it's like when they can't figure out what it is. Yes. Is that true?

36:02Dana DiTomasoYeah, that's totally true.

36:03So when GA4 is making a guess on where people came from, they're looking at something called the referrer of the page. So if you say, Google something. You click on a Google result, you go to the website.

36:15Google will say in the referrer that it's google. com. No, they could say the entire URL, they could say it's google.

36:21com slash your search, but they don't include that anymore because it's up to the originating website to decide what refer information they're going to push to the destination website.

36:29So some social networks, for example Mastodon, which people were using for a hot minute. They don't include any refer information.

36:35in links at all. So that would show up as direct because Mastodon has made the active choice to exclude that referrer information.

36:42If you click on a link from an app and that link was not UTM'd, it's very likely it's going to show up as direct because there is no referrer website. Because it's a link from an app.

36:51There's no URL to show up as the referrer. So that's where those things, direct traffic come in. So direct traffic is also if somebody clicked on a link from- this used to be more of a problem when we switched originally, but we had a lot more non secure websites before HTTPS was really forced on all websites.

37:07But originally it would be, if you clicked on a link on an insecure website and went to a secure website. The referring information would also be stripped.

37:13Nobody else would show up as direct. So there's lots of reasons why direct traffic.

37:17And it could also be that someone has had your website open for so long that it's outside the 90 day acquisition window.

37:23And so because that 90 days is up now, they don't know how you got there because your 90 days of where you originally got to the site is just you've had this tab open for six months.

37:31You come back to six months later, your 90 day acquisition window has timed out. Now you're showing up as direct.

37:35Totally possible as well.

37:37Crystal WaddellIt cracks me up because sometimes I describe like just SEO in general, like you have your house and all of a sudden people are coming through windows and it's like, how the crap did you get in here?

37:46Dana DiTomasoOr someone's in your living room and you're like, Oh, I've just been sleeping here for six months.

37:49You didn't know?

37:50Crystal WaddellExactly. Exactly!

37:51Dana DiTomasoAnd GA4 is just making a guess on where traffic goes based on that refer. So going back to the Google example, if you Google something, you click on a website to go there. GA4, we'll look at the year.

38:00I don't see a G click ID in the URL, and there's no UTM parameters, so it must be organic.

38:07But if somebody then Google something clicks in an ad, then Google will see it's from google. com.

38:12And GA4 will see it's from google. com and they will see that there's a G Click ID.

38:16Because that's the ID that comes along with a Google ad, and they'll say, Oh, it must be paid.

38:20Great.

38:20Or you include a UTM.

38:22And if there's a UTM, then Google will say, I'm going to ignore everything it says from the referrer. Doesn't matter at all. I'm only going to go off of what's in the UTM. And so that's really how that, and that's how you can do things.

38:33If you have Google my business traffic, while UTM in your links is really important because otherwise they'll just show up as organic traffic.

38:40Unless you add UTMs to it to show that it's specifically from Google business profiles is what it's called.

38:44Crystal WaddellWhere do you add UTM parameters for Google business profile?

38:47Dana DiTomasoIn the website link.

38:49Crystal WaddellOh, okay. Gosh. And it's all of that a manual process?

38:53Dana DiTomasoYeah, it is. Yeah. Oh, yes. Then you can also, if you've added UTM parameters to your website link on your Google business profile, then you can also look in search console and see how often your Google business profile shows up because those UTMs will come up in the landing pages shown to you in Google search console.

39:11So it's important for a couple of different reasons.

39:13Crystal WaddellYeah, oh my goodness. I've gotten a lot of referral traffic from Pinterest. And I can totally see where all of these discrepancies are happening. Because I'm close to my people. I talked to them, so I know exactly where they come from. So when I get the little report of like from Shopify, it says, this is where they came from.

39:30I'm like no, that's not, or at least that's where they remember.

39:33Dana DiTomasoThey're just going off of what the referrer is. So if the referrer is Pinterest, like you could have put all these UTMs on a link. But then somebody would, strip them, for example, because they know marketing. They're like, I'm not going to include these UTMs.

39:44I'm just going to send it to my friend.

39:45And like the example I have in the blog post is I was booking a pest control service for our house. We live in an area of the world where you have to spray for ants every year or they take over.

39:53And so we need a new pest control company. And so I Googled a bunch of options.

39:56I clicked on the website link. They had UTMs. On their website link and Google business profile. It's great. But then I took the link without the UTMs and texted it to my wife so that she could book it. Cause she was going to be home when they were going to come here. And I was not. And she clicked on the link from the text message and then booked the service.

40:12So when I sent that to her in a text message, it showed up as direct because I didn't include UTMs with that link. And. Because there's no refer website. It's a link from a text message or from Slack or from a, Facebook messenger or whatever it might be. If there's no UTMs, Google has no idea where this person is coming from.

40:29Crystal WaddellSo how does that impact like overall marketing then? Because I've heard there's this battle in larger companies about who gets the attribution. What does that mean?

40:39Dana DiTomasoYeah, there's certainly things you can do if it's a huge enough of a portion of your traffic, you can try to recapture it.

40:44With Google Discover, for example.

40:46The way it shows up is like a special weird com. android URL thing. And you can grab that and do something with it. But again, like if you're not getting enough of that traffic doesn't make it worthwhile.

40:55In a big company, it's probably worthwhile to put those extra checks in.

40:59And there might be some stuff that you can maybe, sniff behind the scenes.

41:02But the reality is like a lot of the time you don't actually know. Unless it's a specific landing page that you know, the only shared on this one channel. And then maybe, let's say you got a QR code and the QR code goes to a specific landing page.

41:14That page is not indexed on Google.

41:16But you forgot to add UTMs to your QR code. So you would know that people came to this page are from whatever wherever you shared the QR code, there's no UTM. So they're gonna show up as direct in GA4, you would just know that's originally where they came from.

41:30If you added UTMs to that URL for the QR code, then yeah, you would have them in the correct channel and everything else in GA4.

41:37But it's just like one simple thing that you forgot to do. And then all of a sudden, everything's showing up as direct.

41:41Crystal WaddellWow. Okay. I know we have to close this down.

41:44I have to follow up with that just real quick because the QR code then is, say you had a product that you wanted to advertise or that you just wanted to have a post. You either got to start with a UTM code attached to that post? Or you have to have separate landing pages for it?

42:00And if you had separate landing pages for it, is that then duplicate content?

42:05Dana DiTomasoSo one of the other things you can do as well. And actually there's a free course I have on bright local about GA4 and actually go through this process in that course.

42:13If people are interested in checking that out, just Google GA4 essentials, bright local, it'll come up for you.

42:18But one of the things I talk about is one of the things we add is often redirect.

42:22So we'll have a URL that's like your site. com slash, ant removal service, for example. And then when you put out a flyer, you have the URL of your site. com slash ant removal service.

42:32And then when people visit that URL, you then redirect your ant removal service page with UTM parameters appended.

42:38Cause you know, the only people who came to the ant removal service URL are people who saw that URL in your flyer. So that is another way to do that as well.

42:44And I go through exactly how to do that in WordPress. But there's lots of different like Wix has redirects, Shopify has redirects.

42:50So any redirect tool, just put in what your URL, That you're going to publish out in the world is.

42:55And then you would redirect that to your actual URL with the UTM parameters appended, which is a nice way to get multiple sort of vanity URLs out there in the world, but not need to worry about people like typing in UTM parameters.

43:06Cause literally no one's ever going to do that.

43:08Crystal WaddellYeah, that is so genius. And it's so applicable to e commerce. Because a lot of times like this is great for, blog sites or service sites.

43:16The best advice I've ever heard to do that for e commerce. Because I was trying to figure out how do you do that with product pages?

43:23Dana DiTomasoYeah, and same thing with QR codes too. Make sure you're always UTMing those URLs from QR codes.

43:29Cause maybe they'll remove the UTMs later, but at least you got them when they first come to the website.

43:33And it's less obvious that there are UTM codes on a mobile browser. Which is how people are using QR codes anyway. So they wouldn't necessarily realize the UTMs are there and hopefully we'll just pass on the URL to a friend with the UTMs appended.

43:46Crystal WaddellYeah, I, I'm thinking about my own behavior and I've done that before.

43:50Where can people learn more about these courses and specifically like an entrepreneur, like the, my small group entrepreneur group, what would be the most beneficial? Type of product that you have for them.

44:02Can we start with that?

44:03Dana DiTomasoOh yeah, absolutely. So, website is KP playbook. com. Or Google kick point playbook or Google me, Dana DiTomaso.

44:10There's many different ways you can spell my last name. Most of them will get to me. There's only other one other Dana DiTomaso in the world. She's in Pueblo. If you want to swing by and say hi.

44:18But the course for entrepreneurs, I would say the best one is Practical GA4, which is focused strictly on GA4.

44:24I assume in this course that you don't have tag manager, any other advanced stuff running, you're just using GA4.

44:30And so it goes through GA4 from start to finish. But I also have this whole how to section on how to do common use cases. Like I want to know how many people click on this specific button. I show you how to do that just with GA4, no GTM.

44:42So I think that's really accessible for people who are like, I just need to know analytics. I don't need to worry about all this other nerd stuff. I don't want to learn JavaScript. I don't want to get into the coding of it.

44:50Then Practical GA4 is the course for you.

44:52Crystal WaddellOkay. Awesome. Yeah. Cause I think most people and myself included, we're using CMSs like Shopify or Wix.

44:59And so that coding, we're just, we pass that off. And we're hoping just to

45:04come in and do our thing. Yeah.

45:05Dana DiTomasoYeah. And for that course too, I'll give you a 20 percent off code that you can include in the show notes as well.

45:10Crystal WaddellYeah, thanks Dana! I appreciate that. Awesome sauce.

45:13Okay guys. I know today, this was a big one. But I can't wait to hear your thoughts.

45:17Remember, you can drop me a text message.

45:19The link to send me a text is in the show notes, and then you can also search the show.

45:24If you heard something that you love, just go click that search the show link.

45:28And then, search whatever term you heard today and it will pop up. Right up there for you just to learn more. Dana, thank you again for being here with us.

45:36And I hope to see you in November in San Diego. Yay.

45:40Dana DiTomasoYou will. I'm doing a full day workshop on Google on Looker Studio and reporting, and then I'm going to be giving a session as well.

45:47Crystal WaddellI should probably be at that workshop. Yeah, I should probably be there.

45:50But thanks for being on the show. And guys, I will catch you next week.