When your website loading speed is slow, your page load times can affect every metric that matters to you.

Gone are the days of dial-up Internet when the average load time for a page was eight seconds. That might not seem like a lot, but for visitors to your site, it can feel like an eternity.

Consider that in an age where our time and attention is limited, users are less likely to bounce from websites that load quickly. No matter what kind of content your website serves, — e-commerce, informational, SaaS, etc.— its success is affected by site speed.

In this article, we cover how to tell if your website is just too slow.

Why You Should Care About Website Loading Speed

Site speed matters because a faster website makes you more money.

As mobile technology and Internet connections continue to improve, the average person browsing the Internet has high expectations for load speed.

A Note About U.S. vs. Global Site Speeds

If the majority of your prospects and customers reside within the contiguous United States (excluding Hawaii and Alaska), load times will generally be consistent. However, a lot can impact someone’s load times, including their connection speed (cable, mobile data, fiber optics, etc.), distance from servers, the capacity of your hosting, and more. For smaller businesses, it is important to fully vet your hosting situation’s details, such as location. Here’s a list of hosting solutions for small businesses that might be helpful to begin your journey.

More importantly, your site speeds will vary across the world. If you’re in the U.S. and serve people all over the world, you need to assume that their load time, depending on location, is going to be much longer than you see at home.

Most often, think of  Africa and many parts of Asia. Internet is slower in many of these places and a large number of users are accessing the web via their mobile devices. If you have ever spent extended periods in an area with less than ideal data coverage, you’ve probably noticed that download speeds are far from consistent.

And if you’re in China, the Great Firewall can put a major damper on speed.

How a Slow Website Impacts Your Bottom Line

In one study, over a quarter of participants stated they would abandon a webpage that takes four or more seconds to load. Additionally, a one-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

To get a better sense of how that one-second delay impacts your bottom line, let’s suppose you have an e-commerce store that, on average, pulls in $100,000 a day. With a 7% reduction in conversions, this translates to a $2.5 million loss in sales per year.

Ouch.

How Does Pagespeed Impact Conversions?

If that’s not enough of a reason for you to think site speed is important, consider the following:

1. 20% — The percentage of shoppers that will abandon their shopping cart if they perceive the pages as being too slow. (Source)
2. $1.6 Billion — The revenue lost per year, per second of site speed decline according to Amazon’s internal testing. (Source)
3. Eight million — The number of searches that Google has calculated it would lose per day if search results were to load just 0.4 seconds slower. (Source)
4. 15.4% — The decrease in downloads reported by Firefox when average load time increases by 2.2 seconds. (Source)

Website Load Test: How To Measure Website Speed

There are multiple ways to perform a website load test:

1. Use one (or more) free online tool(s) to measure the speed of a single page – like Google PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom, for instance
2. Use a tool to measure the speed of every page (or a group of pages) on a website

But first and foremost, there is an even easier way to measure your site’s speed based on its performance: user and employee feedback.

Regularly requesting feedback is one of the best methods for understanding if your site is loading so slowly that you must take action. If your website is slow, customers and employees should be encouraged to speak up if they experience long load times.

It might not be a bad idea to use a service like Google Surveys to gain insights into your customers’ true feelings about your website. This tool can be invaluable when seeking market research to drive business decisions.  Tons of other choices for survey software exist if you’re looking for more advanced features.

How to Measure Page Speed

Many free tools across the internet can give you a good idea of how your website loading speed performs. The downfall of these tools is almost always the same — although they are accurate, they do not allow you to test more than one URL at a time.

However, these types of tools are helpful if you already know what pages frequently have long load times or if you want to benchmark performance before applying site-wide optimizations.

Many of these tools also give very helpful readouts that may help diagnose the cause of page load issues and some even go as far as to recommend actions you can take

Here is a list of the tools that we recommend for testing a single page’s speed:

1. Google’s PageSpeed Insights
2. Google’s Lighthouse
3. Pingdom Website Speed Test
4. GTmetrix
5. WebPage Test

How to Measure Website Loading Speed

After using one or more of the tools above, you should now have data that indicates just how slow certain pages are loading.

But what if you don’t have a list of frequent offenders for slow load times. How do you figure out what those pages are, and to what extent does their page speed impact your site?

To answer these questions, we would recommend utilizing tools that bulk analyze the pages on your site. Here are two and how to use them:

1. Batch Speed

Batch speed is a bulk page speed checker that relies on Google’s Page Speed API. To get the most out of this tool, we recommend using an XML sitemap generator to generate a sitemap for your website (if you don’t already have one on your website) or using a tool like Screaming Frog to generate a list of your website’s URLs.

You can use a sitemap or URL list as input to the bulk page speed checker. Here are the results of a batch speed test for our own site:

The details section of each page can be expanded to see how each detected issue contributes to the page’s load time.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) has a site speed section that can be helpful if you know what you are doing. You can find this section by logging into GA and navigating to Behavior > Site Speed > Page Timings. Here you will find a chart like the one below:

At first glance, this is very valuable information, but if you compare any of the timings found in GA with those found in any one of the five tools for measuring individual page speeds, you will more often find that these timings won’t match up.

By default, GA only collects timing data from a fraction of your site visitors – 1% to be exact. The value of the data in this report is questionable, or even non-existent if your website traffic is relatively low.

The same can be said for sites that have a great deal of traffic as GA also limits timing data to 10,000 hits per day.

There is, however, a solution that allows you to increase your GA page speed hit limit — and we highly suggest it. If you want to know how to do it, shoot over an email to info@directom.com, and we’ll share some of our favorite resources.

Benchmarking to Fix Website Loading Speed

With any issue, you need to understand all the factors thoroughly to identify a plan of action. Here are a few simple steps to begin benchmarking page speeds:

1. Use bulk page speed tools like GA and Batch Speed to compile a list of slow loading pages in a spreadsheet.
2. For each individual page, run that list of common offenders through website load test tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom.
3. Record page timings and routinely update new data.
4. Identify high priority pages based on extremely high load times or pages with valuable content (home page, product / sales / service pages, contact pages, etc.).

Simply put, if your website is running slow, money is being left on the table. You must take action, or you risk losing out on new business and Google rankings.

Contact us for an SEO audit or check out any of these helpful resources written by our team below. Or, to get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as Google Partners before you reach out.

• Internal Links: How Much Do They Affect SEO?
• Image SEO: Does Alt Text Still Matter?
• How To Crush Your Unminified JS And CSS Issues
• These Landing Page Optimization Tips Dramatically Boost Conversions
• Readability Analysis: Tips to Improve Your Writing and SEO

The post How To Tell If Your Website Load Times Are Hurting Your Business (2024 Edition) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Looking for information regarding subdomain tracking for monitoring users across your entire platform in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?

Updated: 4/18/2024

“GA4 is set-up to handle subdomains automatically if the same GA4 measurement ID is shared across all subdomains of the same root domain.“

Dana Schumacher, Senior Digital Analyst at DOM

How much longer are you going to rely on Universal Google Analytics? You are at risk of losing any of your historical performance data in 2023 if you don’t set up and properly configure Google Analytics 4. Learn how the two platforms compare to each other in this blog post – Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics.

Subdomains are a standard way to segment content on a website. Subdomains can be created at any time with no limit and with out a registrar. A common reason to create subdomains would be to differentiate a sector of your business such as “info.yoursite.com” or “tools.yoursite.com.”

From a developer’s perspective, subdomains are integral to utilizing multiple CMS platforms.  For this reason, they have become common across the web.

While subdomains have little benefit from an SEO viewpoint, many websites have plenty of justifications to leverage them.

How To Set Up Subdomain Tracking In Google Analytics

Configuring Google Analytics subdomain tracking can be somewhat aggravating and extremely cumbersome. If you are still using Universal Analytics and also have the need to setup tracking for subdomains – we strongly suggest setting up GA4 so you can avoid many of the remaining steps.

Despite being the market leader in web analytics, Google has been somewhat ambiguous on how to properly configure Google Analytics to track traffic between subdomains and root domains in an aggregate report (aka cross-subdomain tracking).

If this is your first time attempting to achieve correct cross-subdomain tracking, you’re in luck because this guide has made it simple for you.

Cross-Subdomain vs. Cross-Domain — What’s the Difference?

Understanding how cross-domain and cross-subdomain tracking differ from each other is crucial. The methods for implementation across each are entirely different.

What’s The Difference Between A Root Domain And A Subdomain

To be clear, here is the difference between a (root) domain and a subdomain:

• directom.com (root domain): Domains consist of various letter / number combinations followed by their domain extension (.com, .org, .gov, .edu, etc.)
• cctld.directom.com (subdomain): Similar to root domains, except with a series of letters / numbers at the beginning, separated by a period (.)

Use cross-domain tracking when you want a single report that displays user behavior across two domains as if they were on a single domain. Without cross-domain tracking, GA will record a new session every time a user navigates between two or more domain properties.

How To Set Up Cross Domain Tracking In GA4

Trying to set up GA4 cross domain tracking?
We’ve got you covered in this blog post:
4 Steps To Set Up GA4 Cross Domain Tracking

You would need to implement cross-domain tracking if, for example, you wanted to track users across the following:

• https://example.com
• https://examplesite.com
• https://www.othersite.com

Cross-subdomain tracking tracks users and sessions across different subsections of a single domain. We get requests to implement this type of tracking much more frequently than cross-domain tracking.

Some of the most common uses for subdomains include:

• Foreign language versions of a website
  • de.example.com (<— German version)
• Third-party marketing solutions/software (such as Marketo, Salesforce, Unbounce)
  • marketo.example.com
• Blog hosting (typically when blog functionality is cost-prohibitive with current CMS)
  • blog.example.com
• E-commerce checkout pages (typically third-party shopping cart solutions)
  • checkout.example.com

Please note — in the above examples, the root domain never changed. If you’re trying to track sessions across two root domains, we recommend following a different process.

For website owners with multiple subdomains, you need to implement cross-subdomain tracking if you want to track users across the following:

• www.cctld.directom.com
• www.es.directom.com
• www.directom.com

Technical Side Note

Domain owners can create and manage as many subdomains as they want. Proper DNS configuration of subdomains is vital for tracking users across them.

If you make your way through this guide and are still not seeing proper site traffic across subdomains, it might be a good idea to get a second set of eyes to help identify the issue.

Before you continue, we cannot stress enough how getting the following items properly configured will give you a higher chance of success:

1. Root domain & subdomain DNS settings
2. GA account structure
3. Implementation of the same GA code across all subdomains and the primary root domain

Assuming all of the above is good to go, you are ready to configure cross-subdomain analytics correctly.

“If you’re dealing with a website with multiple subdomains, in most cases, you’ll want to configure the same Google Analytics 4 measurement ID/data stream across all subdomains.“

Dana Schumacher, Senior Digital Analyst at DOM

Why Track Cross-Subdomain Traffic in Google Analytics as a Single Session?

By default, Google Analytics is not set up with cross-subdomain tracking. As a result, website owners will not have an accurate picture of how a user moved across subdomains and the root domain.

Here’s what happens normally: Every time a user comes to a website, GA tracking notes that visit as a session and begins tracking how that person interacts with a site.

Without cross-subdomain tracking, GA will count a new session every time a user goes from a subdomain to a domain (and vice versa). This means that total sessions are being miscalculated and referral data gets lost.

Translation — there’s no way to tell where a user came from and sessions become inflated.

Let’s say that an organic search user lands on a company’s blog from Google and the blog post lives on blog.example.com. After reading the post, the user wants to learn more about the company and fills out a contact form that lives on the root domain. Without proper subdomain tracking in GA, the conversion data will credit the subdomain as the referral source when really the user first came to the site from organic search.

Without correct referral source attribution, websites can’t tell which channels are the most effective for their goals.

Most sites want to track user navigation between subdomains that share a root domain and the corresponding root domain as a single session. After tracking is set up, traffic sources, user actions and behavior completed on any subdomain can be attributed to the same user session.

For example, you might have a promotional landing page set up at info.example.com that directs users to purchase products at buy.example.com. With cross-subdomain tracking properly implemented, GA will count users landing on one subdomain and converting on another subdomain as a single session.

Heads Up, You Have Been (Un)Warned

Pulling up Google’s developer documentation for cross-domain tracking will prominently display a fun warning at the very top:

If the owner of the world’s most ubiquitous analytics platform suggests that something is complex, they’re probably right.

Our advice — do not let Google psyche you out.

It is true that the code behind this configuration is complex.

However, we’ve pulled off quite a few Google Analytics implementations. We made this subdomain tracking resource easy to understand.

So, have no fear – this guide will walk you through a step-by-step process to follow that will help assure success.

Getting Started — The Typical Google Analytics Account Structure

The account structure hierarchy in Google Analytics is:

Analytics Account > Properties & Apps > Views

The image below represents how many analytics accounts are set up. This implementation structure consists of the following levels:

Note that in the implementation above, all the items in the “Properties & Apps” row have unique tracking IDs. Having an implementation set up in this manner is pretty typical.

On the positive side, this setup makes accessing traffic and behavior across a single subdomain within an account a breeze.

Since every property has a unique tracking ID, the data associated with each domain or subdomain automatically populates as its default view and can be accessed without any further configuration.

On the other hand, this configuration makes it practically impossible to track cross-subdomain traffic.

How to Setup Subdomain Tracking In Google Analytics 4

• Tools needed: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Tag Assistant
• Time required: 20 min
• Estimated cost: $0

Figure out how Google Analytics tracking is implemented on your site. This guide will touch on how to set up cross-subdomain tracking for both hard coded Universal Analytics and Google Tag Manager configurations.

Before jumping into implementation, please note that this process will only work if your site is using the Universal Analytics version. For older websites with “Classic Analytics,” it is highly recommended to upgrade to the latest version.

In Google Analytics 4, users can be tracked cross-subdomains without the need for additional code. It should generally be handled using the same measurement ID and leveraging reporting, comparisons, and segments to address different subdomain data views.

If you are unsure which method you have implemented on your site, we suggest downloading the Tag Assistant (by Google) Chrome plugin or consulting your developer.

Part 1 – Set the cookieDomain

A cookie is a piece of code on a website that stores information about a session on a user’s computer.

To attribute the name of the domain in the information contained in a cookie, you will need to set the cookieDomain.

If Universal GA is hard coded on your site:

Congrats! The cookieDomain is set to auto by default, and you can skip right to part 2.

If Universal GA code fires through Google Tag Manager (GTM):

1. Navigate to and select the container you wish to edit.

1. Click “Tags” on the left-hand menu.

1. Click on your Google Analytics Tag (In this example, our tag was named “Universal Analytics.” If you are unsure which of your tags is being used to send data to Google Analytics, look for the label “Google Analytics – Universal Analytics” in the “Type” column of the tags table.

1. Click to edit the tag then proceed to “More Settings” > “Fields to Set.”
2. Click “+ ADD FIELD.”
3. Set the Field Name to “cookieDomain” and the Value to “auto.”

Part 2 – Update the Referral Exclusion List In GA4

This part is the same for both GTM and hard coded Universal Analytics implementations.

Note: In Universal Analytics, setting referral exclusions does not remove that data entirely. Instead, it just gets removed from the referrals are and gets populated as direct traffic.

In addition to that, there is a possibility that this step is already set up correctly in your account, but it is necessary for analytics to display accurate numbers. It is worth the two minutes it will take to double check. 

1) Log in to Google Analytics and select any view from the account that you wish to implement cross-subdomain tracking.

2) Access the admin panel by clicking the gear icon in the bottom left of the screen.

3) Under the property column, navigate to Tracking Info > Referral Exclusion List.

4) Your root domain may already be in this table. If it is not, click the “+ ADD REFERRAL EXCLUSION” button and submit your root domain (yoursite.com).

In Google Analytics 4, referral exclusions can be easily set with the tag settings area of the data stream settings in GA4. Once you’ve configured those, GA4 identifies those unwanted referrals by leveraging the parameter “ignore_referrer.”

To review and make changes to your list of unwanted referrals in GA4, navigate to Data streams > Configure TA settings > Show all > List unwanted referrals.

Pro-Tip: Seeing Hostnames in Google Analytics 4

In Google Analytics, reporting will strip the hostname when examining exact URLs. If you’ve gone to the trouble of setting up cross-subdomain tracking, seeing whether someone landed on a subdomain or primary domain is essential context when analyzing performance data.

To see this information, navigate to a report where the primary dimension is a pageview (such as Site Content > All Pages/Landing Pages). Select the secondary dimension dropdown > Behavior > Hostname.

Keep in mind that when adding together.

It’s worth noting here that when you implement GA4, the hostname dimension is populated automatically. This is just one of the many ways GA4 is a less manual and easier to set up than it’s predecessor.

While these considerations are high-level best practice when configuring GA4 for multiple subdomains, we recommend that you also refer to Google’s documentation for more details on this subject.

Dana Schumacher, Senior Digital Analyst at DOM

Conclusion

Implementing cross-subdomain tracking has a reputation for being quite difficult, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  If you followed the steps in the guide above, you should have your implementation correctly set up in no time.

Just remember the two main parts:

1. 1. Set the cookieDomain.
   2. Update the referral exclusion list.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Premier Google Partner before you reach out.

The post How to Track Users Across Subdomains In Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – November 2024 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Bot traffic in GA4 has proven to be an entirely different beast as compared to it’s predecessor Universal Analytics. GA4 touts machine-learning algorithms combined with manual input from Google’s engineering team as their one-size-fits-all bot filter.

While this is a powerful tool as a foundation and may be improved upon in the future, there have been many analysts and data scientists coming out of the woodwork to prove that the default filter is far from perfect out-of-the-box. 

Below, we’re going to be looking at bot filtering in GA4 using the format of the scientific method. We’ll get to:

• Understand the problem
• Ask the right question
• Test our hypothesis (through a case study we’ve done here at DOM) 

This is where we should put a spoiler alert, because we’re all here for a reason, right?

What Is Bot Traffic In Google Analytics 4?

Bot traffic is a data-analytics-specific problem. You may have heard that most bot traffic is not actually malicious in nature and you may even have members of your data team that use bots to scrape the web for useful information.

While it’s true that these bots don’t pose a threat to your cybersecurity, the problem is that these bots will severely skew and bloat your website data, pollute your analytics, and ruin otherwise-useful metrics.

Bots and GA4

Before getting into the most common types of bot traffic, it’s important to understand the three key components of bots.

1. Bots are scripts
2. Scripts are a set of programmable instructions
3. Scripts are most easily run on Virtual Machines

With these key components being taken into consideration, we can begin to look at the types of bots most often encountered in analytics and get to the question we all ideally would like to answer…

Is there a way to identify and filter out bot traffic to a statistically insignificant percentage of sessions?

Common Google Analytics Bot Traffic Type #1: Web Scrapers

Bot is a very open-ended term. Most traffic noise comes from web scrapers, which provide an automated, scalable solution for access to structured web data. You can think of web scrapers like the programming version of RegEx.

Any structured data on the web can be pulled into a spreadsheet at the speed of light. These bots are incredibly useful for lead generation, brand monitoring, company data, market analysis, and basically anywhere that publicly available data is useful.

Web Scrapers & GA4

According to the 9th Annual Bad Bot Report from Imperva, Selenium is the most popular tool used for web scraping. Imperva estimates that web scrapers like Selenium may be responsible for as much as 40-60% of website traffic depending on your industry. This might account for why some websites have such high traffic and yet lackluster conversion rate metrics.

If you’ve ever run into the issue where you’re getting valid-looking leads generated from your form submissions, only to follow up with them and they say they’ve never heard of you and never filled anything out, this bot is the reason. 

Bot Scripts In GA4

Want some more fun facts about bot scripts?

1. Web scrapers can have as little as three lines of code.
2. Most web scrapers save web pages and their data to a file, which takes anywhere from 3-8 seconds.

These facts might lead you to believe that all bots should fall into an average session duration of fewer than two seconds. However most web scrapers are more complex than just looking through a website.

Common Google Analytics Bot Traffic Type #2: Form Fillers

Form Filler Bots And GA4

Form Fillers do as the name implies, they fill out the forms on your website in the hopes their spam tricks people into scams. If you’ve ever run into the issue where you’re getting valid-looking leads generated from your form submissions, only to follow up with them and they say they’ve never heard of you and never filled anything out, this bot is the reason. 

Form fillers are similar to email phishing scams. These bots fill forms automatically using a series of logic statements. They often use stolen user data to appear legitimate. Even though they have people’s real information, they should be treated like all other bot traffic and be filtered out, at the very least, like a non-qualified lead.

Form fillers use a combination of Python – the most popular programming language for making bots – and JavaScript to execute predetermined scripts. While times vary, some form fillers can take less than 2 seconds to fill out a form.

With such a wide variation on the main metrics of web scrapers and form fillers, we need to look at other variables that we can combine average session duration with in order to identify bot traffic and filter it out of GA4. 

What Is A Virtual Machine?

A virtual machine (VM) is software that allows for the emulation of a whole computer or device.

VMs are usable on local disk or on the cloud. They can run as a desktop program or as a mobile app.

VMs are the best way to run scripts regularly. Saying that, there are several limitations to virtual machines. After all, but your computer was only designed to run one computer, your own. That means that limitation have to be set in order to successfully run Virtual Machines. including:

1. Running a whole device. Most devices are built to run only its local, intended software. Emulating other devices, from phones to computers, in one device means that limitations have to be set in order to successfully run VMs.
2. Operating System Versions. VMs use old OS versions because they take up less computing power and take time to be cracked and emulateable.
3. Screen Resolution. Screen resolutions are pre-set and minimally adjustable to ensure consistency of emulation. Common default and maximum sizes include 800×600, 1360×768, 1140×900, and 1600×1200.

What Is Screen Resolution In Google Analytics (GA4)?

On a typical computer or device, this is the resolution of the monitor or built-in screen. This dimension is based on hardware. On a typical computer or device, like the ones you’re using now, the resolution of the monitor or built-in screen will be captured by GA4’s Screen Resolution metric.

If the majority of bots are using Virtual Machines, and Screen Resolution measures the resolution of your physical device, what happens when the device is software?

This leads us to our hypothesis (thank you for your patience).

Our Hypothesis For Bot Filtering In Google Analytics (GA4)

Bots & Screen Resolution In GA4

Bots can be identified through their Screen Resolution because bots use virtual machines that have pre-set and/or strange screen resolutions that stand out in analytics reports.

These suspect users are verifiable through Average Engagement time, OS Version, and various other dimensions due to the fast executable run time of scripts and the technical limitations of Virtual Machines.

But that isn’t enough to definitively say that we can filter out these users from our data reports. 

So… these suspect users are verifiable through:

• Average Engagement Time
• OS Version
• Various other dimensions

Due to the fast executable run time of scripts and the technical limitations of Virtual Machines. 

Results and Supporting Dimensions

To test our hypothesis, we ran a case study on a website that uses GA4 out-of-the-box to see what we could find.

All of our data came from a three-month period.

Traffic Using Virtual Machine Pre-Sets

Firstly, we found that 30% of their traffic belonged to screen resolutions that are common Virtual Machine pre-sets that are also not typically found as real-world device resolutions. 

Next, we’ll look at User Interaction.

User Interactions In Google Analytics

In the top right corner there, you’ll see that the average user with those screen resolutions was on the page for zero seconds but did about 4 things.

If you know a person that can do 4 things in literally no time flat, you let us know. 

They’re probably a world record holder, or they would be… except there were 4,000 “people” across these two screen resolutions alone that could do it, too. 

The only other thing that I’ll point out is the black-color-coded cell over on the left. This screen resolution, a resolution that doesn’t exist as a real physical screen, represented 40% of all form fills for this website.

40% of their leads were useless because they didn’t have a robust bot filter and they just used GA4 out of the box. 

Even though we aren’t going over all the details, this data certainly supports our hypothesis.

• 0% of screen resolutions under 8 seconds of average engagement time were a current OS version
• Mobile users make up 16% of users and 59.5% of [Screen Resolutions + OS] under 1 second
• Devices listed don’t match a real-life screen resolution
• Many devices aren’t listed because JavaScript isn’t able to automatically pull the information
• 98.96% of users under 8 seconds have no device set/detected

How To Set Up Bot Filtering In Google Analytics 4 (With Confidence)

How to Exclude Bot Traffic In GA4

In order to confidently filter bots in GA4, you need to build a layered logic sequence. To spell it out plainly, your bot filter needs to audit traffic with a series of tests. If one statement turns out to be true, then it needs to pass on to the next statement, and so on.

How To Filter Bot Traffic In GA4?

Here’s a brief overview of the 5-step process for filtering bots in GA4.  

1. Begin bot filtering in Google Analytics 4 by pulling suspect screen resolutions
2. Cross reference secondary dimensions – does the screen resolution combine with an old operating system?
3. Find average event time that is less than 8 seconds
4. Test for final, definitive proof before botting using different metrics found in GA4
5. Filter out all users matching criteria

These combinations can be saved as custom metrics in GA4. In addition to that, they are such a powerful tool if you need a reason to compile a great argument for a custom GA4 migration.

Any other questions about bot filtering in GA4? Don’t hesitate to contact us.  

The post Why You Should Set Up Bot Filtering In Google Analytics 4 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

As highly capable digital marketers, we have an unprecedented number of tools to help us do our jobs. Last time we checked (a few minutes ago), the most popular marketing automation software, coming in with around 20% of the market share, was Adobe’s Marketo platform. If you have anything whatsoever to do with digital marketing, you know how prevalent Marketo is. Most implementations are centered around their handy landing pages. So most of our Marketo SEO tips are most relevant for the landing page templates, though you can use that platform for other things, too.

Just like anything else you want your customer to find via a search engine, your Marketo pages need to be optimized for SEO. Here are our top tips to get the most out of your SEO for Marketo.

Marketo SEO Tip 1: Just do the SEO thing.

You know the thing we’re talking about: optimize that page for search engines! If you want to know more about how to do that, we have a whole bunch of resources to help you. Trust us, we’re experts. In fact, below is a list of blog posts we’ve written over the years to help you out with some of the SEO basics.

• Image SEO: Does Alt Text Still Matter?
• Internal Links: How Much Do They Affect SEO?
• Why SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions Are Still Important
• Does Duplicate Content Affect SEO?

That said, if you’re up to speed already on the SEO basics, this post is for more advanced users who really want to squeeze the most value they can out of their Marketo assets.

Marketo SEO Tip 2: Learn how to edit html.

We’re not trying to be glib (well, maybe a little), but you will get a lot of mileage out of the simple small step of popping open a copy of HTML Programming for Stupid People, or whatever those books are called, and teaching yourself some basic coding. It’s not difficult—html is definitely one of the easier programming languages to learn—and you’ll enable yourself to do stuff like these sub-tips.

Need a reason to learn to code HTML? Here’s why you should learn to code HTML in case you want some reasons why.

Marketo SEO Sub-Tip A: Add canonical links to your header tags.

Don’t be alarmed, it’s easier than it sounds. You can freely edit the HTML of the Marketo headers (everything between the <head> tags on a webpage). One of the most useful ones is the canonical link. We use canonical links all the time as a way of telling search engines that potentially duplicate content is intentional and need not be indexed. Google famously dislikes duplicate content, and we all know what happens to content Google doesn’t like.

It gets ranked lower. That’s all.

You won’t lose your listing, but your organic searches will suffer. This is especially true for Marketo pages because they tend to multiply based on the SKUs, products, or services being marketed, and similar page content can trigger false duplicate flags to Google’s crawlers. That’s the opposite of what we want.

Marketo SEO Sub-Tip B: Add Google Analytics code and various pixels to the header tag manually.

While you’re editing the header, you might as well take this step while you’re there. By “manually” we mean “by hand,” as in “you have to code it yourself” because Marketo doesn’t let you do it as easily as other web design interfaces (like WordPress, for example). You can get the embed codes from the websites you use to track whatever it is you’re tracking, and your little bit of coding knowledge will come in very handy.

Marketo SEO Tip 3: Make sure your gated content is protected by noindex tags.

One of the most useful techniques for a digital marketer is to put valuable content behind a conversion link, like a newsletter signup. This lets us get something valuable in exchange for something valuable, which your gated content most definitely should be. But if that valuable content is visible to Google, then simple searches can bypass your gate and your hard work goes unrewarded.

Make sure to add the noindex tag in the headers of the pages that host your content, not the landing page itself. That’s a great way to make sure Google loses track of your page, which, again, is the opposite of what we want. Don’t take our word for it—check out Google’s own knowledge base about noindex tags.

Want to get more in-depth on our tips for gated content besides making sure search engines can’t crawl it? Check out our definitive guide to gated content.

Marketo SEO Tip 4: Link to your landing pages on your website.

This could probably be included in Tip 1, technically, but we see it so often that it merits its own mention. The tendency is to pretend like your landing pages aren’t part of your website’s ecology, but that’s not doing your SEO any favors. We’ve already seen how much Google likes links, so don’t be afraid to link it in your site navigation, in blog posts, wherever your favorite links live.

Marketo SEO Tip 5: Make sure you’re secure.

You have to make certain you’re using the https prefix with Marketo, especially when you’re linking to it from your website. Not only does Google prefer secure pages, but a link from a secure site to an insecure one might raise a flag on your customer’s browser. And flags are bad.

Marketo SEO Services

Those might be our most important MarketoSEO tips, but we could go on. If you’re using Marketo then SEO is extremely important for driving leads and sales to your website. Luckily, we’re experienced in optimizing Marketo sites and helping drive growth for your Marketo stores with our SEO services. Schedule a free consultation today and maybe we’ll share them with you.

The post SEO For Marketo: 5 Advanced Tips For Marketo Success In 2024 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Learn more about bounce rate and engagement rate in GA4 in this blog post – Where Did My Bounce Rate Go in GA4? Enter Engaged Sessions.

In analytics, we often find clarity. Unless, of course, those analytics are inserting bounce rates into their equations. In which case we find total confusion from bounce rate in Google Analytics.

Because bounce rate intermingles with a number of other analytic metrics, the stat can either be an illuminating testament to a site’s health (or lack thereof) or an incredibly deceiving distraction.

Some marketers jump the gun on bounce rate statistics.

Bounce rate deception creeps in when we don’t understand the nuances of Google Analytics. Specifically, when we fail to grasp the Google Analytics definition of bounce rate, we set ourselves up to make poor decisions.

What Is Bounce Rate In Google Analytics 4?

The calculation for bounce rate in Google Analytics 4 is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged sessions. This calculation is different from Google Analytics Universal Analytics (UA) where that calculation is the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only one page (and, thus, sent one request to the server).

At this point, you might be asking yourself: “what’s an engaged session?” Well, we will get into that next, but here’s a handy post we wrote that goes into more detail: Where Did My Bounce Rate Go in GA4? Enter Engaged Sessions.

What Are Engaged Sessions & Non-Engaged Sessions in Google Analytics 4?

An engaged session (used to calculate engagement rate) is a session that spent more than 10 seconds on the website, had 2 or more pageviews, or had a conversion event occur. On the flip side, a non-engaged session (used to calculate the bounce rate in GA4), spent less than 10 seconds on the website, did not view any other page, and did not perform a conversion event.

In essence, bounce rate in GA4 is the inverse of engagement rate, and these metrics are both valuable in understanding if and how your users are engaging with your website.

How Is Bounce Rate Calculated In GA4?

Simply put, bounce rate in GA4 is the inverse of engagement rate, and these metrics are both valuable in understanding if and how your users are engaging with your website.

How Do You Find Bounce Rate In Google Analytics 4?

Here is how bounce rate is calculated:

(non-engaged sessions) / (sessions) – bounce rate %

For instance:

(9 non-engaged sessions) / (50 sessions) = 18% bounce rate

Here is how engagement rate is calculated:

(engaged sessions) / (sessions) – engagement rate %

For instance:

(21 engaged sessions) / (100 sessions) = 21% engagement rate

The calculations are simple, right? Now that we’ve got the definitions and calculations down, let’s talk about what a good bounce rate is, and how you can use this metric to evaluate and improve your website.

What Is A Good Bounce Rate In Google Analytics?

When it comes to bounce rates, almost every site owner wants this question answered in short order. In fact, it is possible you skipped to this part of the article. That’s OK, don’t feel bad, but you aren’t off the learning hook.

Bounce rate stats are unique to the site and, more specifically, site page experience and goals.

Some people will tell you that a bounce rate over 70% is bad. In fact, a writer for Search Engine Journal explicitly states that a bounce rate north of 70% means “something is probably broken.”

Such a statement seems to imply that a consumer can’t be both happy with the page of your site they arrive on and want to view only that page.

Imagine yourself in Whole Foods. You see a can of tuna on the shelf. You want to know whether eating tuna daily is bad for your health. So you Google it and land on a blog post that argues that tuna should be eaten no more than three times a week. What is the likelihood you will view another page on that website? Are you happy?

You got the information you wanted. You decide that information is trustworthy, so you place three cans of tuna in your cart. You need to finish shopping, so you do not view any other page on the site.

You happily bounce.

The point is this: a high bounce rate should not necessarily be interpreted as a sign of user dissatisfaction. You mustn’t paint with a broad brush when making statements about bounce rate.

There are plenty of sites that recommend bounce rates to shoot for, but we question such an approach.

A better path lies in considering bounce rate as one criterion among many of site health.

Let’s do that now.

Why High Bounce Rates In Google Analytics Occur

Writers tend to turn the “why is bounce rate high” section into a dreary experience. It assumes the position that a high bounce rate is bad. This section assumes that a high bounce rate occurs for both good and bad reasons. Most marketing writers treat the why-is-bounce-rate-so-high section like the postmortem of a professional pitfall. Which is to blindly assume that a high bounce rate is bad for business.

At DOM, we take a more nuanced view. We recognize that evaluating bounce rate requires careful analysis of the particular website, company, and goal in question.

So why might your bounce rate be high?

Your Content Satisfies

Remember our Whole Foods example? It’s OK if you skipped to this section and missed that; I’ll explain again.

If your page solves a problem, your bounce rate might be higher. The fact that your page solves a problem is a good thing.

How can we distinguish a page that satisfies user intent from one that doesn’t, when both may have a high bounce rate?

1. Read the content. Apply common sense.
   A page about fishing in Yellowstone that discusses the best fly fishing fly to use solves a problem. If the person that lands on that page immediately scroll to the section called “USE THIS FLY IN YELLOWSTONE,” the person may decide to bounce after viewing the solution to their problem.A page with a glossary of terms probably satisfies searchers looking for a single definition. DOM’s Internet Marketing Glossary isn’t something someone reads in the way they read Faulkner. They are there to find the definition of a term they don’t understand.
   

   That’s it. No sound of furious further clicks should be expected.

2. View Time On Site (TOS) in Google Analytics.
   What if a person spends five minutes reading a page on your site, but exits without viewing any other page? That does not sound awful. Sure, in certain cases, long and involved content can negatively eat up a reader’s time.However, on the other hand, someone who spends ample time reading your content—and then exits without viewing another post—doesn’t necessarily hate your page. It is important to remember that pages that solve a problem with a quick, straightforward answer may experience both low TOS and high bounce rate.

A Deeper Perspective On Content That Satisfies

Let’s say that you’ve determined your high bounce rate is in line with a positive consumer relationship. Does this mean you should just move on? Not completely.

The high bounce rate led you to investigate a page of content. You determined that the high bounce rate was a reasonable result of your page’s problem-solving content. But now that you are here, you could opt to go ahead and lower the bounce rate for your own benefit.

For example, you could set up a call to action that encourages your readers to check out another related article. You could attempt to sell a service you offer via a CTA button. You could set up an email collection form and collect leads.

Your Site Is Slow

Slow sites are frustrating. You are trying to get information, but some lumpy image builds out at the speed of a turtle. So you back out and find another site with similar information.

You bounce.

It is always important to check your site speed, not only on your devices, but with site speed checkers such as Google PageSpeed.

Fixing site speed can be a tough task. This article is not going to dive in too deeply, but let’s look at some simple things that sometimes help.

• WordPress Plugins
  These can be the devil. If you have too many, they may be overloading your site. Just a single plugin can wreak havoc on your site speed. And testing your site speed right after installing a plugin is unreliable. Many plugins build up a cache, or database, that begins to hobble the site’s loading time months down the road.To resolve such issues, deactivate one element at a time and test, test, test!
• Use Cloudflare.
  Cloudflare is a free cloud network solution. Yes, the free version suits most site owners.Cloudflare downloads the most recent copy of your website, thereby cutting out the host for site loading. It is worth looking into if your poor site speed is causing high bounce rate.We just spent 11 sentences worth of this post explaining simple reasons why site speed on WordPress can get bogged down and cause high bounce rates. That said, Cloudflare is one of our favorite WordPress plugins out there, and we have it included in our exclusive list of the best WordPress plugins for SEO.
• WordPress Themes
  These can be site speed killers. A theme may look pretty and function well when you view the demo, but they can be heavy and sluggish when put into action.Always review themes for their site speed before buying.

Your Page Is A Poor Experience

Look at your page. That big image shoving all the content down only vanishes once the user scrolls into a huge ad. Scroll a bit more, a pop up takes over the user’s screen.

That sounds horrendous. It sounds like a page that most of us would bounce from.

Make sure your site’s user experience is on point if you want people to stick around.

Another reason for poor user experience on a page can be the way it’s delivered. For example, is your page content a lump of text?

If so, break it up with useful headers and, potentially, images.

Your Mobile Experience Is Bad

People access the web via mobile more and more every year. The stats don’t lie.

When your mobile experience is bad, a slow loading and poor user experience scenario is amplified. People using their phones to search want fast solutions.

If your site’s navigation complicates the solution-finding experience, you are likely to lose the consumer. In other words, the consumer may bounce.

Always test your site’s mobile experience. Make sure you test your site on a service like Google PageSpeed and pay special attention to the mobile results section.

Your Content Title Misleads

In order to attract links, your content’s headline needs to attract clicks. A properly written, enticing headline can create success for content marketing campaigns.

However, some content marketers and ad copywriters take too many liberties with headlines. Their overwhelming desire for clicks blinds them to the pitfalls of clickbait.

Yes, clickbait: the act of misleading a person with a headline. Clickbait comes in many flavors and levels of outrageousness. Clearly, you aim to entice people to click, and that in and of itself requires a shiny headline. But you need to be conscientious of when a headline goes from taking a few liberties to downright inaccuracy. When that happens, people bounce.

And it gets worse.

Many people will remember brands that clickbait them and just stop viewing all of their content, even content with accurate headlines. Proper article headlines help nurture relationships with readers as an added benefit.

A Website Linking To Your Site Is Misleading

We discussed inaccurate headlines. Well, if a website is inaccurately linking to a page on your website, you might be compiling bounces because your content doesn’t meet the reader’s expectations.

Unlike inaccurate headlines, issues with exterior sites’ misleading people in the direction of your content is trickier to resolve.

The best way to resolve such a matter is to contact the site owner of the misleading link and request removal or a change in copy.

You could opt to alter your own content, but that isn’t likely to work in most cases.

You’re Running A PPC Landing Page

Pay-per-click landing page designs certainly vary in terms of look, style, and paging. Some pay-per-click landers use single pages with a goal to garner leads. This can result in higher bounce rate statistics. In this case, a marketer will most likely consider the conversion rate over bounce rate statistics.

When the goal isn’t aimed at clicking through a site and is instead to fill out a lead generation form, bounce rates may be higher. When the goal isn’t to drive click-throughs, nor to have visitors fill out a lead generation form, bounce rates may be higher.

Bounce Rate Tracking On Subdomains

For some sites where people move between subdomains, bounce rate statistics can be tougher to interpret in a meaningful way. The first step in getting a full picture is to have proper analytics tracking set up. Read our Google Analytics Subdomain Tracking guide to make sure your site is set up properly.

Erroneously Low Bounce Rates In Google Analytics

You updated your site months ago. Suddenly, the bounce rate went from 80% to 8%. That new template must really be winning for you, right?

Eh, not so fast.

If your bounce rate is excessively low, there is probably something amiss with your metrics in general. Analytics errors, from a general standpoint, need to be fixed because you can’t know they aren’t adversely affecting other metrics.

Check that the code is installed properly throughout your site, including making sure you don’t have multiple instances installed.

Bounce Rates In GA4 And SEO

Does bounce rate influence SEO?

The answer is yes (and no).

The reason that bounce rates fire up SEO enthusiasts is that no one truly knows whether Google’s search algorithm leverages Google Analytics stats. In a logical world, it would sure seem like Google might rely on easily digestible information to benefit its search results.

Throughout his tenure with Google, former head of Webspam, Matt Cutts, consistently denied that search algorithms base SERPs on Google’s famed analytics program.

While some felt Cutts was covering for a Google conspiracy, others viewed his stance on the matter as quite reasonable.

Let’s think about things for a moment.

Google, using its own analytics program (which is installed all over the web on millions of websites), could open its algorithm up for trickery. This would put a part of the Google search algorithm into the hands of those who most seek to upend it.

Additionally, what would happen to sites with incorrectly installed Google Analytics? All their great content would be banished to the SERP cellar? That just doesn’t make sense.

But Bounce Rate Does Matter To SEO

Google doesn’t need to leverage Google Analytics data in its SERP algorithm formula. Instead, Google tracks the time someone spends on a search results link.

So Google does indeed track bounce rate, just not likely through its own analytics program.

The Final Bounce

If you’ve made it this far, you now have to decide: would you like to view more of DOM’s digital marketing content, or bounce?

The example above illustrates the glaring point of this entire article: a page can be great, while still registering bounces.

Bounce rate, when fully understood, offers marketers a way to gauge content health. When a marketer determines that bounce rate statistics negatively reflect on the page, fixing the issue isn’t always overly difficult.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Bounce Rate In Google Analytics 4 (Everything You Should Know) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

The earth is no longer round… but that doesn’t mean your international SEO (or overseas SEO) strategies should be linear.

After marinating for twenty-odd years in a technological chrysalis, the world as we perceive it has emerged with four corners and a screen and fits comfortably in most pockets/purses.

With the swipe of a finger, a person can now score a date, watch a movie, and impulse-buy whatever products their heart desires.

With the world quite literally at our fingertips, we can search for, find, and purchase exactly what we’re looking for, no matter where in the world it is located. Purchasing power lays completely in the hands of the consumer… and the search results. To assist you in winning over the hearts of both, we have rounded up some pretty incredible international search engine marketing consultants to guide you in your quest for making your international market expansion search engine (and user) friendly.

29 Top SEO Consultants Share Fundamental Strategies To Help Improve Your Website Rankings Around The Globe!

International SEO Tip #1: Do Your Homework!

Katrina Reger, Digital Marketing Strategist, Blue Compass Interactive

Plan ahead!! From choosing your URL structure (ccTLD, gTLD, subdomains, subdirectories – there are lots of decisions to be made on URL structure alone,) to hreflang tags which help with local search on a global scale, and canonical tags to help with duplicate content; there are countless factors worthy of your consideration. When scaling your site internationally the worst thing you can do is expand blind. Google will rank your site higher if you do the legwork upfront rather than attempting to fix errors after Google has come “crawling.”

Sam Binks, Digital Marketing Manager, Cool Gifts for Dads

Time differences are important – don’t set up meetings when it’s too early/late for the client. Get some training for your team in how to respect cultures and customs. For instance, if international clients are coming to your office, is it appropriate to eat certain foods at certain times of the year? Show you’re invested in making them happy and you have some idea about where they’re from.

Damon Burton, President, SEO National

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to engaging a variety of international demographics. Businesses should start by writing unique value propositions, blogs, and press specifically to the target country or location. It is crucial that whatever info is generated is specific to the target dialect. Something interesting in one country may not be as equally interesting in another. There may also be different uses of jargon. Sounding natural in your engagement is key.

Stephanie Mahnken, Sr. Digital Marketing Specialist, Direct Online Marketing

It’s very important to really dive in and learn how your customers in foreign markets are using and/or looking for your product or services. To do this effectively, you need to dedicate hours of time to keyword research and competitive analysis. We also recommend having your website translated into other relevant languages to target a specific country, along with country and language meta tags.

Marcus Miller, Owner, and Head of Search Marketing, Bowler Hat

Success with international SEO is not easy. There is much to consider before we even think about the SEO elements. We must consider the regionalization of content, the content is provided in a location’s primary language, currencies, locations that need content in multiple languages and local time zones (for starters). If your business is in the UK and you are selling into the US you could be going home just as the US traffic starts so you will need to consider how you handle customer service from an international perspective. And of course, international shipping can impact your ability to be competitive and various taxes all come into effect.

Ultimately the best tip is to be sure that this is something you want to do and that the returns will be worthy of the effort. With international SEO this is no easy win and a careful hand is needed from a human and technical perspective. Do it right and you can open up a much larger marketplace.

Dana Schumacher, Digital Analyst at Direct Online Marketing

It is incredibly important to understand the linguistics and language dialect of your audience. Many cities/regions have their own different characteristics and dialects and you want to make sure that’s top of mind when creating and optimizing content for international SEO. With that being said, it’s always a good idea to get input from someone who is familiar with the language and dialects. It plays a major role in making sure your content marketing and SEO work is relevant to your audience.

International SEO Takeaway: CYA: Cover Your Ass(ets). Research the people, the culture, see if there’s a demand for what you’re supplying, before diving headfirst into international waters. Overlooking the fine details could cost you dearly.

International SEO Tip #2: To ccTLD Or Not To ccTLD?

Aleyda Solis, International SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti

Make sure the ccTLD, hreflang, and flag choice are cohesive. If someone connects to a site from Spain, but the flag on the site is Mexican, that user will feel like the site is not relevant to them, and they will likely leave…If your site has a Spanish version “.es”, and want to target the British, they enable an English version in their .es ccLTD. But because this site is already geo-located to Spain, it will most likely never rank in the UK or another country.

It’s very important that you think about what other countries you want to target, how you are going to expand in the future, and if it makes sense to start with a ccTLD in the beginning. You will likely need the ccTLD’s in these countries, or you can enable a generic domain where you can play country subdirectories, that way your site will be scalable, and won’t suffer from issues so that you are able to profit from what you have built.

Jonathan Bentz, Sr. Digital Marketing Strategist, Direct Online Marketing

Help Google understand your ccTLD belongs to your main .com by verifying both sites with the same Google Search Console account. When I provided internet marketing services and SEO for a company with 4 different ccTLDs in addition to their main .com, I registered every single domain in webmaster tools under one account.

When I did that and set country-specific locations for each domain, the international domains started ranking for the same short tail, high search volume keywords that the main site ranked for – with no additional link building required.

By going through and properly verifying each site in one Search Console account, then setting unique country locations for each domain, Google will quickly learn to identify your ccTLD’s for their appropriate location… and trust them just as much as your main site.

International SEO Tip:

Want to set this up for your international domains? Check out this guide for setting up international targeting in Google Search Console.

Steffen Ploeger, SEO specialist, 9thco

It’s not good practice to have duplicate websites on different country code top-level domains (ccTLD). Geo-targeting will be outweighed by the domain authority of the .com and as a result, the .com will outrank other ccTLDs even in their geographic target country. Instead of using duplicate websites on different ccTLDs you should use subfolders to indicate country or language. Don’t use proxy localized content. Google and Bing have clearly said to keep one language in one URL. Proxied content, content served by a cookie and side-by-side translations all make it very hard for search engines to index a page in one language. 1 URL = 1Language

International SEO Takeaway: There’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. ccTLD definitely helps with geo-targeting and SERP rankings, but if you have multiple countries contributing to profitability, having a ccTLD in each can confuse search engines and ‘cannibalize’ results (eek!). Strategize what country you’ll benefit most from, ccTLD that bad boy, and subdomain the rest.

Overseas SEO Tip #3: Talk The Talk With Hreflang

Brett Bastello, SEO manager, Inseev Interactive

If you’re headed into international SEO is to make sure you’re properly using the hreflang= tag.

What this tag does is serves a version of your web page in their local language, based on the visitor’s IP address.

This tag can be placed in either the sitemap, within the on-page markup, or in the HTTP header, but it’s important to only choose one. By having this markup listed in multiple locations you leave yourself open to inconsistencies and/or input errors, which will confuse the crawlers.

As your website expands into additional/moves out of certain countries, it is much easier and faster to update one set of hreflang inputs, as opposed to three, especially when there is a team of multiple people spearheading these on-site changes.

Andrew Akesson, Head of Digital, Venn Digital

Another aspect we often see that is wrong is when a company wants to expand into foreign language websites. They do this without giving the user any thought sometimes, so we may get a job/recruitment website that has translated all of their landing pages, but because all of their staff/recruiters are English, all the job descriptions on that page are English.

So for example, the hreflang sitemap states that the page is targeting German users in Germany (de-de), then Google will look to serve that page to German users in Germany. However, when those German users get to the page, they see that all the job descriptions are in English, which is a language they don’t speak and they bounce back to Google. This sends the wrong signals to Google and they demote the page in the rankings. So the recruiter has not only annoyed the user through bad UX, but they have also annoyed Google because the user is having to try a different result from the SERP.

There are a couple of things that should be done. The first is to ensure that the language on the page is the same as that of the hreflang. If your hreflang is de-de, then your page needs to be in German as this is the target language/users you are specifically targeting. Having half the page in one language and the other half in another language means the target user can only understand half the page, meaning they will be less likely to connect with your brand.

Another option to prove how your users are behaving is to use heat mapping software on-site. Any good heat mapping service will give you some information on what country your user is accessing your site from. In this instance, if your main messaging on page (the first thing they are like to see) is in English and the target users are from Germany, then you don’t have to do too much calculating to see that it’s the language you are using that is making people bounce back off the page, as they won’t be scrolling any further down the page to get to the German.

International SEO Takeaway: This tool is a beaut. When used properly, it can really take your international SEO to the next level. But always err on the side of caution, and see if you can find a native speaker to look over the content for any nuances particular to the region.

International SEO Tip #4: Content & Context

Siobhan O’Rorke, Marketing and Communications Manager at Lookeen

Make sure the keywords you’re optimizing your site for are making sense in the context of the languages you’re translating to. Find a native speaker to perform detailed keyword analysis in each language, and to test them (preferably in the target country).

Jitesh Keswani, Co-Founder, E-Intelligence

Get closer to your target native search audience. As the culture and language of your visitors vary from country to country, the basic online search pattern also differs. You want to ensure, as a marketer, that your website speaks to them in the tone that they are comfortable with. And this is not just limited to text – also consider the media and colors used on your web properties.

For example, if your website is full of images that relate more to the western world, then you may not get much out of your presence in the online search space in Japan. Accuracy and professionalism are the keys to pleasing your local search audience. For your international SEO to be a successful venture, it’s important for you to win their trust.

Jimmy Rodriguez, COO, 3dcart

The one thing that is universal across the globe is good content. If you want to rank globally, pump out high-quality content that is useful to an audience worldwide. Try to keep your topics general rather than culture or location-specific. For the most part, the same burning questions that people have in the US, they will have in Canada or Australia. The psychology of humans is universal which is why pumping out content based on global keyword research is one of the best SEO strategies. This of course, given that all on-site aspects are optimized for global search.

Colt Foutz, Director of Digital Content Optimization, TransPerfect

Localized content – preferably written by a native speaker familiar with your industry vertical – is, by its nature, unique content. It won’t count against you as duplicate, and you don’t need to flag the original language page as canonical – which could work against you in getting the new language page to rank. But for every unique market with different cultural norms, consider experimenting with a different design. The right graphics and spatial organization of your site can make a difference in user experience and getting customers to convert.

Oh- and don’t forget to translate image ALT-tags.

International SEO Takeaway: Content and context may just be the new peanut butter and jelly. You can have one without the other, but damn they really are better together.

Overseas SEO Tip #5: Build Links

Nenad Cuk, Marketing Manager, Thoughtlab

Start building links from websites that are optimized for the target country. If all of the links are coming in from a .ru website, and you are trying to rank for .ag, you won’t get as much of a push as if you got other .ag sites or even sites from Latin America that have the same language in their content. Just as one wouldn’t expect to get a rank boost to US sites by pulling in links from irrelevant sites outside of the market, a company shouldn’t expect to get a rank boost by using irrelevant countries in their citation building.

Matthew Mercuri, Digital Marketing Manager, Dupray

Interact with people who you have already done business with. When your clients and customers get a follow on Twitter, they’re significantly more likely to follow you back. Moreover, you need to narrow down and eliminate the people most likely to ignore you on Social Media. Ashton Kutcher will not be your friend online, nor will Kim Kardashian. BUT, the local bakery owner will. Your sister, best friend, and family will. So will your German clients. You need to do whatever it takes to get a base. This base will allow you to successfully publish content while tapping into the networks of that base.

Jason Ohsie, Digital Marketing (SEO) Department Manager, Direct Online Marketing

The importance of building quality links cannot be understated for SEO today and, most likely, into the future. Link building for international SEO, in particular, can be challenging to navigate because of inherent cultural differences and language barriers to non-native speakers. To get the most out of outreach efforts, you have to be systematic in your approach. Using your favorite link-building analytical tool – there are several good ones you can use – start by identifying and prioritizing link opportunities that genuinely represent the best fits for your content or business objectives.

For the top candidate backlinks with high-quality domain authority or trust flow, spend time doing your homework by engaging in deep research about their brand. Ask yourself: who might be their target demographic and psychographic audience? What pain points are the brand looking to solve? Are there local initiatives they are looking to promote?

While it may seem like a lot of work on the front end, there is tremendous lasting value in high-quality backlinks that will more than reward the significant investment in time. For the rest of your list, craft a short, personal message with a strong call-to-action. Provide value to the person receiving each email. Be clear and direct about your objective. Think about being the person receiving the email and what would compel you to take action on behalf of that person

Jessica Carmona, Marketing and Business Growth Manager, Guarana Technologies

If you’re expanding your business to other countries, local SEO should be one of your top priorities. It’s important to make sure your NAP (Number, Address, Phone) is consistent all across platforms such as Google Business, Bing, Yelp, Foursquare, and any other directories you might find relevant. Since you might not have an actual address and local phone number yet, a great strategy to solve that issue is to use services such as Virtual Business Addresses (which many coworking spaces provide) and software such as CallRail.com to get a local address and phone number and start on your International SEO as soon as possible. Additionally, you can add schema markups to your pages to help search engines understand where you’re located.

Ronald D’souza, Digital Marketing Manager, Angel Jackets

Link building plays a vital role in how you rank on a SERP. On the other hand, it provides you with the opportunity to reach more people who could relate to your brand or service.

A good link building technique involves building relationships with bloggers and influencers of your niche industry and providing value to them. You should be able to communicate what value your story could provide and why their audience would be interested in it. One great tip to get potential backlinks is by searching #journorequest on twitter advanced search and selecting your target country. You will find a lot of people looking for your expert opinion or input.

Vukasin Vukosavljevic, Head of Growth, lemlist

A big push with SEO is always the backlinks you’re able to get to rank high. But, in order to find those links without burning through your budget, you have to invest significant time into your email outreach and the way you approach people. The reality of the situation is that backlink outreach is extremely competitive and it’s hard to get a breakthrough in a busy inbox. The best way to grab the attention is to personalize your cold emails and focus on biz dev rather than direct asks.

Michael Dello Russo, Digital Marketing Coordinator, Direct Online Marketing

Backlinks are important, but don’t overlook the value of internal links, or links to other areas of your site. When dealing with content that appears in multiple languages, I create separate URLs for each translation. This makes internal linking a breeze.

Also, if a page has any other language translations, I link it at least once in the copy. This helps build links throughout each of the articles, gives the reader language options, and helps them easily navigate to their preferred language in the event they are automatically redirected to a page in the wrong language.

International SEO Takeaway: Ah links, the social butterfly of SEO. And like a butterfly, they are delicate, finicky creatures that will beautify your site (for rankings that is). Handle with care.

International SEO Tip #6: Think Beyond Google

Val Kaplan, Marketing Director, Sampi Marketing

China is one of a handful of countries where Google is completely irrelevant. It’s market share is currently less than 1% and the access is also blocked from the Mainland. The largest search engine in China is Baidu (about 60% market share) and SEO must focus on optimizing for that service rather than Google. Also, websites that are hosted outside of China load considerably slower than those hosted on servers within the country.

The difference is mainly due to China’s Great Firewall that filters and slows down the traffic coming from the outside. The slow loading, in turn, hurts Baidu ranking. Unfortunately, in order to host in China, a website must first apply for ICP (internet content provider) license issued by the government which can only be obtained by locally registered businesses. Solution: if a company is serious about getting in the Chinese market they should open a company here first.

Dimitri Semenikhin, Founder, Yacht Harbour

An important factor in international SEO is to remember that Google is not the only game you need to play. Russia, for example, is predominantly dominated by Yandex. Its rules and metrics are different and optimization strategies can actually differ or even cancel out in terms of SEO for Google or Yandex. Make sure you weigh the potential benefits of branching out to different regions before investing in SEO as you could cannibalize existing traffic.

Steven Macdonald, Digital Marketing Manager, SuperOffice

I believe the key to any successful international SEO campaign is to start by looking at the visits by a country report in Google Analytics (found under Audience > Geo > Location). It’s much easier to succeed with international SEO if an audience in that country already exists.

To reach 50,000 visits, we first looked at visitor data in Google Analytics and found at least 11% of visits came from Russia. We then set up a small,  basic 4-page website in Russian that covered product and contact information. We implemented hreflang to make sure Google displayed the Russian website on google.ru, and added the website to Yandex’s Webmaster Tools. Finally, we sent out an email to partners and asked that they link to our new Russian website, which led to a handful of high-quality links.

Within 12 months, this activity, which cost us $0 led to $54,000 in online sales.

International SEO Takeaway: Sadly, in some countries, our beloved Google (transparency: we are a Premier Google Partner)is the red-headed stepchild (my apologies to any red-headed stepchildren reading this post, no offense is meant). While researching what your target market is searching for, make note of what they’re searching on.

Overseas SEO Tip #7: Doing B2B In New Countries

Maxim Shomov, Digital Marketing Leader, Fair Point GmbH

From my experience, B2B SEO doesn‘t differ from regular search engine optimization. You still have to deal with the Google algorithm to rank high. However, other marketers often tend to forget that even in B2B marketing, you interact with real people, be it business owners or other decision-makers. The key to a successful campaign is to tap into their emotions. This is what makes B2B marketing harder than B2C – these people are used to marketers trying to sell them products and services.

Jignesh Gohel, Founder and Marketing Head, Olbuz

The best tip to acquire international clients is deciding what industry or brand you are planning to pitch and start studying their competitors, business opportunities and missing dots on their website/brand / or in marketing strategies. Pitch with useful information: what they are missing and how you can improve with all your research and data. Here the key part is to reach the right person of the brand you are pitching and you won half battle. I have seen most of the agencies used to sends thousands of emails with the same format has no personalized touch and will hardly attract the other party.

Chad Remp, Operations Manager, Wheeling Truck
I would state the most important thing is for international visitors to your website to know that you accept international orders. Many (I mean a lot) of websites/companies will not sell internationally, and they even state this on their website. We want to make sure our international customers understand we want their business. We have “International Orders” listed at the top of our page so foreign visitors know we want their business.

Adam Stetzer, CEO, HubShout

It is important to NOT overthink International SEO. In fact, many of the factors are identical. That being said, for international businesses, there are several considerations. There are subtle language differences, even among English speaking countries. In addition to different spellings, reference points and norms can be very different. And slang is certainly different. Be sensitive to this fact. As meetings are set up, obviously time-zone problems will present themselves. As for pricing and commerce, exchange rates can be significant – and change. If you write a 12-month contract from the US for a client in the EU, be prepared to specify what currency you will be paid in.

International SEO Takeaway: Businesses are people, too! Well, not really, but they sure do have people working there, and it’s important to remember that. Treating people like, well, people, can have an astounding effect on your B2B efforts.

What Have We Learned Today From These International SEO Consultants?

Search engine optimization is constantly evolving. What works today may not be as effective tomorrow. This is especially true in international SEO: what works in one country may not work in another.

So, before you head off to implement an international SEO services strategy,  please consider the following your new checklist:

• Do your homework on the country, culture, and dialects
• Contemplate if a ccTLD would be most beneficial or if going the subdomain route would be best for your company and campaign.
• Use your hreflang tags, but still have a native speaker make sure that the content (and your context!) is appealing and accurate – not jumbled or offensive.
• Build links! This leads to building relationships with trusted members of your international target market.
• Make sure to comply with local search engine protocol – Google does not reign supreme in all countries and failing to recognize that could come back to bite you.
• Just because you’re in B2B does not mean that customer service has left the building- adding a personal touch to communications with another business can be what seals the deal. Read up on the customs of business dealings in new territories, and comply to the best of your ability.

That is all for now, my digital darlings. Want to learn more about international SEO and international search engine marketing? Check out any one of these helpful resources written by our team below:

• How Online Marketing Helps Global Exporters Grow
• Our General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance Checklist
• Australian AO Says SEO Horror Stories by Dodgy Practitioners Need Regulation

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free SEO services consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

Updated July 3, 2024

The post International SEO Tips – Updated 2024 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

GA4 offers a unique opportunity to gain deeper insights into what drives your customers, as well as to fine-tune your marketing strategies accordingly. 

Do you want to know how GA4 can help your company grow with confidence? Get your popcorn ready. We’re about to embark on an exciting journey into the world of analytics, where rich data awaits to unlock the potential of your brand.

We’ve tapped into the wisdom of our own digital marketing analysts to bring you the most frequently asked questions and answers marketers like you have about GA4. 

With GA4, you can track user interactions across all their devices, gain greater insights into user journeys, and supercharge your digital marketing strategies. Get ready to discover the full scope of GA4’s powerful capabilities and how they can revolutionize your business. Let’s begin the journey towards uncovering the full potential of this powerful tool.

What are the key differences between Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Universal Analytics?

There have been countless changes – mostly for the better- between GA4 and Universal Analytics. Here are some of the biggest, most impactful differences that users need to be made aware of. 

Different Data Models

At a fundamental level, GA4 primarily uses an event-based data model, which adds great flexibility and granularity to your tracking capability. In comparison, Universal Analytics was more heavily reliant on sessions and page views and offered manual configuration of events with hard limits to event label, event category, and event action to describe the nature of the event. 

Biggest Takeaway: Traffic and sessions still matter greatly in GA4! But the fundamental way that GA4 handles session is different with the introduction of the session_start event and the concept of engaged sessions. This means that comparing GA4 session data to Universal Analytics session data is an apples to orange comparison that will not match up correctly. Your traffic numbers will be off from each other by design. As a rule of thumb, it’s infinitely better to stick to one data model and observe trends that occur relative to that singular data platform rather than comparing data between different platforms that are using different data models. 

Greater Customization

Universal Analytics comes out of the box with predefined reports that did a reasonably good job at a one-size fits all approach web analytics. However, the true power in GA4 is that, in the hands of an experienced analyst, it can give you powerful insights that are tailored towards your website. GA4 introduces custom definitions (parameters) that replace custom dimensions and metrics in Universal Analytics, providing more flexibility in data collection. 

Biggest Takeaway: While you can focus on migrating and replicating your Universal Analytics setup in GA4, that is missing the larger overall opportunity at hand. Your analytics should mirror your business needs and priorities and with GA4, you are able to tailor your analytics setup to meet those needs. Unfortunately, GA4 is lackluster out-of-the-box and it’s not entirely intuitive within the platform about what you need to do to get the most out of it. If you want help with your GA4 analytics, then reach out today for a free strategic consultation.  

BigQuery integration

GA4 offers free integration with BigQuery for advanced analysis and reporting, while Universal Analytics requires a premium (360) subscription for the same.

Biggest Takeaway: The native integration with BigQuery allows for more advanced analysis, but also should make you raise the question of who really owns your data. Google may not store your Universal Analytics historical data in perpetuity. Or if you wanted to leverage customized GA4 dashboards in Google Looker Studio or other visualization platform, you are at the mercy of the very limited GA4 API quota. Luckily, this integration offers a cost-effective alternative for storing GA4 data. 

AI-powered insights

GA4 leverages machine learning to provide automated insights and predictive metrics, helping digital marketing managers make more informed decisions and builds predictive audiences that can be used within Google Ads. 

Biggest Takeaway: The ability to leverage GA4 audiences into Google Ads offers quality training data based off of your website’s actual user audience behavior to optimize Google Ad campaigns. With Google ads becoming more reliant on smart automated bidding strategies, the quality training data is even more important to maximizing return on your investment.

How can digital marketing managers benefit from the improved data integration and cross-platform tracking in GA4?

For businesses that leverage mobile apps in addition to websites, the enhanced cross-platform tracking allows for a more seamless experience comparing data streams. Because Google Analytics Firebase and GA4 are both events-based models, they are leveraging similar data schema that allows for cross-platform comparison of data. 

In terms of integrations, GA4 integrates well with the core Google stack via:

• Google Ads
• BigQuery
• Firebase
• Looker Studio

This means a greater ability to take advantage of GA4’s default data-driven attribution modeling, improved cross-device tracking, and great insight into user behavior on your website.

What new insights can GA4 provide for digital marketing campaigns?

Enhanced audience segmentation

GA4 enables digital marketing managers to create dynamic audience lists based on a wide range of user attributes, behaviors, and events. This enhanced segmentation can reveal new insights into how different audience segments interact with marketing campaigns, allowing for more precise targeting and personalization.

Customizable funnels

GA4 allows digital marketing managers to create customizable funnels with multiple touchpoints and conversion events, providing a deeper understanding of the user journey. By analyzing these funnels, managers can identify bottlenecks and areas of improvement, optimizing their campaigns to drive more conversions.

How does GA4’s machine learning capabilities improve data analysis and prediction for digital marketing managers?

GA4’s predictive metrics, like Purchase Probability and Churn Probability, can provide valuable insights into users’ future actions. Digital marketing managers can use this information to proactively target users who are more likely to convert or re-engage those at risk of churning, leading to more effective and efficient campaigns.

How can digital marketing managers leverage GA4’s enhanced audience segmentation features to target their campaigns more effectively?

Develop dynamic remarketing campaigns

With GA4’s advanced audience segmentation capabilities, digital marketing managers can create dynamic remarketing campaigns that are tailored to each user’s specific interactions with their website or app. For example, they can target users who have viewed a particular product category but haven’t made a purchase yet, encouraging them to complete the transaction with personalized offers or recommendations.

Optimize audience bid adjustments

GA4’s audience segmentation features can be used to identify high-value audience segments that generate the most conversions or have the highest lifetime value. Digital marketing managers can then increase bid adjustments for these segments in their Google Ads campaigns, ensuring their ads are more likely to be shown to users who are most likely to convert.

Improve content personalization

By leveraging GA4’s audience segmentation features, digital marketing managers can gain insights into the preferences and interests of their target audience. This information can be used to create personalized content and offers that cater to each segment’s needs and preferences, leading to better user experiences and higher engagement rates.

What are the best practices for setting up GA4 for optimal data collection and reporting?

The best approach we’ve found is to spend time planning what you want to see out of your analytics. This means creating a measurement strategy that mirrors your marketing goals and trying to find ways to mirror those goal KPIs and metrics in your reporting. 

Additionally, GA4 has more robust platform reports, but requires detailed understanding of your setup to maximize its usage. Not everyone in your organization will feasibly want to get to this level of understanding, which means the better approach can be customized dashboards that answer “What questions do I want answered from my web data?”. 

In terms of GA4 configuration best practices, here is a handy GA4 checklist that is comprehensive and easy-to-setup.

How does GA4’s event-based tracking differ from Universal Analytics, and how can digital marketing managers benefit from it?

For lead generation sites with lots of forms and gated content assets, you may be able to set up detailed event parameters such as form_name, content_type, form_id to be able to differentiate how different content and different forms are performing on your site overall. You also can analyze audience segments to see if there are patterns of behavior existing on a website. A practical use case would be being able to identify what events converting users are taking on your website versus events non-converting users as a whole are taking. Is there content that answers questions for an engaged user that leads to conversion? These are interesting insights to uncover that previously with Universal Analytics were harder to come by. 

GA4’s enhanced ecommerce model and funnel reports are also significantly more robust than it was for Universal analytics. For a multi-step checkout process, you are able to clearly identify when users add items to cart, view their cart, begin checkout, and complete a purchase. This allows for greater visibility of conversion drop off points.

What are the key data visualization features in GA4 that can help digital marketing managers make more informed decisions?

While it requires intimate knowledge of your GA4 configuration, the free form or blank report allows you to set up a custom report to compare events to custom dimensions and metrics. 

In terms of other report types, the funnel reporting and path exploration reports are significantly upgraded in GA4 versus Universal Analytics. That being said, they’re not intuitive to use and require a baseline knowledge of GA4 and the events tracked in your setup.

There are limitations to comparing session-scoped and event data that Google introduced in December 2022. Unfortunately, blending this type of data together would require BigQuery or another alternative.

How do GA4’s privacy and consent features help digital marketing managers comply with data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA?

Privacy and consent features

GA4 offers better privacy controls, including consent mode and data deletion capabilities, helping marketers comply with data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

I used the auto-migration tool in Universal Analytics to upgrade to Google Analytics 4. Was this a good idea?

Unfortunately, businesses have found out the hard way that the auto-migration tool was woefully insufficient at porting over users from UA to GA4. Far from an easy button, it does not migrate the setup in a way that makes sense for most businesses. In some cases, we’d recommend that you start with a net new setup because the quality of data is unusable for those using this migration tool.

What are the top GA4 integrations that digital marketing managers should consider for their marketing tech stack?

Google Ads: Link your GA4 property with your Google Ads account to analyze ad performance and optimize your campaigns.

Google Search Console: Integrate GA4 with Google Search Console to monitor organic search performance and identify optimization opportunities.

Google Data Studio: Connect GA4 with Google Data Studio to create custom data visualizations and interactive reports.

BigQuery: Integrate GA4 with BigQuery for advanced data analysis and reporting capabilities.

Firebase: Connect GA4 with Firebase to track app performance and user engagement.

Most other software platforms are leveraging the GA4 API, but are adapting to changes to provide solutions including Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, Marketo, Hubspot, etc.

How can digital marketing managers use GA4’s conversion modeling to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns more accurately?

GA4 Conversion modeling refers to how GA4 estimates some conversions that it doesn’t observe directly based on the modeling of data. This doesn’t mean that the data is less trustworthy necessarily, but it is a clear difference versus Universal Analytics. There are a couple of main implications that a digital marketing manager should be aware of, which are that recent conversion data may be subject to change. The modeling may result in shifting of recent conversion data, so understand that numbers may change slightly over time. The other major implication is that Google Analytics is best used when thinking about patterns and trended data versus stressing over exact numbers. As it is, with Apple’s Intelligent tracking protection and increasing changes to data privacy, there is less guarantee of completely accurate data, but overall trends and sample sizes should still inform strategic decision-making.

What are the recommended GA4 training resources for digital marketing managers to get up to speed quickly?

Of course the DOM blog is a great resource! But beyond that:

• Analyticsmania.com
• Measureschool.com
• Simoahova.com

How can GA4’s enhanced ecommerce tracking features help digital marketing managers optimize their online store performance?

GA4 provides very clear pathways for evaluating checkout funnels and overall product performance. Understanding how different traffic channels are performing in terms of conversion events is critical and should help inform how conversion optimization efforts are taken on site. GA4 is not the answer to why problems happen – behavioral analytics tools such as heat-mapping or A/B testing help better with this – but GA4 can help pinpoint where conversion drop off points are happening as well as provide clues for what problems may exist.

What are the top GA4 custom reports and dashboards that digital marketing managers should create for better campaign monitoring?

The most powerful visualizations would be connecting GA4 to other visualization platforms such as Google Looker Studio, Tableau, or other visualization alternative. Ideally, to avoid the GA4 quota issue, these SEO, PPC, and general marketing dashboards are generated with integration from BigQuery or other data warehouse/database system.

How can GA4’s predictive metrics help digital marketing managers optimize their budget allocation and campaign targeting?

GA4 predictive audiences are the most likely application where it uses machine learning to predict custom audiences such as those likely to convert or those likely to churn. Keep in mind, your website needs enough of a data set to be able to have these insights generated. 

I am not getting the same kind of insights I want out of my GA4. How do I fix this?

1. Generate a measurement strategy that identifies the business goals, marketing goals,  KPIs, and metrics that are important for a business. 
2. Install GA4 through GTM. The biggest challenge is likely in this step, as there are a lot of custom CMS websites that don’t have a proper data layer setup to capture the right data in GTM. 
3. Integrate GA4 with the Google stack.
4. Generate a custom dashboard that answers the most important questions you want answered out of your data. 

DOM offers GA4 analytics setup and training if you need help with the above.

How can digital marketing managers use GA4’s advanced analysis techniques to gain deeper insights into user behavior and campaign performance?

Integrating GA4 and Google Ads data with BigQuery unleashes the ability to blend data and evaluate performance through deeper data analysis. Within platform, there are powerful insights, but to be able to manipulate and blend data together that is only possible with external solutions will further untap its potential.

What is the future of GA4, and how can digital marketing managers stay updated on the latest developments and features?

GA4 is continually evolving and is most powerful when digital marketing managers spend the time to understand its nuances. Hopefully, GA4 will become more feature rich and adjustments to the UI happen to lower the learning curve for brand new users. 

GA4 is meant to be integrated with Google Tag Manager and it would be very difficult and time-consuming to be maintained through hard-coded gtag. 

The data landscape will also likely be changing with the popularity and dynamic changes resulting from AI and data privacy laws. It is up to digital marketing managers to stay current as things are rapidly developing.

You Made It To The End?

If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, you just uncovered some crucial insights into optimizing your analytics strategies with GA4. 

With answers to 20 vital questions, you’ve gained the foundation to build a solid data-driven approach for your brand. 

Have a question you didn’t see answered above? Contact us and let us know – we’re always eager to help you grow online with confidence. 

Thank you for diving in with us, and let us know if we can support you with our top-rated marketing analytics services as you complete your GA4 migration journey.

The post 19 Popular GA4 Questions (With The Right Answers From Our Expert Analysts) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

If you have any fears about adding this must-use web analytics platform to your site, we would love for you to join us to get up to speed and have your questions answered.  

DOM President Justin Seibert and Senior Digital Advertising Analyst Steve D’Angelo will join John Murcott and Jeremy LaDuque from WooRank in a live webinar on February 22, 2023 at 12 PM EST to share their insights on making the big move.

Titled “GA4 For WordPress: Everything You Need to Know,” this webinar is intended to be your WordPress site survival guide for the big move to GA4.

Unsure how moving to GA4 will impact your data? Have technical questions about adding Google Analytics 4 to WordPress that require answers from a specialist? Want to tune in live and give your ears a break from an endless stream of Taylor Swift’s channel or that 8 hour stream of Lofi hip hop?

This is the event for you.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about all things GA4 for WordPress and prep your site to survive the big move!

In addition to answering your questions live, this webinar will also cover:

• The GA4 setup checklist (want to grab your own copy of our GA4 implementation checklist)
• Common pitfalls to avoid, including:
  • Not planning ahead
  • Not changing data retention settings
  • Not configuring Enhanced Measurement events
  • Not registering conversions
  • Not taking advantage of event parameters
  • Not registering event parameters
• The pros and cons of using plugins to deploy GA4 vs Google Tag Manager
• Reporting challenges you are going to face due to API quotas
• And more

Click here to watch on demand

Looking For More Information On Adding Google Analytics 4 To WordPress?

This move to GA4 is much more than a simple upgrade from UA – it’s a complete shift in how you are going to measure web performance.

Need an introduction or refresher to this game-changing analytics platform before saving your seat for this webinar? Check out any of these resources below. 

• WordPress: Google Analytics Installation Made Easy
• Begin Your Google Analytics 4 Training In Our Upcoming Webinar
• Is GA4 Better Than UA? Find Out In Our Next Webinar!
• Still Putting Off GA4 Implementation? Here’s Why You Can’t Wait.
• Our Top-Rated GA4 Analytics Services

The post Fear You Won’t Survive Adding GA4 To WordPress? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Google Looker Studio Templates You Need

Below you will find 4 free Looker Studio templates you can use to get started producing marketing reports using the platform. We hope they are useful for you. Enjoy!

C-Level executives yearn for continuous data and analytics. And they should because intelligent analysis certainly drives online marketing successes and failures. But the more we crave data, the more chaotic our data grows, leading to a colossal mess that doesn’t help any marketing initiatives.

Enter Looker Studio, a data display solution that allows companies to consolidate analysis efforts into a slick, clean display. With Looker Studio, marketers gain access to a myriad of analytic information, including Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and Google Analytics. And that’s just a few examples.

But what if organizing analytics in Looker Studio could be even more seamless and straightforward?

Free Looker Studio Templates

Save time and optimize more by using the following data studio templates, provided free in this article.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. By using these free top 4 Looker Studio templates, you will save significant company time and money. Instead of designing report templates from the ground up, download our top 4 Looker Studio templates for free, plug in your relevant data, and begin unlocking your campaigns’ real potential.

Free Looker Studio templates mean you save more time refining campaigns.

How to Use These Looker Studio Templates with Your Own Google Analytics Data

All the templates below are completely free to use. All you need to do is click on the yellow “Use this Template” button below the template of your choosing. This will open an interactive version of the respective report in a new window. By default, each report will populate with fabricated data from the Google Merchandise store, but it is simple to personalize the report with your own data. Simply click the grey “Use Template” button in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

Free Google Looker Studio Template Step #2

A pop-up window will appear, allowing you to select a data source(s) to add to the new report. If you have used Looker Studio in the past (you know, way back when it was Google Data Studio) and have already created the data source you would like to use, simply select it from the dropdown menu under New Data Source. If you haven’t used Looker Studio before or need to create a new data source, either select “CREATE NEW DATA SOURCE” from the dropdown menu under New Data Source and configure your data, or follow Google’s instructions for data source creation.

Free Looker Studio Template #1:

Google Analytics Overview Dashboard

Use this Template

Free Looker Studio Template #2:

Google Ads Overview Dashboard

Use this Template

Free Looker Studio Template #3

Google Analytics Organic Traffic Events Dashboard

Use this Template

Free Looker Studio Template #4

Google Analytics Landing Page Report

Use this Template

How To Use Free Looker Studio Templates

Just getting started with Looker Studio? Here’s a few more links for you to check out and learn more.

• Creating Filters in Looker Studio for Robust Reporting
• Track Looker Studio Report Engagement with Google Analytics

To get more information on Looker Studio and understand how Looker Studio Templates work, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Partner Agency before you reach out.

The post Grab These Free Looker Studio Report Templates (Updated for 2024) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Have you been seeing the acronym GA4 littering your LinkedIn feed and wondered “what the heck is that?” Likely followed by “should I care?”

The answer to the first question: GA4 = Google Analytics 4.  The answer to the second?  Absolutely (assuming getting insights into how your marketing efforts are impacting sales).

GA4 was actually first released in beta as “Google App + Web” in 2019 and then reintroduced as GA4 in October 2020. Earlier this year, Google announced it’s sunsetting the ubiquitous current version of its analytics platform – Universal Analytics, or GA3 – in 2023.

This change set the stage for 2023 to be the year that GA4 becomes the only analytics solution for any organization currently using Google Analytics. In other words…

You Have No Choice, So Just Flipping Do It!

Otherwise you’ll lose even basic reporting on how your website performs. Forget about advanced insights; you won’t even see how many people came to your site or how they got there.

On July 1, 2023 Google snaps their fingers and your Universal Analytics reporting goes away completely.  That means the 28,000,000+ websites currently using the un-upgraded version of Google Analytics have some work to do.

If your website ranks among those 28 million, here’s what the next several months are going to look like for your analytics account:

• Until July 1: all of your data will be collected in Universal Analytics.
• After July 1: you won’t collect any new data.
• After December 31: you won’t be able to access your historical Universal Analytics data in the Google Analytics platform.

(Note: if your Google Analytics property was created after October 2020, you may already be using GA4. Breathe a sigh of relief.)

So does this mean you should wait like the grasshopper until June 30th to switch?  I would urge you in the strongest terms not to wait for the following reasons:

1. Universal Analytics and GA4 pull data differently, so they aren’t apples-to-apples comparison. You’ll want to run both versions side-by-side so you can compare the two.
2. Some of the metrics – like engagement rate – are brand new, as is the user interface. Give yourself time to get educated and used to everything new.
3. Custom implementations – if you want to go that route – can take 6-8 weeks or more.  And that’s from the start date.  If you’re using an outside agency, realize you may have to wait weeks or months to even kick off.

Want more information on the end of life for Google Universal Analytics properties? Click here.

Don’t Just Settle: Build a Whole Measurement Strategy

No matter where you are in the process of setting up GA4 for your organization, you should take this time to take a step back and really evaluate your measurement strategy.

Most marketers we speak with don’t have confidence in the insights they currently receive from Google Analytics – and often aren’t even sure all the data is correct.

Every business and website is unique. Because of that, it’s highly likely that your GA4 implementation will need to be customized as well. Make sure you seize this opportunity upfront to think through a true measurement strategy before you migrate.

That way, you can take this new platform and tap into real, actionable insights into how your target audience is using your website.

Plus, Google has baked in some really cool new features in GA4. It’s more flexible and scalable than Universal Analytics and boasts some predictive features.

In other words, Google will be able to start predicting how some audiences will behave, including what kind of sales and lead conversions you will receive.  Keep in mind Google’s crystal ball isn’t perfect, although we expect it to improve other time.

Just be aware that the cost of creating all these new features is that GA4 isn’t plug-and-play like Universal Analytics.  You’ll need to spend time strategizing what kind of insights you want, then configuring from there.

Not Sure Where To Start With A GA4 Implementation? We’re Here To Help.

In order to adopt this platform correctly, it’s going to require your business to undergo a complete shift in how you measure campaign performance.

Once you get started with customized GA4 reporting, you’ll be able to make better data-driven decisions with your digital properties and marketing investments.

If you have yet to get started with your migration or have run into roadblocks, our upcoming webinar will be a great place for you to gather your team and get started.

“Is Google Analytics 4 Better? (A: It’s All About The Implementation)” launches December 15th at 1PM. Click here to get registered.

Hope to see you there!

Have questions about setting up GA4 or about the webinar itself? Reach out to us and our team will be happy to help with no obligation.

Supporting tech companies with their GA4 implementation is one of the biggest responsibilities our agency is going to have in the coming year.

Good luck in all your marketing efforts in 2023 and, as always, be generous with giving and receiving help.

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