Meredith's Husband: 0:42

Hey, this is Meredith husband, I've got some SEO advice for you. But I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use there is a major change coming in the world of Google Analytics.

Meredith: 1:02

Oh, there is.

Meredith's Husband: 1:03

Yeah, it's pretty this with AI? No, this is, this is one thing. That is not happening with AI. Let's see what happens next week. So far.

Meredith: 1:14

Kenny, I affect SEO? Can I do SEO?

Meredith's Husband: 1:19

Sure. I'm probably yeah, I've worked with I've had projects where clients are already using a supposedly AI tools. Right. But yeah, I mean, AI is gonna come up with come up with strategies for SEO, and what keywords should you use? It can write for you. But we talked about that, like in a recent episode, how you shouldn't let, I don't think it's a good idea to create your content with AI. It's, in the long term, in the short term, it might work probably will work. But in the long term, I don't think it'll work. So um, yeah, I mean, I'm not doing it for my for Meredith husband.com. I do have a couple of test sites where I'm seeing what happens.

Meredith: 2:01

Interesting, you'll have to get back to us on that.

Meredith's Husband: 2:03

But what's happening, I know that you're on the edge of your seats, you just can't you tell? I'm waiting to hear what's gonna happen with analytics. Oh, boy, there's a new platform coming there. Replace it, like Google Analytics has been around forever. Not forever, but like a long time. And it's really valuable gives you some really helpful information, because it tells you, hey, where are some weak, how much traffic you're getting? What's happening, where the weakness is, where your strength is, it really it kind of provides a, I like to think of as like a treasure map to improving your conversions. Like to making more money from your website, if you don't have Google Analytics, it's going to be it's you're just shooting in the dark, like, you got to know kind of what you who likes to

Meredith: 2:48

shoot in the dark. Not terribly, I probably shoot into a wall. And then whatever it was, I was shooting with just smashed my face and break my glasses. I

Meredith's Husband: 3:01

can see that happening. So Google Analytics is really valuable. And what's happening is Google Analytics, they're relaunching the entire platform. So they have this new thing, this new platform called out conquer this new platform coming out called G four, G for Google Analytics

Meredith: 3:19

isn't good. And four isn't 123.

Meredith's Husband: 3:23

I don't think the G stands for good, but

Meredith: 3:25

sounds like a jet. before.

Meredith's Husband: 3:29

But anyway, I don't know exactly. The reasons why they're doing this. I have. I mean, there are some reasons that they say, you know, find makes sense. And then there are some reasons that I kind of I feel everybody in my industry hates the new GE for Google Analytics, my colleagues, we hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate why it's terrible. It's so awful. Why? Because all the use all the useful information that we have used for years and years and years, is next to impossible to find in this new platform, or it's just not there lately. So why should we do that? Here's my feeling. So there. So the reasoning is that, oh, they're going to start integrating. They have another tool called Google Optimize, where you can do split testing. It's really cool, actually. And they're going to integrate, yes, optimize, and they're going to integrate that or they say they're going to integrate that with Google Analytics, which, fair enough that would that could be useful. But what also, what I feel they've done with a new platform, is they they've tried to make it at least look very user friendly. Because one thing with the original Google Analytics is there's a ton of data there, there's a ton of stuff, and you kind of have to know where you want to go in order to get the useful information. It wasn't very hard. I mean, to be honest, like 90% of what was in the original Google Analytics was not useful to me, or the people I work with. It's just kind of extra. So the new version doesn't really have any of those. Let's call them bells and whistles. And it looks a lot easier looks a lot friendlier to us. It looks more what I would call bubbly. It's just that's exactly so ready. Let's see what I think they did is they're trying to appeal to people. This is gonna sound bad. They're trying to is going to try to appeal to people like us to consumer and at the expense of nice, we expand I have a good thinking you are very good consumer, at the expense of people like me who are using that to get actionable insights into what, how to make websites better. So for me and my colleagues, like the all the information that we used to use to be our go to like, here's what you look at, here's what you look for. We can't even find it anymore. It's a pain. Oh, correct. Like, for example, I have moved some websites to this new g4 platform, and setting up converts, setting up conversion. So conversions you can imagine would be an important thing to track

Meredith: 6:12

and remind remind the listener what conversions or whatever

Meredith's Husband: 6:15

action you want people to take, like on your site, it's contact me, right? On, on an e commerce website, it would be like by now, whatever the action is that you want people to take. So tracking those conversions is really important, right? You want to know, not only how often is that happening? How is it happening? Are the people coming from Google? are they leading to conversions? Are the people from Facebook or from Pinterest? Or how many pages do they visit? Or how many times did they visit or which landing page, all this stuff and stuff. So just setting up conversions is kind of like the number one thing that you need to do right to be able to track any of this stuff? Yeah, it took me the first time I hit this. And this in the old system, and the old Google Analytics, this took like, 20 seconds to do you set up conversions. It's very easy. And this new system, it took me about four weeks to figure out how to do it. Yeah. And I like to think that I kind of know what I'm doing. With Yeah, with this with this. So the fact that it took me so long, just that's just one example.

Meredith: 7:20

Oh, boy, didn't you google how to do it?

Meredith's Husband: 7:24

And I? Yeah, I mean, I would only work on it for like an hour at a time. And then I would give it and then I would give up. But I did that for like, I've spent probably close to 10 hours trying to figure it out. Google. Me, that's one example. And a lot of the other metrics. So things that you might want to look at, if you're using Google Analytics, it's like, okay, so let's see, where are people coming into our website? And are certain pages working better than others? Are people bouncing off some pages, like some page might lead to a lot of conversions, another page might lead to none? Well, good luck finding that and the new analytics. Yeah. Are you

Meredith: 8:02

serious, but

Meredith's Husband: 8:02

you could find it? Super, super simple.

Meredith: 8:05

So my question is, my question is, can you just keep the old one.

Meredith's Husband: 8:09

So there has been a notice, if you have logged in, if you have the original Google Analytics, and you have logged into Google Analytics, anytime in the past, I think couple years, you would have seen a notice up at the top. And it would it says something like, Hey, the new G for Thor screw g4 is coming, you're gonna need to switch by I think it's July 1 of this year. And until now, myself, and Mike, all the colleagues that I know, have just continued to use the original analytics, we have not switched, and we tell all of our clients, like the new analytics sucks, let's just stick with this one, because it's better. And in the back of my mind, and I think a lot of my colleagues minds are, they're going to fix it. Their Google under, they're gonna hear all this backlash, that is all over blogs in my industry again, and they're gonna help so they never have fixed and Google, or I should say, July one is now approaching, and now we have to switch. The old Google Analytics will no longer be available.

Meredith: 9:08

Who can we call? What letters can we write?

Meredith's Husband: 9:13

So time what I have is I hired this Oh, let me back up. There is another tool called Google Data Studio. And what it does is it just lets you build what they call visualization, visual.

Meredith: 9:31

Visual will isation. Wow, that's new that I pronounced the word

Meredith's Husband: 9:37

correctly. And it's kind of you normally would, you would not have to do this with your Google Analytics data. Because Google it set Google Analytics itself kind of did this for you. But I hired someone I reached out to someone who specializes in building those dashboards. And I said, Build me a dashboard for Google G for information. And this is the information I want to say this is these are the these the graphs I want to see. This is the info I want. Please build it. Now. He knows exactly. He knows exactly where to fino. He know what he did. He knows exactly how to find that information. And he wouldn't find he built a new dashboard for me. So I have essentially given up I sent to Google Analytics. Good give up. I just created

Meredith: 10:25

my own. So can other people use yours?

Meredith's Husband: 10:29

Yeah, they can really well, they can go to marriage. husband.com/analytics. And you can, if you're logged in, you will need to be logged in to your to whatever Gmail address you use in order to access Google Analytics. It has to be Gmail, of course, and you will need that you will need an Analytics account. But from there you you will be able to click a button and say this is the property I want to look at. And you will get what I have put on that dashboard, what I think and for me, it's what I use now. That's what I actually use. It's the information I need for SEO. It's what I need to actually get actual what I call actionable insights, and God and do stuff so that I can, so I can make more money so I can get more leads, so I can improve myself. That's

Meredith: 11:16

great. So you took a problem, you took a problem, you got to ask for help you outsourced somebody to get that help. And now you have a tool that you can help others when

Meredith's Husband: 11:31

there is there is another option. You don't have to do that. Obviously you can you can use them. Maybe you like to new g4, I have no idea. If if you log into Google Analytics, there is now right now. So this is as as we're speaking, this is February. I don't know how long this is going to be active. But there is an option that Google says, Hey, if you want to transition, click here, and it will give you some guidelines, and they claim that they will move over all your settings. Now I don't know exactly what that means.

Meredith: 12:04

Okay. I mean, you trust to

Meredith's Husband: 12:07

be honest, I would rather them do it than try to do it myself, which is what I did. And that was a nightmare. Yeah. So if I had not shifted to the new g4 platform by now, this is what I would be doing. I would click on that little, you'll see a banner at the top and kind of just ask them to do it. Because when after this thing happens again, I don't know what they're going to do exactly. It might be super helpful. It might not. But after the fact, if you wait till after that date, I also don't know what's going to happen. Like it might be really hard, kind of like the millennial millennium, the millennial millennium.

Meredith: 12:46

So you would advise people to have Google move their stuff over for them, see if if they like it. And if they don't like it to go to Meredith's husband slash analytics,

Meredith's Husband: 13:00

it's husband.com/analytics. That's what I would call what I would if I were in the if I were doing it now.

Meredith: 13:07

Americans husband.com has no apostrophe,

Meredith's Husband: 13:09

correct no apostrophes in URLs, just want

Meredith: 13:12

to make that shirt just you never know someone could get frustrated.

Meredith's Husband: 13:17

That's what I would do. If I were, if I if I still needed to make the switch. By the way, actually, you do have to make the switch in order for the new dashboard to work. So I guess you should go you should go to if you have not switched already, if you set up Google Analytics in the last year, there's a very good chance that you already set up g4, they probably have pushed new accounts into setting up the g4, which is the new the new one.

Meredith: 13:47

For Okay, that's good to know.

Meredith's Husband: 13:50

So that it so you do need to go through and eat, you need to do one of two things. You either need to go through and do that, click that button at the top of the screen and say, Please convert everything for me. Or you just need to wait until July one. And they're claiming the if you don't do anything by that date, they're just going to do it for you. Again, I have no idea what that means or what exactly they're going to do. You can wait. What would you recommend? If I were in that situation? I would probably do it now. Because on July one good, the Google team is going to have a lot of work to do. Transitioning all these things over. It might be a shitstorm it might be fine. But it might be a disaster. Again, I don't know.

Meredith: 14:35

But also if you do it now then you'll have more time to learn it. Although I used to have the frame of mind if I had a bag of Oreos, that I might as well just eat them now. Yes, and then burn all the calories later. So I wouldn't listen to me in terms of

Meredith's Husband: 14:57

that sort of way of thinking has rubbed off on you on to me, but if I have like chocolate in the house, chocolate, and I started eating I might as well just eat it all in kids and then I don't have it and I won't I won't have to get sick tomorrow from chocolate. I'll just get all Yeah, I don't bite again things I don't. That's where I do. So that's what I would do. I would do the transition. Now I would ask them to migrate your stuff and just it's I'm sure it's probably a very simple walkthrough, click click click and they'll do something for you. Then take a look and if you don't like it, then go Up to

Meredith: 15:35

married husband.com/analytics MEREDITH husband.com Dash, forward backwards,

Meredith's Husband: 15:42

very easy to follow.com forward slash analytics. Forward slash. Yeah. And it's very simple. There's not a whole lot of stuff there, but it's the stuff that you need and it's all right there should be easy.

Meredith: 15:57

That's, that's very nice. That's the it's kind of boiled down version, no smoke and mirrors, everything you need

Meredith's Husband: 16:04

one stop shops to g4 on yourself. Then, good luck. Good luck. All right. Hope that helps.

Meredith: 16:12

Thank you. Bye, bye.

Meredith's Husband: 16:21

I hope that helped. I hope that helped your website. I hope that helped your business. I hope that helped give you a little bit of confidence that SEO was not this convoluted, cryptic, crazy thing that nobody can understand. If you did like it and you found it helpful. Please share it with a couple of your colleagues. Tell them what you like. Or more importantly, tell me what you liked. Let me know interview. leave a review on Apple. Tell me what parts you like. And I'll try to do more of those parts. And again, thanks for listening.