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 July 1 2023, that's what it is today. No, it's not today. That's in the past, but it's not long in the past, hopefully. And hopefully you're listening to this not too long after July 1 2023, because Google released their new or I should say, Google stopped offering their old Google Analytics, you can no, you can no longer use the universal Google Analytics, you have to use the new G for analytics. What? Which is awful. I hate it. Everybody I know hates it. Everybody I work with.

Meredith: 1:34

Why would they do that?

Meredith's Husband: 1:36

I don't know that. There's supposedly a bunch of strengths and it's gonna be better for AI. billable. Okay, I

Meredith: 1:42

am so tired of AI.

Meredith's Husband: 1:44

Don't say that. We're gonna do another episode on AI.

Meredith: 1:46

I love AI.

Meredith's Husband: 1:47

Right. Me too. Now, I don't know, I've read the details. It's a it's like, it's cookieless. Tracking? I don't even know what that means. I don't understand most of the details.

Meredith: 1:57

I just know it's not. We're never gonna understand

Meredith's Husband: 2:00

why don't understand the benefits of why they do it. I assume there's some probably reasons behind the scenes. I don't know. But the front end of the new Google Analytics is not very user friendly, especially if you're used to using the old, the older Analytics,

Meredith: 2:15

which most of our listeners are,

Meredith's Husband: 2:17

everybody. Well, if you've used analytics, ever, yeah, you've probably used the old Universal Analytics right? Now. It's G four. It's G four. It's the fourth version, that technically the Universal Analytics, they were on the third version, I guess. But there was never really a big difference between those versions. I couldn't tell you when those happened. But this fourth one is like, wow, it's a lot different.

Meredith: 2:41

Different different in a good way. No.

Meredith's Husband: 2:48

I mean, it looks the Google Analytics platform now, I think looks a little more modern. Okay. That's one thing is it was I guess it was not the original was not very user friendly, either. Google Universal Analytics. It didn't look very pretty, this one looks prettier. But there's like no drill down. There's so many things that are missing, and it's still seems buggy to me.

Meredith: 3:09

Here's my question. All the people that have been using this and are accustomed to it, will they be able to easily adapt to this

Meredith's Husband: 3:19

man? See, I? I can't even easily adapt.

Meredith: 3:23

And is it? As of as of July 1, it's just already changed. You can't hold on? Is there a way that you can? If you don't update? Can you still hold on to it? No, you cannot. is the last to tell Google that we don't like it.

Meredith's Husband: 3:38

I think they probably have seen the feedback. Okay.

Meredith: 3:43

Is there a way? Is there a place that we can write our feedback that you know of?

Meredith's Husband: 3:49

Maybe I don't know, I don't think that would matter. I think it's too late. The boss has already left the station. Yes. But let me ask you this. What's the Why do you have a website,

Meredith: 4:02

have a website. So if people are looking to get their family or pat servants photographed, you can see my work, they can see your work without me needing to be there,

Meredith's Husband: 4:18

right. And that's it. And that's it, period. Just so people can see your work.

Meredith: 4:23

And so they can contact me if they would like to work with me.

Meredith's Husband: 4:29

Some people can contact you so you can get leads. So you can get clients. So you can make money. So you can get conversions. We call those conversions. Yes, we do. So when people go to your website, and they like your work, and you say, hey, Meredith. So I would say that's the reason your website exists. That's the sole reason your website exists, yes. To help you get business, right. Yes.

Meredith: 4:57

Oh, do you hear myself dreaming? Hold on, listen.

Meredith's Husband: 5:02

It's our dog dreaming.

Meredith: 5:03

It's not the sweetest when they dream, that and when they play.

Meredith's Husband: 5:08

So if you are just starting SEO, and you're or you're just starting with your website, you're very early in the process and nobody has contacted you. You're not getting any business to your website. You don't really need to worry about setting up conversion tracking, because just don't happen. Your time would probably be better spent doing getting people to your website first. But if you've ever had a person contact you through your website. Yes, it's time To start tracking those, yes, how the problem is that with the new G for analytics, setting up conversions is a pain in the ass. Why would they do that? I do not know. It's really. And it's better now. Now it has improved significantly in the last couple months before this launch. But we talked about this on another episode. And it took me hours and hours and hours to figure out how to set up conversion tracking. And I kind of know what I'm doing. Like, I'm not a genius, like I'm not a analytics. I'm not I'm not super technical guy, but like I should be able to do this. And this took me so long. Anyway, it's easier now. But it's still more difficult than it used to be. So I'm going to tell you what, how to do that. However, it the process can differ depending on what you use as a CRM. So you use currently 17 hats, you're switching to dubsado. There's a whole bunch of others that people use, oh, man. And if your website contact form is tied into that CRM, which this process could differ, but I'm going to say what you should do is you should have a confirmation page a thank you page. Yeah. After somebody clicks Submit, they go to a thank you page. And that thank you pages on your website. Yes, not on dubsado are on 17 hats. So most of these are actually I don't know, there's so many of these I don't know. But a common feature is when people click Submit, then they go they go to another URL, the information goes to dubsado. But the actual user lands on the confirmation page, look for that whatever CRM you're using, look for that feature, and then set up a confirmation page. Okay? Because that is by far the easiest and most accurate way to measure conversions, Hay House, there's there's other methods, but they are they're very difficult, and they're not very accurate. So set up a confirmation page.

Meredith: 7:35

And will the confirmation page tell you where they came from and tell you all these? No,

Meredith's Husband: 7:39

no, no, we just want it because the only way for somebody to get to that page is they submit your contact work. So that gives us a really reliable way of seeing how many conversions we get. And then we can see using analytics where those conversions come from? Okay, okay. I see. Because, because if you know if the one reason that our website exists is to get leads and help our business, I would say that, without that information, we can't really make good decisions about getting more leads. If we don't have no idea where the leads are coming from,

Meredith: 8:13

then we don't know where to invest our energy. Exactly.

Meredith's Husband: 8:17

Exactly. precisely correct. Meredith Oh, thank you, husband. Okay, so once you have a confirmation page, yes, you need to go to Google Analytics, you need to set up what they call an event, you need to create an event. And yeah, the new analytics is very event focused. Everything is an event, like a page view is an event A, somebody scrolls, that's an event, they watch a video, that's an event, they click a button, that's an event, everything is an event. So we're gonna set up a new event. And that event is going to be a page view. And it's going to be the page view or a page view of your confirmation page.

Meredith: 8:55

Okay? Okay. Okay. Because we know we this, this,

Meredith's Husband: 8:59

this, this portion, I can do this part of the setup, I can do a blog about, right, I will do a blog about if you want to see a blog about how about this, if you want to see a blog, a little demo, that's how you do this, raise your hand. Then when you get home, or whatever you're wherever you are, when you have access to the internet, go to marriage husband.com. Look for the contact button and just let me know and just send me a note. We'd be like, Yeah, I'd love to see that.

Meredith: 9:23

Yeah, you have to remember it. It's not easy. It's not easy to if you can just do it right now do it now,

Meredith's Husband: 9:29

because or just let me know somehow, if you want to contact me on Instagram or whatever. Okay. So once you have set up an event, that's not the end, it used to be in the old, it used to be in the old Analytics, you just go into the admin section, you click a button, you say, Here's my conversion page, and it's pretty much done. With the new one, you got to set up an event. Now that's not that's just an event each No, no, just your confirmation page. So now you need to set up a conversion. You need to go it's a different place analytics when the admin Yeah, so now you need to go and you need to create a new conversion. And you need to say this conversion is when that event happens. Okay, so when

Meredith: 10:11

somebody, when somebody contacts you and submits a contact form completes a contact form on your website. That is called Making a conversion. That's a conversion. Yes. Okay. You have to tell them to set it up. They don't just know that.

Meredith's Husband: 10:29

Well, you have to tell Google. Even in the old system, you had to tell Google Hey, what Does your your conversion page Google doesn't know what your conversion pages but you just tell them and that's pretty much it. Now it's a two step process, you got to create an event and name the event and then you got to create the conversion. And the conversion happens when that event happens. I don't know why it's Tuesday. It's very confusing

Meredith: 10:49

to me. There's got to be they need they must be tracking something?

Meredith's Husband: 10:55

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It doesn't really matter what I think anyway. Sure. So then once you've done that, then then you're then you're good. Okay, then you can sit back and relax, and wait for the conversions to roll in. Now, I would say, if you have never had any conversions, you probably don't need to worry about this yet. But once you start getting conversions, you want to you want to do this right away? It would it would be but there are the things that might be better might be a better use

Meredith: 11:22

of your time to set this up. But conversion, and if you

Meredith's Husband: 11:26

know what you're doing less than 15 minutes, if you don't know what you're doing. Well, it took me hours to figure

Meredith: 11:32

out oh, boy. So you're gonna have a how to, I'm gonna have a How to Blog. Eventually, the Fed Yes.

Meredith's Husband: 11:39

The first time anybody contacts you on your website, somebody comes from Google, and they contact you. If that's never happened, you probably don't need to do this right away. But if that's happened, you want to set up conversion tracking, because conversion tracking is not retroactive. So let's say you start getting conversions, and you don't set this up for six months or 12 months. And then at some point, you're gonna want to know this, right? So then you go and look and you set up, it won't track six months ago. And a lot of times when you are looking at conversions, you want to see the trends. And a lot of times for a photographer to stay up to date or a lot of businesses, there's some seasonality. So you're going to want to compare like this winter to last winter or this summer to last summer, right? So you want to get this set up just so it can be collecting that even if you don't plan to look at it right away.

Meredith: 12:27

Okay, it's good just to just that it's accumulating what it should be rather than just wasting.

Meredith's Husband: 12:36

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's, and this is the, this is the one thing like I said, this is the reason your website exists. This is the one thing that you want to keep track of this is all I'm going to recommend doing with the new Google Analytics. Supposedly, there's a bunch of other stuff you can do. But

Meredith: 12:51

my guess is there is there. Is there a cliffnotes to this update. It's called

Meredith's Husband: 12:57

this podcast.

Meredith: 12:58

Thank you for doing it for us, my husband. You're welcome. Oops,

Meredith's Husband: 13:04

oh, this podcast is over.

Meredith: 13:06

Bye. Bye. Can I get this? If

Meredith's Husband: 13:10

you're finding these episodes helpful, I created something that I think you're going to find even more helpful. It explains the SEO process similar to these episodes in a way that I hope is new for you, but it also puts them in order so that you know what to do first and second and third through the entire SEO process. And I hope saves you a lot of time by giving you an actionable step by step plan. It's called the SEO roadmap, and you can find it at Meritus husband.com/roadmap.