How to Prepare for the Google Analytics IQ Exam

This week, we concluded our Study Group for the Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam. I took some notes that might be helpful if you plan on taking the exam, as well.

The material that Google provides (to study for the exam) is comprehensive. It’s divided into two classes: Basics and Advanced. Below you’ll find transcripts of each of the lessons (as of April 2020).

If you want a TL:DR; skip to the bottom of these lists.

Google Analytics Basics Class Outline

1. Introducing Google Analytics
   1. Why digital analytics?
      1. Customer journey mapping: the path to loyalty
      2. Adopt new data strategies for better marketing
   2. How Google Analytics works
   3. Google Analytics Setup
      1. Set up the Analytics tag
      2. View the history of account changes
      3. Diagnostics messages
      4. Common account issues
      5. User permissions
      6. Using App and Web Properties
   4. How to setup views with filters
      1. How to verify your filter
      2. About regular expressions
      3. LunaMetrics Basic Google Analytics Filters
      4. LunaMetrics Regular Expressions guidebook (PDF)
2. The Google Analytics interface
   1. Navigating Google Analytics
   2. Understanding overview reports
   3. Understanding full reports
   4. How to share reports
   5. How to setup dashboards and sharing
3. Basic Reports
   1. Audience Reports
      1. Overview of Audience Reports
   2. Acquisition Reports
      1. Traffic Source dimensions
      2. Analyze Channel contribution
   3. Behavior Reports
      1. Exit rate vs. bounce rate
4. Basic campaign and conversion tracking
   1. How to measure custom campaigns
      1. Best practices for creating Custom Campaigns
      2. LunaMetrics 4 steps to better campaign data in Google Analytics
   2. Tracking campaigns with the URL builder
      1. Campaign URL Builder tool
      2. UTM Tracking template
   3. Use goals to measure business objectives
      1. Match Types: Begins with, Equals to, & Regular Expression
      2. Goal templates in the Solutions Gallery
      3. LunaMetrics Deleting Goals in Google Analytics
   4. How to measure Google Ads campaigns
      1. How to link and unlink your Analytics and Google Ads account
   5. Course Review and next steps
      1. Monitor account health performance
      2. Diagnostics and troubleshooting

Google Analytics Advanced Class Outline

1. Data collection and processing
   1. Google Analytics data collection
      • How Analytics tracks a site using domains and directories
      • Data limits
      • Data privacy and security
      • Check your web tracking code setup
   2. Categorizing into users and sessions
      • Defining sessions in Analytics
      • Change the duration of session timeouts
      • Measurement protocol data collection
      • Linking Google Analytics to Google Ads
      • Linking Google Analytics to AdSense
      • Linking Google Analytics to Google Search Console
   3. Applying configuration settings
      • About view filters
      • About goals
      • About channel groupings
      • About content grouping
      • Custom dimensions and metrics
   4. Storing data and generating reports
      • Data collection limits
      • Dimensions and metrics overview
      • Dimensions and metrics explorer
      • How sampling works
      • Core Reporting API overview
   5. Creating a measurement plan
      • The Google Merchandise Store membership plan
2. Setting Up Data Collection and Configuration
   1. Organize your Analytics account
      • Example account structures
      • Working with multiple trackers
      • About roll-up reporting
      • About cross-domain tracking
   2. Set up advanced filters on views
      • About view filters
      • Advanced filters
      • Regular Expressions
      • Regular Expressions guidebook
      • Custom filter fields
   3. Create your own custom dimensions
      • Custom Dimensions and metrics
      • Custom Dimension scopes
      • Custom Dimensions with Google Tag Manager
   4. Create your own custom metrics
      • Set up custom metrics
      • Custom Dimensions and Metrics for developers
   5. Understand user behavior with event tracking
      • Event Tracking Template
      • Set up Event Tracking
      • How to track outbound links
   6. More useful configurations
      • Demographics and interests reports
      • Internal site search
      • How site search metrics are calculated
      • Five questions to ask of your Site Search data
      • Calculated Metrics
      • About calculated metrics
      • Channel Groupings
      • About channel groupings
      • Custom channel groupings in GA
      • Content Grouping
      • About content grouping
      • Enhanced Ecommerce
      • About Enhanced Ecommerce
      • Setting up enhanced ecommerce
      • User ID
      • About User ID
      • Set up the User ID
      • Data Import
      • About Data Import
      • Refund Data Import example
      • Data import step by step guide
3. Advanced analysis tools and techniques
   1. Segment data for insights
      • Create a custom segment
      • About segments
      • Advanced segments worth their weight in gold
   2. Analyze data by channel
      • Channel segmentation walk-through
      • About attribution modeling
      • About channel groupings
      • About multi-channel funnels
   3. Analyze data by audience
      • Audience reporting walk-through
      • Use the cohort analysis report
      • About benchmarking reports
   4. Analyze data with custom reports
      • Custom report walk-through
      • About custom reports
      • Dimensions and metrics explorer
4. Advanced marketing tools
   1. Introduction to remarketing
      • About remarketing audiences
      • Display remarketing Google best practices
   2. Better targeting with dynamic remarketing
      • Create audiences for dynamic remarketing
      • Use dynamic remarketing to show ads tailored to your site’s visitors
   3. Course summary

That’s a lot- give me the summary!

Yes, it is a lot to know. Now you know how valuable the Certification is! It’s not easy to learn all this material and pass this test!

Unfortunately, as well, the price to pay for this free material is listening to Google pitching their products a lot (including for Google Ads and their remarketing product). To skip the sales pitch and get to the meat, you could consider reviewing these items…

The Most Important Lesson

If you only have time for one single lesson, I’d suggest the most important one is about how to create a measurement plan for your business (Transcript).

This tells you what you should look at (and maybe, what you should ignore) within all of Google Analytic’s data with a goal of actually helping your business.

A Course Overview

Perhaps you want to learn all this material covers in a short summary. This can give you an idea of all the material the course covers, in case you want to attempt to earn the IQ certification someday. If this is you, read the transcripts for the two course summaries (the last items in the two lists, above):

• Summary of the basic material
• Summary of the advanced material

Another Study Group?

I’d love to host another study group covering Google Analytics (and maybe other certifications). If you want to hear when I do another study group, just signup for a free account at The SEO Game Plan and I’ll tell you when the next one starts.

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