Managing your Google Analytics Account (9/2/2020)
In this week’s Office Hours we talked about how to best manage your Google Analytics account.
While having a Google Analytics account won’t “help your SEO”, having good data in your Google Analytics will help you make better SEO decisions. Those good decisions will result in more traffic and more customers. That’s why it’s so important to have Google Analytics on your website (don’t forget goal tracking)!
In this week’s office hours we talked about some problems with managing a Google Analytics account. Have you ever seen such messed-up data in a Google Analytics account that you just wanted to start-over? Should you? That’s what we talk about, this week.
We also took some time to review recent news within the SEO community as a whole. I suggest a way for you to keep up with changes in Google as it relates to SEO, as well.
Do you have questions you’d like to ask at the next Office Hours? Signup to join The Colony and you can participate, too!
Transcript
David
Welcome to office hours. Today is Wednesday, September 2nd. We’re going to talk about SEO, and I’m going to put Ali on the spot because I really, we were talking to off-screen about successes, and Ali had a super success that I’ve just thought we can’t not talk about that. Can you tell us about your success last week?
Ali
Yes. Now my analytics dashboard is appropriately set up. Thanks to David, and we’re getting my weekly update, and we noticed that, when I say we, I mean me, I know I noticed that a particular page on our website with a specific service got like five hits, which is unusual for that. So we’re going to capitalize that by doing a blog post on the same or similar topic this week.
David
I love that you’re using the data to inform your strategy. That’s great. That’s exciting. That’s kind of the point of setting up all of that stuff. I’m glad you didn’t just set it up and walk away from it, but you used it. That’s, that’s exciting. I had success in that. I started a new client this week, so that’s always a good thing. They’re kind of in a different industry, which is always interesting. I’m even using the processes I’m in providing through curious ants. Sometimes I forget to use them. Like now, I’m forcing myself to start at step one and do step two. So I’m drinking my own Kool-Aid. Drinking my own poison. What’s the analogy I want to use there? I’m starting there and working through it. I set up yeah, set up analytics, set up the goals, do this work into the process. So you’re not alone. I’m doing it with you because I got a new client. So that was that’s kind of fun. So.
All right. Well, we had two interesting questions from Lavonya two this week, and I wanted to get to those first. Ali, if you have questions, of course, we will go to those as well, but I’m going to close some screen things here, so I don’t get distracted by all this other screen edge that’s opened. Lavonya, you’d asked a question about Google analytics, asking if you no longer use a website, how can you remove it from Google analytics? That was your first question.
Do you have any context for us? Why did you want to remove it?
Lavonya
Well, the one that has been set up is a domain I no longer use anymore. I’m planning on selling that domain name. So that’s what I was wondering how I can remove it?
David
If you’re going to sell it, you might want to keep it going. So if you do sell it, you can show that there is traffic.
Lavonya
There’s no website attached to it.
David
Oh, okay. If it’s all zeroed out then, and no one else has access to that or needs that traffic history?
Lavonya
No, what I did was transferred the website to a different domain.
David
Okay. Okay. You set up a new Google analytics [Interrupted]
Lavonya
Yes
David
account on that domain, and you’re going to get rid of the old one. There, if I was playing around with this, just to make sure, and it all has to do with how you set it up in the first place did when you had that domain, that someone set up the Google Analytics account for you, or did you set it up yourself?
Lavonya
I played it myself, but I think I did it like completely wrong. Because for some reason, I signed up with Google Analytics IQ. Okay. I think it’s set up as a demo part of it. I just need to try to get rid of it.
David
Okay.
Lavonya
I think it’s set up that way too, and also demo and also not demo so I can go in and check it. I just want to make sure I move everything.
David
Yeah. It usually doesn’t really hurt anybody to keep analytics accounts even if there’s no traffic. However, if you eventually get enough clients and forget where the number is, I think it’s a hundred accounts. That’s the maximum number of accounts that you can have in a Google Analytics account. At that point, you might have to remove things. Let’s share my screen, and I will show where we might find this information. We go under admin, which does everything for our accounts. This is the account. I’m looking at the, what we used to be the SEO game plan is now curious ants, and it can go to account settings, and I can simply click move to the trashcan, and that’ll get rid of it. You’ll see the trash can is actually almost the recycle thing from here. You can restore it; I think it keeps it in there for two weeks, just in case you made a mistake, but that’s how you can delete it, but I deleted it at the account level, not the property or the view level if that makes sense.
Lavonya
You said you deleted it at the create account level?
David
Yeah. There are three levels of a Google Analytics account. There’s the account level, property, and view under account go to account settings. Up at the right canned corner, there is a move to the trashcan button. Okay. Now, you usually wouldn’t want to do this. Like for instance, let’s say this was a client that you no longer work with. If that were the case, I would ask them to remove you or go to user management and remove yourself. If you’re not careful, you could really hurt someone else’s Google Analytics data. Like they might want it, but if this is an account that you own, then that’s how you could delete it. Does that answer your question?
Lavonya
Yes, it does.
David
Okay. There was another question you had. Let’s see if I can pull that up. That’s the wrong screen. There it is. With Google Analytics, you ask; Is it possible to remove a website and start over with Google Analytics with the same website?
Lavonya
I think that answers the quotes on the first question, right?
David
Well, you said you had more details.
Lavonya
Okay. Basically, like I’m going through, setting up my account in Google analytics, but, if I think I did something wrong or it’s not, I don’t think it’s set up, like, I want it to, and I just want to start all over. Go back through the steps to set it up, but it’s just pulling the information from the time I set it up the second time. Is that correct?
David
Yeah. If you start over, it’ll only show you data from that point forward. Because Google would have no idea of your interactions before that point. If your information is completely wrong and inaccurate, that’s fine. But that would be a pretty extreme circumstance. I’d almost hesitate to do it. You can always add notations within Google Analytics. What you can do is put a notation in there and say, I fixed this problem here. So you know, Oh, that’s when it happened. I’d almost rather keep it together unless it was so inaccurate. Like I’ve seen circumstances where pages were missing from the Google Analytics code. They didn’t have it on it. At a certain point, you add that you added to every page, and now all the pages are reporting. Well, in that case, I still wouldn’t start over. I’d still make a notation. I’ve added a code to all the pages now.
Lavonya
Okay.
David
I’ve also seen errors made where someone just adds the Google Analytics code to a site’s homepage and not the interior pages. Well, okay. Once you fix it, then I would just keep that same historical account because at least you have the data for that one page in that case.
Lavonya
Okay.
David
What was the nature of the errors in the analytics account that made you want to start over?
Lavonya
Just because I’m missing something. I didn’t put the code throughout the whole page. I think Google is only tracking the home page and the contact page, I guess.
David
Okay. Yeah. So I would just use the same account.
Lavonya
Okay. Instead of deleting it, just go back through the steps and as I go back through the steps and see where I went wrong or correct. Whatever, I think.
David
Yeah. You’re using a WordPress website. Right? I recommend, what’s the name of that tool? There’s a new plugin from Google. Where is that? It is, Oh, it’s called Sitekit.
Lavonya
I think I have that
David
Okay. Well, Sitekit should add the code to every page of your site for you automatically.
Lavonya
Oh Okay. I think the only reason I have that is just from your instructions. I believe. I don’t think I got it from anywhere else on there.
David
Yeah. When you install Sitekit, you still have to take some extra steps to add the analytics code to your site. I recommend good using Google search console as a second step, but that’s nice to have, not a requirement. Still, Sitekit will automatically add it to every page, your site, unless there’s a serious, some serious development problem on the website, which is unlikely.
Lavonya
Okay
David
But a plugin, there’s also a plugin called monster insights, which I used to do the same.
I just liked the site kit because it’s integrated with several other Google tools, like, not only Google Analytics, but Google tag manager and Google search console and page speed insights, just all in one. It’s just really nice to have that all together. You can see the data from within your WordPress install, which may be valuable or not. I always go to the Google Analytics site, but you want to save yourself a step. I highly recommend the Sitekit plugin, and that should solve your problem. You just need to tell Sitekit which of the Google Analytics accounts you want it to use.
Lavonya
Okay
David
Unless there’s some severe error where you’re over-reporting, let’s say you had the Google script on there twice on every page. Every page sent two visits, well, that would be like double the visitors than you would really have, that might be a problem. And I don’t know. I still probably wouldn’t start over.
Lavonya
Okay. I’ll just go back through and see, but something tells me I did something wrong. I still, but I get everything I get on my notifications every Monday. That’s coming through okay. But I just feel like I did something wrong.
David
What you can do is, you could, you’re using Ghostery, right? to prevent Google analytics from executing?
Lavonya
Yes. That’s another thing I need to go back through and see if I set that up correctly because I’m not sure if that’s set up correctly. Because I think it’s still tracking me when I go to my own site.
David
Yeah. Well, you can pause Ghostery just to make sure. And Then pen up real-time reporting and Google analytics, and then watch yourself as you visit every page of the site and watch the analytics grip trigger on every page just to make sure it’s on every page.
Lavonya
Okay. You say pause Ghostery and then watch it and see if it tracks me going to the H.
David
Well, go to what they call real-time analytics, which is at the top left-hand column. It’s real-time analytics. Otherwise, you have to wait a day for the analytics script to populate, but it shows it in real-time if you do real-time. When you can see, Oh yeah, it is watching me visit every page. That should tell you whether there’s a problem with the script, or maybe you’re just not getting a lot of traffic yet.
Lavonya
Okay.
David
All right. Well, Ellie, did you have any questions? Those were Lavonya two questions.
Ali
I don’t think so. I didn’t have time to go back in and reset up my Google data studio. Do I have to do anything to like wipe it to be able to start from scratch? or
David
So, no, don’t think so. All you have, what I’m recommending you do is just start over with the steps.
Ali
Okay.
David
Step one, click on that link and create a new copy of that report. Once you make a new copy, it’ll ask you to set up Google Analytics with it again, and then just use that one. I think it’s that easy because what we figured out after our conversation is I found where I was looking for the data source. Still, because it was pulling from search console, not Google analytics data, I was afraid you’d have to literally go through every item in that report, change it manually. I thought, what, for the time, I would just start over, and you can go into your Google data studio. If you go log in to Google data studio, you could find your old one and just delete it. Then, start over with step one of setting up a monthly report now and just follow those products. I also recorded a video.
Ali
Okay.
David
Hopefully, that helps you make sure you’re following the steps. Your friend is sniffing your head. (referring to her dog)
Ali
I am listening to you even though I looked distracted because he always has to get into trouble when I’m on a conference call. It’s like Murphy’s law. As soon as we hang up, he’s going to be passed out. Right now, it’s like, I get into, wow. Hopefully, next week will better. Yeah, but, yeah, last week was a very productive call for me, but then I didn’t get to. After we did a lot of stuff that day, I didn’t do many things after that.
Ali’s dog
Woof, Woof
David
Oh, bark bark. Well, I thought if we didn’t have any questions, we’d go through something that I like to review every month. It comes out from a website that I wanted to check called search engine round table. I’m going to share it on my screen. And this is the monthly report that they do on what’s changed in Google over the last month. I just review this every month. I actually have a little alert set up to help me keep track of that. This has come out to see what’s going on. I highly recommend it again. Search engine round tables, their monthly web webmaster report. It goes through a recap of everything that’s changed in Google over the last month. Most of the time, the changes are relatively small. A lot of times, there are rumors that by the end of the month are either subsided. For example, here’s their information about Google algorithms over the last month. Their previous most recent article says, oops, what we thought was now rhythm change. It’s just a glitch, and everything’s back to normal. It’s almost like when you hear a rumor about SEO, pause for a moment and don’t just follow down because it’s so funny. You can practically hear the conversation. Uh oh, there’s a coming algorithm. Oh, no, there’s a significant algorithm shift. Nope. It’s all back to normal. Just, you got to be careful about SEO rumors and stuff like that. Other things that have changed that might be worthwhile are Google search console is starting to roll out some new tools. That’ll be really interesting. I think you all, at this point, have this Google search console installed on your sites. A lot of great information there. The Google API isn’t really related to what we do. You know things going on with the tools. You’ll hear about it here. Let’s see, some of the SEO and announcements from Google over the last month are really interesting right now, Google. I don’t know if you’ve done a Google image search lately, but now they’re starting to add banners or badges to each image, telling you whether you have a license that photo has a license that you can use under which circumstances you can use it. You gotta be careful about borrowing images from other websites and putting them on yours. Make sure you have permission before you do that. This will help because many people go to Google image, search to find it interesting, or photo to put on your blog post.
Ali
Yeah. That’s why we use, Unsplash and like those other kinds of things. We want to avoid Googling something similar, and then the image from our website pops up, but not as our website. So
David
Yeah, I believe that Google is moving more and more towards an image-based search engine, and images will be more critical, especially unique photos. In fact, I hired someone to take a bunch of pictures of me, for me, for my website, just because I wanted to avoid having to rely on stock imagery on my website.
Ali
I was briefly working in real estate before the pandemic hit. That was like one of the number one things they touted is video. Don’t get comfortable with yourself real quick and do videos because that’s what people respond to.
David
Well, they say YouTube is the second biggest search engine. Second, only to Google. I actually spend more time streaming stuff on YouTube than I do on Netflix. At this point, really in YouTube is my go-to for entertainment.
Lavonya
Yeah. They have full shows on YouTube.
David
Yeah. That’s good stuff. Besides, when you have a question, you just want to watch someone do it on YouTube.
Ali
Well, every single time I fold a fitted sheet, I have to Google a video.
David
Every time I tie a bow tie, I did the same thing.
Ali
I honestly don’t understand how people folded fitted sheets before the internet.
David
Another thing that changed recently is the Google support of article structured data for rich results. That is kind of something that’s buried deep within curious ants. Still, if you’ll eventually get to it, the idea of structured data is a way of encoding information on your websites that Google understands what that is for. There’s a particular way to encode something on your website to tell Google this as an article instead of a landing page, or this is a video or an image. If you use the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, it automatically includes all your blog posts as articles for you, which is one reason I like it. The rich results test is a tool that helps you verify whether you’ve using structured data accurately.
Some other structured data issues have come over the last month fixed, some information about what they call mobile-first algorithm from Google. Right now, all new websites are being evaluated from what they’re calling a mobile-first perspective. That means when Google crawls web pages, they’re assessing whether or not you should be indexed or rank on the mobile experience of your website, not the desktop. It’s not the desktop version that matters. It’s the mobile version that matters. Just because, so I guess this announcement has to do with new sites launched in all domains, do not default mobile-first indexing. If you buy a new old domain, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a mobile-first index. They’re rolling it out. They’ve been rolling it out for a while, but it’s something we need to think about.
Let’s see what I think. So this is an interesting one. Have you heard of the sandbox, the Google sandbox?
Lavonya
No
David
This is a theory that Google penalizes or holds back new websites from ranking. It’s called the sandbox. The rumor is that if you have a new website, Google doesn’t like you and will hold you back. Apparently, there was a prominent theory about this. A significant view about this and what this article says is that it never really was a sandbox. Google’s always denied that there’s a sandbox for new websites. However, whenever you launch a new website, it still feels like you’re getting nowhere. And it’s very frustrating. And it’s easy to blame Google. Google says, Nope, Google is not indexing your site because we have no reason to index your site. No one’s linking to it, whatever. So don’t blame Google. If you know your sites aren’t indexed yet, it’s your fault for curious and does it the right way. Word count is a ranking signal. It’s always an exciting conversation. I typically recommend that pages have no less than eight hundred words on them. On each page, Google in this article says, they’re not counting the words on a page to rank a page, and that’s not why I say 800 words. I suggest many words on pages because the more words you have on the page, do more opportunities. It is for your page to get long-tail traffic from Google. We like to think we know what our customers are searching for on Google.
We do keyword research to help identify that, but we can’t really predict that someone could search for so many possible phrases to find us. So the more warrants we have on a page, the more naturally we’re going to talk about things that our customers are looking for, that we’re not even anticipating they’re looking for them. Google basically says, Hey, we don’t count the words and rank a page with 800 words one step better than a page with 799 words. It doesn’t work that way. It’s really about, I’d say it’s really about having more opportunity to rank because you have more content. You can theoretically rank a page with 300 words on it, right. It’s only going to rank for so much. What were you going to say, Ali?
Ali
It’s just increasing your odds content-wise that you’re going to talk about something that someone’s searching for.
David
Right. Right, I mean, it’s so frustrating. I see pages that have 200 words on them, outranking some of my clients with 800 words. Okay. For that phrase at that time, it’s not about the number of words on the page, like you can have a really well-received page with very little content, but that means the number of phrases that they could be searched for us. Very small, links and link building is an essential topic with an SEO. It’s really what makes Google different from other search engines. Google does not rank a page just on what’s on the page, but once to see what other websites say about you. This is just a reminder that Google isn’t really indexing the links. They’re indexing pages and using the links to help find new pages.
Often, we talk about link building, where like, can Google index the link? Yeah, that’s kind of part of the question, but we can lose track of the fact that Google doesn’t really index links. It indexes pages, the pages, the links just help them find those pages. We haven’t talked a lot about XML sitemaps. Are you guys familiar with what an XML sitemap is? An XML sitemap is a way of listing all the pages on your website so that Google can see what’s everything is on your site. It’s a particular page on your site that basically lists everything that exists.
There’s other information you can send to Google along with a list of pages that includes telling Google when the last time you modified that page was some people like to gain that system and think that, Oh, if I just keep changing the last modified date on my XML sitemap Google’s gonna think the contents new. This article is warning you that’s stupid, by the way, was it over the last week.
Lavonya? Do you know that WordPress 5.5 came out?
Lavonya
I think so. I had to update mine recently. They just updated mine yesterday.
David
Okay, so WordPress 5.5 is important because it’s the first time WordPress automatically sent out XML sitemaps with WordPress. And if you’re using the Yoast SEO plugin that has been doing that already for you. But now we’re press launches with an XML sitemap. So, if you don’t have Yoast now, Google can now find it and use that to crawl your site. If you go to curious ants and search for “XML sitemap,” there’s some information on there. It’s worth checking because sometimes, you might not want every page of your website sent to Google. For instance, if you submit a form on your website and it goes to a confirmation page, that’s not a page you have Googled if you know about it, right.
It just doesn’t help anybody for Google to send traffic to that page.
Lavonya
You’re saying the key, Yoast SEO because I was about to delete it.
David
Yeah.
Lavonya
Because I’m following your instructions for SEO right now. No, that wasn’t right. It just to delete it, but you’re saying keep it because it can also help us, I guess, eliminate some of the steps. Maybe.
David
I like, I like Yoast plugin a lot. What I don’t like is the green button, the green light. Right. Just ignore the green light, keep the plugin installed. And you’re fine. Right. Just ignore whether it says the green light’s good or not. That’s, that’s my recommendation with Yoast. Don’t pay for it. Don’t do it. Don’t mess with the green light, who cares and, but take advantage of all these other wonderful things, like an excellent XML sitemap, the article markup on every blog post automatically done for you. These things are worth doing Yoast for.
Plus, they’ve recently made some significant improvements to speed. The Yoast plugin was getting bloated, and they fixed that recently. So I do recommend, yes. I just don’t recommend worrying about the green light. There’s some other. Oh, there’s an exciting SEO myth-busting video series on YouTube. If you want to look that up, that’s pretty interesting.
This is an interesting article about bandwidth. Oh, I won’t even go into that.
Here’s another that came out this month. Links from Wikipedia do nothing for your site has no SEO value.
Ali
not surprising.
David
Well, first of all, it’s tough to get a link from Wikipedia. Right? They placed themselves very well. If you follow link building, you know that’s been the case for a long time because all the links are no-followed. Recently, Google made a change where they said, okay, we’re going to use no-follow as a suggestion. They may reserve the right to give you SEO credit from a no-follow link, but Google is confirming, or at least maybe there, maybe we don’t believe them, but they’re saying, Hey, these Wikipedia links don’t help your SEO efforts.
No, they can send a lot of traffic, and that traffic might be good. If I got a link from Wikipedia, I would not turn it down. But I don’t think that you will rank better due to it. Here’s an article which we could kind of talk about for a long time. Guest blog post links have zero value. I recommend in the game plan to use guest blogging to build links. Google came out explicitly and said that those links do not provide value to you. Now, this is one of those conversations where we were like, okay, do we believe everything could go tells us, Google does not make money from organic search, right? They make money. When you get frustrated with organic search and pay them for paid search ads, right? That’s where they make money.
Also, they do not want people to be able to game the system. They do not want people to be able to rank number one because that’s not fair. They want an algorithm that can’t be gamed. They can say the algorithm is objective. Sometimes they’ll say stuff that we know is not true. They’ve said this before. And then it was so funny last time they officially said it a month later, they reneged on it. My argument has always been what’s the worst that can happen if you do a guest blog post. Well, if you do a crappy guest blog post, that could be bad. It could be considered a bad link, and Google might get mad at you.
But If you do quality guest blog posts, you’re going to be on a quality website, talking about a topic on which you are genuinely an expert that might send traffic. Even if it doesn’t help your Google ranking, I think that’s worth it. If you’re trying to do guest posts to game the system, well, that’s your own fault, that’s stupid, and Google’s more intelligent than you. But, If you’re trying to do guest blog posts to get yourself out in front of people who are one to see and know that you have the expertise, then go for it. Like that’s a legitimate form of marketing, whether or not it helps your SEO. I’d argue it does help your SEO. The problem is it doesn’t help your SEO. If you’re just doing crappy guest blog posts on anybody who will take your website link and who will list you alongside Louis Vuitton handbags and all kinds of illicit stuff. Don’t worry about that. Those do not help your Google, but a regular guest blog post. I bet you it will, and then canonicalization, which is a whole topic in itself. I do have an article on curious ads about canonicalization. Canonicalization is the idea that sometimes websites will accidentally duplicate two copies of the same page with a different URL. Canonicalization is a way to tell Google, Hey, we know these two pages are identical, but we want you to treat this as the proper one. If you use the Yoast SEO plugin, guess what it automatically does that for you. You don’t have to worry about it.
Another good reason to use Yoast, but it’s a very confusing topic. And a lot of people get confused. That’s some of the news with Google over the last month. Anyway, I hope that was kind of a helpful little overview. A lot is going on. It’s always hard to keep up with stuff, but that’s one tool I use, and I hope that helps you keep up with stuff as well.
Ali
Yeah, definitely. I’m always down for things that’ll make my life easier.
David
We have got a couple minutes left is, do either of you have any additional questions?
Lavonya
Well, I think last week, I think Ali was talking about, they were getting calls from their website, and I’m not tracking the calls that I was going to ask. I don’t remember if we talked about CallRail or do anything about CallRail? Is that good for Google to help track her calls that she gets from her website?
David
I don’t know if Allie was talking about it. I definitely recommend the service CallRail. It’s a paid service, but what it does is you install this code on your website, and then whenever someone visits a site CallRail really quickly before the user can even see it changes the number as it’s displayed on your website. So you see a different number. Well, CallRail knows if someone calls that number, that person they know who saw that number because that’s the only person who would have seen that number. They can then go in and say, we know the person who called this phone number found you because they did a Google search, and they landed on this page.
Ali
Doesn’t Google have a similar service where basically you can choose phone numbers that you like to identify to yourself and then use them? So if a particular number calls a specific number, where is that from? Because so used it in a particular advertisement or on the website or?
David
They have a feature like that under paid search. I don’t know if they have a feature like that outside of paid search. There might be something associated with Google, my business, right.
Ali
I have to check my notes from my realtor’s office talking about how you can use different phone numbers on like lawn signs versus business cards versus website, to know what marketing strategy is actually getting you traffic. It also helps with privacy because then the person doesn’t even have your phone number.
David
Right, CallRail is more sophisticated than that. You can do that with CallRail, or you can actually just install it on your website, and it not only knows this call came from your website, but it knows the call that came from the website, came from Facebook, Google, or Bing.
Ali
Would it then like, would that person be able to then keep calling that same phone number and always get routed? Or would it change?
David
Yes
Ali
That’s so interesting. In theory, you could have 10 different customers with 10 different phone numbers for you.
David
Yes, you could. You could. There are ways to manage that, to make sure that it doesn’t get confusing.
Ali
Then, like if somebody verbally was like, Oh, you should give this place a call and give them their phone number, like,
David
Well, so then you get into a fascinating conversation about who gets credit for that. Right? So if I call a company because I do a paid search click, which gets attributed to paid search, and then I give that number to you, Ali, I referred the client to you, but it was the paid search in reality. Related to me, that’s related to you, so it would come across as a new paid search phone call, even though I’m the one who gave you the number.
Ali
Right.
David
So, with smaller businesses, that’s harder to do because you only get so many calls so often, but with the more prominent companies where they’re getting a lot of calls, this could be super helpful. I think it’s an underrated conversion tactic because you get many people calling you from your business. Sometimes people just want to talk to you, and they don’t feel comfortable under certain companies. They don’t feel comfortable submitting information over a web form or only human nature. So they just wanna talk to somebody. Right? And so this may at least, what’s working,
Ali
My last company was big. It was a national pediatric health care company. That ended up happening more because people would call us first. After all, we were a big name.
David
Right.
Ali
Not really knowing anything. The next thing you know, you’re on the phone for an hour, just giving advice, like, which you know is nice, but not really productive. Long-term, the company I’m with now, because it’s much smaller. It’s private. It’s more focused. Like we don’t get that as often. We usually get more purposeful.
David
Yeah. Yeah. But that’s CallRail Lavonya. Does that answer your question about it?
Lavonya
Well, I was looking up something else, and when I see CallRail, I thought we were talking about it last week. I think Ali had a question that she said they were getting more phone calls or something. That’s why I’ve mentioned I’ll CallRail. I thought she was saying phone calls.
Ali
The problem was last week because my goal tracking wasn’t working with our email submission. So I was checking with my director to see like, are we getting submissions or getting phone calls rather than online admissions. But it really was an issue with how the goal was set up because now it’s working correctly. I saw that we did have two goals completed last week, which is excellent: two out of five. So it was great.
David
No, I think we also talked about the idea of putting a Google voice number on a website so that it doesn’t go straight to your cell phone. That’s what I do on reliableacord.com. I don’t want you to call my cell phone. Yeah, you too. You can call my cell phone, but I don’t want a stranger calling my cell phone, and I don’t want that cell phone number on the internet. I got a Google Voice number, and it just goes straight to voicemail. I can check that, and I get that voicemail.
Ali
I’m wishing I did that. As a board member for my co-op, I’m running for and like within 10 minutes of sending out an email saying that I had people calling my cell phone and wanting to meet and wanting to talk, and I’m like, can you please send me an email? Like an average adult person? No, just email me, please. Like everybody else does. I’m like, Oh, I should’ve put a good Google voice number on there and stuff.
David
Yep. Free number. Why not? Besides, Google needs that information for value, too, because they transcribe all those phone calls. That way they have all this great information about you and them can market to you better.
Ali
I got three echo dots in my house. Like I have no privacy, is I just, it is what it is.
David
Me too. I have given up on privacy.
Ali
People who think they’re living off the grid. I’m like, no, you’re not.
David
I mean, I’m in the middle of the grid. I am the center of the grid just might as well listen.
Ali
Honestly, you should see like every single advertisement on every platform I go on right now is for dog-related products because it’s what I’m focused on right now. It’s what I’m talking about. It’s what I’m searching for. Literally, everything is dogs. Yeah. It’s convenient.
David
Yeah, exactly. Well, Lavonya, I think we are getting off track. Does that, did we even answer your question?
Lavonya
Yeah. You did, you did.
David
I’m Sorry.
Lavonya
No, I was just giving that because I thought it would be good information for Ali because I was okay. For some reason, I felt that she was trying to track her calls too for her website.
David
Yeah. Okay. Good. No, I’m glad you brought it up. I install it for all my clients. Because it’s a huge win, it’s one of my secrets to early victories. It’s hard to SEO. It takes time to ramp up to put all this work in, and eventually, it starts working. The first couple of months, it’s slow. If I install CallRail in the first month instantly, I double my leads because they usually aren’t tracking their phone calls. They just, those are gravy. Now I can take credit for phone calls only by tracking them. It’s like, oh, I’ve got this guy doubled my business overnight. Really never getting all of those phone calls. Now. They just know the business is coming from my work. It’s kind of one of my secrets. I don’t feel like it’s misleading. I hope it’s not dishonest.
I’m really just trying to show them. They’re getting many phone calls from their website than they weren’t even paying attention to. And I want them to know that. I want them to consider that website leads, especially from search because I’m working hard. I want them to get these leads, and I want them. Yeah, it’s so funny. Eventually, some clients get more phone calls and get one form submissions and have no idea. They thought nobody was contacting them. In reality, many people are contacting them because they just weren’t tracking their phone numbers. In fact, it’s so crucial for me. I pay for it for my clients. I don’t ask them to pay for it. Cause it’s insurance for me. It shows them I’m doing my job.
They’re more likely to keep me around longer for the price. It’s, it’s an investment in my clients. So I just cover it for them,
Ali
Okay.
David
Well, all right, well, thank you too. It’s good to see you.
Ali and Lavonya
Thank you.
David
Hope you all take care. We’ll look forward to talking to you next week. Hope your doggie is better trained by next week.