Digital marketers today, are experiencing confusion between the new GA4 channels and old marketing channels in Google Universal Analytics (UA). Of special concern is the new Unassigned catchall channel category.
Learn how to correctly set the utm_source and utm_medium parameters to ensure that all traffic generated from marketing efforts gets attributed to the correct marketing channel. Thereby ensuring no traffic gets attributed to the catchall of “Unassigned”.
How to make web accessibility a part of digital marketing efforts
in his latest column for Martech, interviews a leading experts on Accessibility with a focus on accessibility and digital marketing.
Through interviews with Meryl K. Evans, CPAC, Kim Krause Berg, CPACC and Lea Scudamore, he explores what most organizations are doing wrong and things they can do address accessibility short comings in their digital marketing efforts. It is only by addressing and fixing these that company can increase the ROI on their digital marketing efforts.
17 industry experts interviewed about bounce rate: its importance and how to improve it.
Alan K’necht was one of 17 industry experts interviewed about bounce rate. The opinions on its importance varied between the experts and even what should be done about.
August was a busy month for Alan K’necht. He spoke at two different Digital Summit conferences less than a week a part. First one in Washington DC. on August 4 and then in New York City on August 10. His topic for both events was “Making Your Data Talk/Sing For You: Use the Power of Storytelling to Influence Action“.
During his session Alan covered (from a cognitive science perspective) why the use of visuals is more memorable than simply presenting data. Additionally, he demonstrated how to create create effective data visualization combined with story telling techniques to create a memorable presentation and influence your audience.
In NYC, Alan did something a little differently.
He started off by sitting on the stage, telling everyone a story about a major anniversary that happed over the weekend.
He asked the everyone, if they knew who “Tim Berners-Lee” was. Only 1 person put up their hand. Alan was taken aback with this low number.
He then continued, “it was on August 7, that Sir Tim Berners-Lee announced he was working as special project via an Executive Summary, The project was called the WorldWideWeb.” He concluded with “it is because of that project that we were all here today” and then started his presentation.
The attendees loved the presentation, and afterwards he received lots of positive feedback from the attendees.
Alan K’necht in this column for Marktech, interviews a world leading expert and strategist on UX (User Experience) Jared Spool. The topic “digital marketing and UX”. Spool explains “why user experience can’t be divorced from product and service”. He also shows how UX impacts the success or failure of digital campaigns.
Alan K’necht is presenting once again at a live conference on August 4, 2022 in Washington DC. This is his first IN-PERSON presention in over 2 years and he’ll be at Digital Summit Washington DC.
Details on the specific topic are still being worked out, but you can be assured they will involve analytics and making your data sing!
If you’d like to attend you can use the special discount code for the event SPEAKER75 (saves you $75)
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is rolling out at a rapid rate (since the announcement of the end of Google Universal Analytics (UA/GA3)). Marketers and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals are starting to discover that many of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that they took for granted as being available out of the canned UA reports are simply not there.
For SEOs the biggest complaint, is they can’t generate a report showing conversion by landing page by channel. SEOs want to see conversions (including revenue) by the search engine the user came from broken down by landing page. GA4 still shows you conversion by channel (including organic search). However, if you add the dimension “Landing Page” there is a disconnect.
This Google Analytics 4 implementation guide is for Google Tag Manager and GA4 users. It complements the official documentation and provides a guide on how to attribute conversions to specific landing pages by the default channel group.
This guide, shows you a simple solution to solve the problem and how to create a conversions by landing page by channel report. You require Admin level access to the Google Tag Manager (GTM) account.
How To GA4 Guide: Conversions by Landing Page & Channel
Step 1: Referrer Variable
Ensure the GTM Variable “Referrer” is enabled. If it is not, add it.
Step 2: External Pager Referrer Trigger
Create a trigger in GTM that fires every time a page loads if the referring site’s domain is not your site (traffic referred from another site). For example, if your site’s domain is “mysite.com” set the trigger to fire on Window Load where “Referrer” “does not contain” “mysite.com”.
Trigger Name: Landing Page – External Source Trigger fires on: Set to Some Windows Loaded Events Condition: Referrer “does not contain” the domain of your site
Step 3: Tag to Capture Landing Page
Create a GA4 Event tag “Landing Page” and set Triggering to “Landing Page – External Source”
Name the event. We named it “landing_page”. You can name anything your prefer, just ensure it meets GA4 naming conventions.
Verify you have the correct Configuration Tag set as well.
Step 4. Test Your GTM Set-up
From GTM enable Preview and then open your GA4 account “DebugView”.
In your GA4 account select “DebugView” under the Configure group.
You will see all the initial events that fired in GA4
That’s it! GA4 automatically associates the “page_location“ (aka “landing page”) to the event “landing_page” as well as the source and medium.
Step5: Configure your Report
Within GA4 Explore configure you report as follows
For the columns setting, you can choose any conversion event (i.e. event count) you are tracking or revenue.
This generates the following:
If you prefer you can use the Ecommece Revenue variable
This generates the following report (Revenue by Default Channel and Landing Page) :
Use the filter option (SEOs) to see only traffic from Organic Search and assoicated landing pages from organic search.
Add the dimension of source to see which search engines are driving traffic to which landing pages and how much revenue etc. they generate. This produces the following report: Revenue by Organic Search Source and Landing Page
Once you’ve captured and tied a landing page to a specific source, you can explore a lot of different options for your reporting.
Summary
We know Google Analytics 4 has put much of the reporting requirements on its users and provides fewer reports. The above guide provides the solution for one of the most common Google Analytics reports requested by SEOs that of Conversion by Organic Search Landing Pages.
Hope you found this helpful. If you need any help with UA to GA4 migration or configuring GA4 reports feel free to contact us.
The above solution was researched and developed by Alan K’necht (K’nechtology Inc.) in partnership with Anil Batra (Optizent Academy).
On April 13, Alan K’necht participated in an online group discussion about leveraging Google Analytics for bloggers. We discussed the impact of the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will have on measuring successful blog. Additionally, we took answer a number of questions from online attendees.
Here’s your chance, if you missed it or want to review all the material just follow the link and you’ll have access to the recording and a spreadsheet of our Q&A portion.
Google Analytics 4 Examined with Canadian Speaker& Analytics Wrangler Alan K’necht
On March 31, 2022 Alan K’necht was the featured guest on the web radio show Webcology. This nearly one hour interactive discussion, highlights the issues many are facing with the adoption of Google Analytics 4.
The Webcology recording is available for your listing please here
A great round up of different SEO experts opinions on Key Performance Indicators to measure successful SEO campaigns by Roger Montti from Search Engine Journal. I agree with most of the experts.
For my overall perspective, read it to the end and see my opinion.
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August was a busy month for 
He started off by sitting on the stage, telling everyone a story about a major anniversary that happed over the weekend.
Alan K’necht
