Google Analytics for Local Businesses: How to Set It Up

For organizations of all sizes, Google Analytics is a valuable tool. When utilized correctly, it produces useful data that may aid in the making of key business decisions in internet marketing or SEO operations.

We'll go through five key actions that local companies may take to set Google Analytics effectively in this article. Take a look at it below!

When utilized properly and correctly configured, Google Analytics is a very powerful and efficient tool. This provides us with valuable information about our website, our visitors, which pages are working well, and maybe even what search phrases we're using, especially when it's linked to Google Search Console. There's a lot of useful information here that may assist us in making informed business decisions about our web marketing or SEO efforts.

1. Exclude bots and spiders

Now, there are five crucial stages we'll go through today to help us set our Google Analytics account as effectively as possible. The first is to keep bots and spiders out. This is significant since bot traffic accounts for up to 25% of total traffic, according to some research. We've all seen some of those cases of extremely clear bot traffic if we've gotten extra detailed with our Google Analytics accounts.

So, under Google Analytics, there is a lovely little tool that we can use to accomplish this. There's a beautiful little box that reads Bot Filtering if you go to Admin > View > View Settings. What this does is it takes information from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and ensures that it is filtered against a list of known spiders and bots.

2. Filter spam and personal traffic

The next phase will be to separate spam and personal traffic. Now, isn't it true that faulty data is worthless data? We'll have a hard time making proper business judgments about our SEO efforts or internet marketing if we don't have reliable facts.

As a result, it's critical that we obtain as much precise information as possible. There will always be some margin of error, but the more we can do to reduce it, the better. To filter our own traffic, Go to Admin > View > View Filters and then Add Filters. What we want to do is make sure that our IP address, as well as the IP addresses of our staff, our home office, and our real main office location, are all filtered out.

We can do this by going to Google and typing in "What is my IP." You'll be able to locate your IP address, and from there, you'll be able to block it.

3. Set up goals

Setting goals is the third step. Goals are really essential since setting them allows us to measure our progress, right? It's all about keeping track of your accomplishments. By heading to Admin > View > Goals and then New Goal, we can create goals.

Goals with a specific destination

We may be able to build up a variety of different goal kinds, and it all depends on your business and what you're looking for. However, a thank you page or a destination-based objective is one of the most popular.

Consider this scenario: you're an HVAC firm seeking to get new clients, and you want to know how well your website is functioning, which pages are bringing in traffic, and what type of URL path (or target route) is being followed.

Using a destination-based goal is one approach to measure that. We want to make sure that whenever someone fills out a form, they are directed to that thank you page, and that every time they engage with that thank you page, they land on it, it can be considered a goal. This is quite beneficial in terms of gauging the success of whatever we're aiming for, whether it's our company objectives or what we're attempting to do that month or quarter.

Event-based goals

Another form of goal is destination-based goals vs event-based goals. There are more than two types of goals, but we'll just discuss two today. Setting up event-based objectives is a little more difficult than setting up destination-based objectives. It's not impossible, but it's a little more difficult. Event-based objectives have nothing to do with a certain page or URL, but rather with the actual event that occurred, as you might expect.

For example, if a user fills out a form or clicks a certain button, these are instances of event-based goals that may be tracked. Each has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. If you have any particular parameters in the URL and they don't match exactly, you might not be able to count for that objective if it's a destination-based objective.

You may get around this by changing "equals to" to "begins with." Learning regular expressions is another alternative, and it's probably a little bit better. That can assist us in sorting through the many possibilities and providing us with more precise information.

4. Connect GA to GSC

Connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console as number four. Now that we have these two strong reporting and information tools, we want to make sure they can communicate effectively with one another. As we all know, Google Search Console has a wealth of information about our organic search, including precise search queries, specific pages, how they're doing, the average position, and so on.

We'll double-check that it's linked to our Google Analytics account. Now, we can accomplish that by navigating to Admin > Property > Property Settings, and then selecting Search Console from the drop-down menu. Now, before we get started, double-check that your Google Search Console account is active. That is always the first step. So, if we can get it set up, connecting those two should be a lot easier.

5. Use UTM tracking codes

Finally, but certainly not least, employ UTM tracking codes. UTM tracking codes are an extremely efficient tool for us to measure the efficacy of individual campaigns, as well as where our users, website visitors, and what specific sources, media, or campaigns were effective in that respect.

For example, you may include a UTM tracking code in your Google My Business link profile so that any users who arrive from Google My Business may be precisely identified in your Google Analytics account as visitors who came particularly from Google My Business. This must be done on a regular basis, not in the sense of Google My Business, but on a campaign-by-campaign basis.

So, if you're a smaller, local firm with limited time or finances for whoever could be working on this, it could be best to focus on just a few of the larger campaigns, anything that's a little more permanent, or any single huge campaign. Perhaps you're hosting a local event or running a special offer every few months. Those may be occurrences for which we wish to use UTM tracking codes to track the success of our marketing.