With the move towards GA4, it might be a good time to review your analytics software – are there any better alternatives out there compared with Google Analytics? That’s what we’re covering in this episode of the Majestic SEO podcast – with Chloe Christine from CC Digital, Amanda White from Amanda White Digital, Jean-Marc Courtiade (Matomo Consultant & Trainer), Petr Janošík from Smartlook and Piotr Korzeniowski from Piwik PRO.
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David Bain
What are the best alternatives to Google Analytics? Welcome to the Majestic SEO podcast and live stream. I’m your host, David Bain. And over the next 45 minutes or so, I’ll be joined by a panel of SEO and analytics experts to discuss why now is good time to review your analytic software. What are the pros and cons around different available analytics options, and how to future proof your analytic software, and much, much more. So let’s get straight into introducing our big wonderful panel today. So let’s start off with Petr. Hi, Petr.
Petr Janošík
Hi, David. So I can start with my introduction. I’m Petr Janošík, CEO at smartlook.com. Smartlook is helping companies analyzing their user behavior. Especially, we are focusing on product managers, UX designers or marketing specialist. They’re based in Czech Republic, but also we have additional offices in UK and in the US.
David Bain
Superb Okay, well, thanks so much for joining us today. I we’ve got some another Petr. But this one is called Piotr.
Piotr Korzeniowski
Hi, everyone. My name is Piotr I’m the CEO of Piwik Pro. I’m joining you from Poland, and at Piwik Pro we consider ourselves the best successor to Universal Analytics. Thank you.
David Bain
Okay, superb. I’m gonna get the challenging names over first of all, so we’ll go to Jean-Marc next.
Jean-Marc Courtiade
Hi, everyone. I’m Jean-Marc Courtiade. And I work as a freelance consultant in web analytics, especially in Matamo and a bit in Piwik Pro, and also in SEO. This is where my background is at first, and I am based in France. And yeah, it’s nice to be here.
David Bain
Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Well, let’s move on to Amanda. Now, Amanda, thanks for joining us.
Amanda White
All right, David. So yeah, I’m Amanda White, I’m based out in sunny or not so sunny Cornwall in the UK. And I mainly focus on SEO and PPC and do my own freelance consultancy, which I have done for about two years. But prior to that, about 10-12 years in SEO and PPC agency and in-house.
David Bain
Thank you, Amanda. And also joining us today, Chloe.
Chloe Christine
Hi. So yeah, I’m Chloe. I work as a freelance. I specialize in analytics and Looker/data studio. So really excited to be part of this particular podcast
David Bain
So Google at the moment is changing from Universal Analytics to GA4. So quickly, shall we should we stick with you for that one there? If an SEO or analytics professional is not sure about whether or not to move away from Google Analytics or what GA4 is about, is it a good idea at the moment to move to GA4 in the meantime?
Chloe Christine
Definitely, the Universal Analytics will stop working, I believe, is in June of this year. Although there’s there’s a lot of suspicion within the industry that that will get pushed back again further. So if you don’t move over to GA4 or find an alternative, which I think we’ll have some good suggestions for in this chat, you will struggle to accumulate the data that you need to be able to properly analyze the traffic that’s on your website, because you’re not allowed to continue using the Universal Analytics.
David Bain
Okay, pushed back further than June. Amanda, is that something that is likely to happen?
Amanda White
Yeah, I mean, we’ve seen it happen in lots of areas of Google all the time, they always push back on things if they’re not quite ready. And I do feel like GA4 might not quite be ready. There’s new things being released all the time, you know, you’ll be working in anything, I can’t quite get the same, not exactly the same data, because it’s not going to be the same data. But there’s times you want something similar, and it’s not there, and then you’ll come back. And then there’ll be something that’s more like what you’re looking for. So I think they’re adding constantly all the time. I feel like we’re guinea pigs at the moment. We’re giving it constant data. And we’re constantly pushing those boundaries and Google and learning from that on all the time and hopefully bringing in lots more bits that we need and we used to.
David Bain
Piotr, you represent an alternative analytics offering. But is GA4 something that you’ve looked at?
Piotr Korzeniowski
Oh, yes, definitely we compete with Universal Analytics and obviously, since GA4 came up on the scene, we also had to compare it to it, and it’s definitely a different beast. We are not currently a guinea pig, we don’t have it installed on our main page, but we definitely tested on the site just to see what it is. So if you think about just plugging it in and collecting data, that’s probably not the best idea because it needs some configuration. First, it’s not a plug and play solution as Universal Analytics has been. So it is a good idea to think about the switch before you commit to anything.
David Bain
Petr is a GA4 something you’re actively using at the moment.
Petr Janošík
Yes, in the company, we are using that definitely. But also we are using Smartlook. It’s kind of like additional tool, it can be alternative. But I would recommend to use both because I still see GA as a tool, which can show you great data about customers where they come from, from the channels, how they convert and which converts best. But it’s still more like tracking visitors but not tracking user behavior. So these days you need to have a tool for analyzing user behavior properly. And I think it’s better in GA4 because they’re trying to improve that, so now you can see better user behavior, and they are trying to help you to understand like lifecycle of the customer. But it’s still kind of complicated and it’s not so user friendly, I would say there are better alternatives for analyzing user behavior.
David Bain
Okay, so a great point there about the fact that a standard analytics package like Universal Analytics, or GA4 doesn’t necessarily offer absolutely everything. And I certainly want to incorporate that in the conversation a little bit later on, in terms of what other software is out there. And what other areas are important to measure and have data on. But let’s just go to Jean-Marc briefly. First of all, in terms of GA4, what’s your experience?
Jean-Marc Courtiade
I don’t use it. I used to work with Universal Analytics on a great many clients accounts, etc. But I think that we are talking a lot a lot about the features of web analytics solution. But we tend to forget, I think this gives the GDPR regulation that we have to apply, we have to use. and in this case, neither Universal Analytics, or GA4 are GDPR compliant. Universal Analytics has been banned in three countries in Europe, France, Austria and Italy. And GA4 is actually not acknowledged as a GDPR compliant solution unless you use proxy server, which costs a lot. And that just removes a lot of data, which is needed to proceed with a good web analytics and with improvements etc. So, no, I don’t think it is a good solution, actually. I don’t know what Google is going to do with this. But I think first off, it’s really hard to use regarding the features and functionalities, everybody is making a lot of efforts to get on it, and it’s hard to use. And just to finish with this, I see a lot of customers of my customers going from using GA4 and in parallel multiple or another solution, just to make sure that in case GA4 is banned officially from the EU, they will still have data.
David Bain
Wow, I wasn’t up on my analytics legality and whether or not different analytics packages are compliant with different legislation and legal or illegal in different countries? So I don’t think I was aware of that. Do you think there are companies that operate internationally but are based outside of those countries that you mentioned Jean-Marc, that aren’t aware of the fact that they may not be complying with the law by using Google Analytics in those countries?
Jean-Marc Courtiade
Yes. what I see is that in Europe, companies tend to get on alternatives. It depends on the countries by the way. In the US, it tends to be a bit, I wouldn’t say backwards, but they don’t have these regulations. for now, so they tend to still use Google Analytics and GA4 in this case. But if you look at some big websites, like Coca Cola, for instance, or HubSpot, whatever they using, they no longer use GA4, they use, in this case Matomo, I think more companies were working on getting away from GA4. The big question is, what is Google going to do?
David Bain
I’m gonna stick with you Jean-Marc for one more question, because you’re also a Matomo Analytics specialist, and I’d like to go around the panel now and actually ask their opinion, if they weren’t using Google Analytics, or if they wanted to recommend other software, obviously, they can be the software that lets the company perform as well, you can talk about the pros of using that that’s fine. But in terms of Matomo, why would someone use that instead of Google Analytics?
Jean-Marc Courtiade
So let’s talk about the functionalities. As for now, they are pretty similar to what we used to know in Universal Analytics. So you don’t have to learn a lot of things just like you would do using GA4, that’s the first thing. Second, it’s pretty easy to install, you have many solutions, you can install it on your own server or use a SAS cloud solution. The other thing is that your data belongs to you – you’re not sending your data to Google will do what they want with their server. And the way you can access these data, those data is that you have to use an API. And talking about API, if you want to use GA4, if you want to get to a higher level of usage, you have to use their API with Google Big Query. And so you have to learn this, you have to pay for it. And one thing which is important, the way that we used to know analytics, it was free, but now everything you have to pay for it, but everything even GA4 you have to pay for it, because you have to get people trained on it. And you have to pay for the API to use BigQuery.
For other tools there are pros and cons. In this case, you can get very quickly on that terminal and use it very, very quickly. There are some differences though. We could go on to access as we knew it. I mean, you only recently fix and but that’s okay. And yeah, it’s open source, you get your own data. On the other hand, you have to learn a few things, the interface is a bit different somehow, and there are some functionalities that don’t work exactly the same way. Just for instance, in the Tag Manager, you have to use more code sometimes to do so. They’re not the same. But yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a good way to get, again, used on using web analytics, the way you used to know it before with Universe Analytics, and reinventing the whole wheel.
David Bain
So Jean-Marc mentioned Piotr there, who is obviously from Piwik Pro, another alternative analytics software out there. So how would you summarize the difference between Piwik Pro and Google Analytics?
Piotr Korzeniowski
Well, it depends on which Google Analytics we’re talking about. Because if we talk about Universal Analytics, then as I said, at the very beginning, we perceive ourselves as the best successor in terms of features. And compared to GA4, we’re definitely something entirely different. And GA4 is more similar to Amplitude, a product analytics solutions, than it is to its former Universal Analytics. So I would say with Piwik Pro you’ll feel at home if you loved Universal Analytics. We also provide a free solution that’s free forever. It’s not as generous as it is with Google, because we still have to pay salaries and build the product, but definitely, it is able to run on the majority of the sites in the world for free. If you like, you can subscribe so we only charge bigger businesses. I don’t want to praise my solution too much here. If you like GA4 and its data model, definitely go for it, otherwise please look at Piwik Pro, but also Matomo. We could improve our eCommerce module, they could be better. So definitely, if you’re an eCommerce company, you should definitely look around for now, we definitely invest heavily to make it better. And GA also has very wide community partners, people who know it. So I believe that both Chloe and Amanda here, they know it pretty well. So yeah, these are some things you need to consider.
David Bain
So you talked about eCommerce is not necessarily being the best fit at the moment, what types of businesses would you say tend to gravitate towards Piwik?
Piotr Korzeniowski
Well, 70% of our revenues come from customers, which are in finance, government and healthcare sectors, those were the ones who took privacy and security very seriously before even GDPR, our company is 10 years old. So we had to make ends meet well before GDPR. So now the table turned, we are in the market where Google gets banned, and we have a mature solution. So we tend to get more different businesses, like brands or retailers. But in the past, it was mainly those three categories.
David Bain
Chlow, what are your perspectives on software that you prefer to use instead of Universal Analytics? Or GA4?
Chloe Christine
So I would recommend HockeyStack, but I do think it is more of a business to business orientated tool than business to consumer orientated tool. I have checked their website, it does follow GDPR and CCPA regulations, because I know that was something that was mentioned in this in this chat. They have a lot of integrations with things like HubSpot and Salesforce, LinkedIn ads, to really pull data together from a lot of different sources, rather than just looking at website data. And there is also a lot of kind of user data for whatever happens on the website, which I know like a lot of the Google Analytics stuff lacks. But working with Data Studio, I’m all for Google, just because that’s what I’m most familiar with. But yeah, I think if I had to recommend a secondary one, I would recommend HockeyStack. But like I say, I haven’t tested loads of different ones. So I’m not saying that it’s the best solution. It’s just the one that I would recommend, especially for business to business.
David Bain
HockeyStack is an interesting one, and it certainly gets great reviews. Why? I mean, you touched on why it’s probably relevant for b2b as opposed to others because obviously they allow you to track over offline digital mediums, I guess, such as email and they mentioned on their website, LinkedIn. So what are the other platforms that the allow tracking on and how would you summarize that?
Chloe Christine
There are a lot of different things on there. I’ve definitely seen Facebook, Twitter, HubSpot, Salesforce. So a few different CRM systems as well as a couple of different ads platforms. Google ads as well connects into that. But yeah, I do think it is more relevant for business to business, especially with the HubSpot integration. The HubSpot integration is really good. But I don’t see small business to consumer businesses really utilizing that feature. So they may be paying for a premium that they’re not really utilizing. And in that case, then actually, I think, alternatives, or using GA4 would be perhaps better.
David Bain
Understood? And is HockeyStack actually a legitimate alternative to Universal Analytics or GA4? Or is it something that you would use in addition?
Chloe Christine
I feel it would be a good alternative, if you wanted it to be so. But again, as somebody who’s quite big into Google’s platforms, and the utilization of things like Google Data Studio, which HockeyStack doesn’t integrate with yet. I think that utilizing it alongside Google Analytics would be best for the majority of people if it’s possible to do so.
David Bain
And what about yourself, Amanda, what other analytics software is appealing to you?
Amanda White
So, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I remember seeing something a little while ago, I think it might have been at brightonSEO or somewhere. And there was a there was a talk where Jill Quick described Universal Analytics as driving a car. And we all know cars get you from A to B. And then GA4 comes along, and it’s actually a helicopter. So it gets you from A to B, it still does what you need it to do. But you can’t just go from driving a car to jumping in a helicopter. And flying a helicopter is just not something that we were capable of. So I feel like this gives us this real opportunity right now is okay, I need to learn how to fly a helicopter. Well, actually, do I? Or do I learn Piwik Pro? Or do I use Matomo? And I think a lot of companies, definitely my clients are coming to me with concerns about GDPR, and with concerns of well, actually, I’ve got to jump in and use a whole entire new platform of GA4. I don’t know how it works. You know, GA4 doesn’t work out the box, like I think it was Piotr said, you know, it doesn’t work out the box, you have to customize it, you have to create reports, you have to manipulate it to create very similar to universal, but you have to build those reports, you have to build those explorations. So if you’ve got to learn something completely new, why not learn one of these new platforms? Why not test and try one of these new areas that, you know, I think for Google for so long, has dominated the market and analytics, whereas now I think there’s a real opportunity for lots of soft disrupting, and really sort of take that on market share.
David Bain
Do you think there’s a concern, though, that people are using Google for other uses that they’re obviously using AdWords, they’re using Google Tag Manager or something else, and they’re just thinking, well, what are the unknowns here? And if I do actually move away from GA, is there something that’s going to break because of the other software that I use from Google?
Amanda White
Yeah, sure. So I’ve had a little experience with Matomo. And I’ve got to be honest, it’s quite similar. I think it’s taken that people know and trust Universal Analytics, they know and trust Google, like it’s a monopoly, you’re going to trust them. So then when you use something like Matomo, it’s very similar. You’ve still got a Tag Manager in there. And the sort of process of using it is very similar. So I think that gives you some sort of trust and some comfort in Okay, cool Tag Manager. It’s not Google Tag Manager, it’s Matomo Tag Manager, and you learn in a sort of very similar ways, I think you inherently gain that trust because it feels comfortable.
David Bain
Okay, Petr, you touched on Smartlook, but is there an alternative general analytics software that you’ve also tried?
Petr Janošík
Yeah, I’m coming from digital experience and product analytics markets. So I can talk about this. This is my speciality. So even if Piotr said that GA4 is maybe more closer to pragmatics, now than before, but still I see the in product analytics segment especially there are solutions such as Mixpanel, Amplitude, etc. They are far away from what the GA4 can offer, especially you can see it in retention when you want to better understand your retention and your user data, and how customers behave. So GA4 is just gonna offer basics. And there are better alternatives such as such as Mixpanel, or Amplitude, and then there is digital experience analytics segment. It’s mostly about combination qualitative and quantitative data. And also, this is something with what GA4 is missing, or also the Google Universal Analytics is missing that they are showing you only, you can see there only quantitative data, not qualitative. So in digital experience analytics segment, there are solutions such as Smartlook, FullStory. Maybe look at so their tools, so you can see data, event data and combine these data with session replays so you don’t see only where is the problem. Or let’s say you have some conversion funnel, and you can see that there is a 20% drop off in your last step in your checking or checkout process, but you don’t know why. So you then need to have some solutions, which are able to show you what can be the reason and they are able to show you that informal session replay. So this is a segment of digital experience analytics solutions. And these are tools such as model cluster, where they combine product analytics data and session replay data into one solution. And they can give you additional data, which can help you to better understand what’s what is going on your website or mobile app. So if GA4 definitely closer to product analytics, but as I said, there are much better alternatives, which can give you more precise data, and better answer answers and insights.
David Bain
Jean-Marc, what’s the optimum solution here? Is it actually possible, and a good idea to have multiple analytics tracking codes on your site to use these multiple different pieces of software for different purposes. Or if you do have two or three or more different systems to track what users are doing on your site, will it actually confuse you in the end?
Jean-Marc Courtiade
I work with Matomo, so I would go for it. You can install different solutions in parallel, as I said, some customers do that. If you install Piwik Pro and Matomo in parallel, and I don’t know how it’s going to mix up because some cookies are a bit the same, even though I’m doing this sometimes about anyway, so to me, the idea is to get away from Google, because it’s not GDPR compliant, and it’s hard to use. And for most websites, I’d say you can find an alternative analytics solution. On the other hand, for big websites, or big companies, this can be a bit hard because they used to work with other solutions like that, or it’s a friend solution anyway. But all the big solution, they would take the data from Universal Analytics and do some processes and do a lot of things for them to get some very interesting data. In this case, this doesn’t exist with the agencies that we know, I mean, us for now doesn’t exist, these solutions from starting to pop up, and being more well known. So eventually, I guess that some companies will do some integrations. But as for me, for instance, in SEO, I would say it’s a pain, not having Matomo, for instance, integrated in other solutions, maybe like in Screaming Frog, if you want to crawl and get some data like we used to do before. So yeah, there is no easy answer to that. My point of view would be to just use another solution, because you didn’t have much choice regarding GDPR.
David Bain
I have a slightly different question. Let’s assume maybe if everyone is using one general analytics package, so it could be GA4, it could be Piwik Pro, it could be Matomo, it could could be something else entirely. What’s one additional niche piece of analytic software that maybe focuses in on some aspect of user behavior or something else, that gives you additional information that tends not to be included in these more general tools? So Petr, let’s start off with you because you can probably sing the praises of where Smartlook fits in here.
Petr Janošík
Yeah, that actually, I think started with Google, I think is a good approach, because it’s for free and you can get a lot of data from it. But as I said, Google Analytics gives you quantitative data. So you can see where is the problem on your website, or on your own while in your mobile app, but you don’t know why. And the why is sometimes hard to get, or you need to just get to a lot of A/B testing or do a lot of tests. And there are tools, which can give you the answer why quite easily, because you can connect Google Analytics, this solution such as Smartlook, or FullStory. And you can send the data from these tools to Google Analytics, and gives you a better view on user behavior. So from my perspective, I would always want to know, not only how people behaved but also why they left my website, where did they have any bad user experience? What was the quality? Or is my product? Is my product good? Or is bad, or even if you have a good conversion rate, you can’t be sure that your customers had good digital experience. It doesn’t tell you if your customers had good visual experience or not even if you have good conversion rates. So this is this is how you can prove that your product has good quality. If you combine somehow user behavior data with traditional data, which you can see in Google Analytics.
David Bain
Okay, that’s a nice way to look at it. So maybe a general analytics tool gives you the what, but it might be necessary to use a niche analytics tool to give you the why. Chloe, do you use a specific tool to give you the why?
Chloe Christine
I would say that HotJar is probably one of the best. But I also think it’s one of the most well-known. Something that does a similar thing, but it’s less well known is Plerdy. It’s very similar to HotJar. It’s more of a conversion rate optimisation tool, which I think sort of touches into a little bit of what Petr was saying just gives you more information about the actual user behavior on the website similar to HotJar does. I think it may be slightly cheaper than HotJar, I’m not entirely sure. But maybe better for smaller companies, if they’re looking for a solution that will provide them with the information without having to fork out a lot of money for it.
David Bain
Microsoft offers some kind of free tool that is relatively similar to HotJar as well. Piotr, are you aware of that?
Piotr Korzeniowski
Yeah, Clarity, I think like it’s nice that Microsoft has put up a free solution in the marketing industry. That’s definitely a plus. If you read into the terms of service of that tool, you’ll see that the data is truly collected for the Microsoft advertising ecosystem. So similarly to how Google uses that it was more convoluted than Google. It’s also quite a basic tool. Instead, I would recommend going for something more useful for analysis for people who would like to look at the data and I think on this call, the best solution here would be Smartlook. It’s my perspective that the time I looked at it was a HotJar instead. Right. So also, since HotJar received some bad press when changing their pricing, I think I’ve seen that it’s a good time to review also.
David Bain
Thanks for clarifying clarity for everyone. And is there any other niche software that you’d like to recommend as well? Or do you think you’ve covered what you want to cover with you, Piotr?
Piotr Korzeniowski
Well, maybe a shout out, maybe somebody will help me out, we’re actually thinking about partnering with solutions that could be added to the Piwik Pro backbone. Our solution is a suite of products analytics, tag management, customer management, and we want to focus on those where analytics is the strongest part. And we would like to leave A/B testing, session recording and etc, to the highly specialized software providers, so, if you know, anything, just hit me up, because we will definitely like to partner with those. But not that I would recommend, like, from the top of my head.
David Bain
Okay, let’s go to Amanda. Amanda, do you have any recommendations?
Amanda White
This might sound really basic. But I see so often that people focus so heavily on the data, they actually forget maybe a little common sense, and actually sometimes asking your customers. So if you’re noticing, like customers dropping off, you might have a live chat, and then you can ask them, you know, if they haven’t disappeared completely. Are you struggling? Is there something right here, right now that you’re finding as a problem? Is something not working? And actually, they might answer a question that you’ve been plowing through data for days, weeks, months, and you can just find out that there’s just something that’s not quite right. And actually, a lot of times we’re so hell bent on using tools and systems and platforms and data and spreadsheets and tables, that actually sometimes going back to basics, and actually speaking to your customers in the moment can actually give you that data, or give you the insights right?
David Bain
Jean-Marc, do you have any other software that you’d like to recommend this perhaps niche software that isn’t general analytic software?
Jean-Marc Courtiade
I agree with Amanda. I use session recordings, heat maps, I would go for Matomo, there are plugins, and you can do that directly inside the platform. But actually, if you want to, most of my most of my customers also use HotJar, for instance. So I’m not a specialist in this kind of solutions. I would go for in this case for the one I know most. And what I’m what I would recommend as well is to use some kind of qualitative software, like, as I said, Amanda, to get actually, to know what people really think about that you could use something like line survey, for instance, we’ve seen many, many, many solutions, getting this kind of forms on their website, and it’s a good way to get to get proper information that you wouldn’t get through quantitative data.
David Bain
Okay, great. Okay. Well, let’s try going round the panel one more time, and ask everyone two questions each. So the two questions that I’ve got in mind is, first of all, in terms of education, and research, is there a best resource online to go to, to discover to determine what analytic software is right for you and your business? Because it certainly sounds like there are many, many options available more options than there used to be. So it’s important to make the right decisions here because analytic software isn’t something that you want to be changing every single year, you want to be ideally selecting a package and sticking with it for years. And the second follow up question kind of in relation is, how do you ensure that you future proof the success of your analytics, so how do you actually set it up and make sure it is that long term success?
Chloe Christine
I think in terms of research, this might sound a little bit bonkers, but ask on LinkedIn. There’s a lot of people on there that have a lot of knowledge in these kinds of areas. And if you pop your question on there, you’ll get responses that are probably much more in line with what you’re looking for, because you’re gonna get personalized responses from other people that are already using these pieces of software. In terms of future proofing analytics, honestly, I don’t know, I think there’s gonna be a lot of change to analytics over the next couple of years, especially with the whole GDPR thing, I think that’s thrown a massive spanner in the works. And I think we will see a big rise in more third party tools, I think we’ll see a big rise in all kinds of businesses using them, I think we’ll get more that specialize in business to business, and we’ll get more that specializes in eCommerce. I think in terms of what you can do right now, have a shop around, try out a few different ones. They nearly all offer free demos. Maybe put stuff in your site alongside Google Analytics as well. So you’ve got a bit of a backup there. That’s, that’s all my advice.
David Bain
Amanda, what are your thoughts?
Amanda White
Yeah, so I think, doing things like this. So listening to podcasts, checking out webinars, and like Chloe said, take on the free trials is a really good idea. I think a lot of the sort of onus comes on to us, as well as sort of digital professionals to recommend what we’re what we’re finding what we’re playing with. I mean, I’m personally learning a lot about GA4 and Matomo at the moment. So I’ve got firsthand experience to take my clients where I think they might fit, but I can’t test them all. So I think it is a case of speaking to your peers, jumping on webinars, listen to podcasts, and just seeing what’s out there and what other people are using and what they recommend.
David Bain
Jean-Marc?
Jean-Marc Courtiade
Regarding research, it’s a bit of like, choosing a CMS. Somehow you would go for WordPress, or you go for Drupal or whatever, or Joomla. It’s a bit like this. And I think that, in this case, you can have just put your hands into those into the software. But also it depends if you’re an individual or a web consultant, or a company, because if you’re an individual, you can use this solution pretty easily. If you’re a company or a consultant, in this case, you would have to learn them. And to me, I think there is no risk using something else, because you will still find consultants and agencies, which are going to be skilled in those in using those. So if you’re using that tool, you will find someone who is able to help you with this or you can find someone who can do that. Most analytics consultants now tend to be able to use many of them. Even though some tend to focus on the on GA4, as far as I know, because it’s a there’s a lot of knowledge in it. I would like to make things shorter. But in this case, I think it’s okay to move to another one. And you will find someone and as for the future proof, I guess that going to an alternative is much better than going to the solution like Google where you know, you’re not sure that you would still keep your data or if they would be GDPR compliant.
David Bain
Superb. Okay. And I know that Petr just has to shoot off, but Peter, did you want to just leave any last thoughts before you go?
Petr Janošík
I think that what was mentioned here is correct. I usually go to some comparison sites such as G2crowd. And then like, ask my peers. That’s what I do as a research.
David Bain
I want to remind the listener or the viewer that you can find Petr over at smartlook.com. So make sure you check Petr out there – and thanks for joining us, Petr. Piotr, what are your thoughts on the question regarding research and also future proofing yourself?
Piotr Korzeniowski
First of all the education and I agree with the predecessors, here’s how they are all valid ideas. But there are also some vendor comparisons pages. And I could recommend to one is European Dutch alternatives that gives you a lot of vendors list for analytics, but also other solutions and you can pick your own and ensure that you know there is the compliancy part included and in those lists already, if you don’t really care where the vendors are located. There is a very fresh new site that popped up recently called newmetrics.io. It still needs some work on, but it’s quite accurate. And I also recommend it. So if you would like to compare GA4, or Matomo, or Piwiki Pro head to head, you can go there and you have everything from pricing to features. And in terms of future proofing your solution. So my general comment is to use one solution for as long as you can. So you can at least compare time series and see how you perform. Another piece of idea would be to use our consent management tool, so you won’t be asked to ever remove your data if it was collected lawfully. And in more for SEO and or analysts out there. People who are buying ads is to tag your campaigns use UTM tags where you can where you can, because you just want as much context to your data as possible. And I believe that’s it.
David Bain
Lovely. Okay. Well, let’s just quickly finish off by asking everyone to remind the listener, the viewer where they can find them. But also, I want you to answer one quick question. What’s one very quick win that SEOs can get from their analytics now, ie, is there one metric that you find SEOs are ignoring that if they used correctly that they could potentially get some fairly significant win from so hopefully everyone can come up with with something for that one there? Let’s stay with Piotr. So we want to remind everyone where they can find you. And what’s one quick big win that SEOs can get from analytics?
Piotr Korzeniowski
Sure. So you can find me personally on LinkedIn. So I’m Piotr, and and look for Piwik Pro company, there are many of us, the one with the longest name would be last name with me. Anyway, you can also visit our website, which is Piwik.Pro. And in terms of one quick one, I would ask you to do a dive into your Universal Analytics, which will be probably the tool that you’re currently using. You won’t be using it for long. And look into your goal conversions. And try to see on the source and medium tab, compare it with your Google Search Console reports and see, you know, what is performing best on the goals that are actually are meaningful for you. I know this is simple, but not many people are actually using some advanced segmentation inside.
David Bain
Superb. Thanks for joining us. Jean-Marc?
Jean-Marc Courtiade
You can find me on LinkedIn, as well as on jeanmarccourtiade.com. As for a quick way in using SEO, I’ve been I’ve been doing SEO for many years, even wrote a book about it, and it tends to be kind of you can do it, what I would say is that you can export your data, just like you used to do in Google Analytics. And if you’re using, for instance, Matomo, make sure that you create the right segments for that, and export your data and see if you had some pages that didn’t get traffic within the last one month, 30 days or 60 days, and just tried to find out why. You can also try to mix this data with a crawl across what you would have done to see if you have some kind of zombies pages, and try to find it to find out why.
David Bain
Okay, and do you need to kill your zombies? Or do you need to try and bring your zombies back to life?
Jean-Marc Courtiade
Yeah, try to bring them back to life. But this can this can be hard. So you have to think about the, 80/20 principle to get those online. And using some links, etc. It depends on the pages, but they’re very important.
David Bain
I really find it challenging not to ask a follow up question. Sometimes I’ve got to move on. But Jean-Marc, thank you so much for joining us today. Amanda. What where can people find you and what’s your a quick win that you’d like to share?
Amanda White
Yeah, sure. So you can find me on LinkedIn and on my website, amandawhitedigital.com. And so I think from an SEO quick win, there’s been so much about bounce rates in Universal Analytics, like moving across the GA4 that bounce rates are going up and down, and actually like looking back in Universal, the bounce rates were not that useful because some people could complete their action on that one page and then disappear. That doesn’t mean that’s a negative. And actually in GA4 the bounce rates are now they’ve been introduced, it’s a fairly new thing they’ve not that new recently added. And it’s actually fair if users are spent over 10 seconds on that page, and that is so much more useful than the old version. So whereas you get 100% Bounce rate if they spent time on the site, but disappeared back. So I think, start really digging into those bounce rates on both and really start to compare because the two data sources are going to mean different things. So yeah, start really digging into those bounce rates on both universal and GA4 why you still have time to do them.
David Bain
So thank you, Amanda, for joining us. And moving on to Chloe, Chloe, where can people find you and what’s your quick win.
Chloe Christine
So the best place to find me is probably on LinkedIn. And then in terms of a quick win, my advice would be if you’ve been a little bit late to the party switching from UA to GA4, I would advise utilizing Google Data Studio to combine your UA and GA4 data so that you don’t have to try to compare between two different platforms. It’s going to be a lot easier if you combine the charts, for example, combine it into one chart so that you’re not having to try and compare because you’ve got six months on here, and you’ve got 12 ones on here. And it’s all ended up with mess, which I’ve seen quite a lot of people do so utilize things like Data Studio to combine your data together into one place.
David Bain
Superb. Thank you very much, Chloe. Well, I’ve been your host, David Bain, and you’ve been listening to the Majestic SEO podcast. If you want to join us live next time and you want to interact, you want to ask questions next time, sign up at majestic.com/webinars. And of course check out the other series that we produce that we publish over at SEOin2023.com. Thanks for joining
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