What Google Analytics Won’t Tell You

In this next the Honest SEO Basics Tip, find out what Google Analytics won’t tell you, and how you can get the information you want.

Hi, I’m Vi Wickam and this is an Honest SEO Basics Tip brought to you by Social Edge and the Get Listed Program.

Now, people ask me all the time about things they want to know on their website visitors. And the truth is, Google Analytics can’t tell you everything.

A lot of times people want to capture leads on their website, and they’ll want to know things like, “Well can you tell me the names, phone numbers, and IP addresses of every visitor that comes to my website?”

If they fill out a form on your website, and that form includes their names, the email address, and their phone number- those are things you can gather from your visitors.

Google actually does track some demographic information for visitors on your website because they have that for people who are logged into Google when they visit you.

But you can’t get their phone number, you can’t get their name, and you can’t their email address- unless they type it in!

That is voluntary information that they have to type into your website for you to gather.

Now you actually can get their IP address, but it’s not really that useful. It just tells you this is one person, and it will tell you where that person is.

So you can say, “Oh! This IP address shows us that this person is in Denver, Colorado and they’re using Century Link internet”… blah blah blah.

But it doesn’t tell us that this is Joe Smith and his email address is joe@smith.com, and it doesn’t tell us that his phone number is 3030303.

So those are things that Google won’t tell you.

But if you structure your website well, and you give them a reason to give you their phone number, or their name, or their email address, then maybe they will!

But that goes into how do you structure your website? What are you doing to call your customers to action?

That is not information that you can steal from your visitors, or that you can get from Google Analytics.

And besides, it wouldn’t be very fun to view the web if every time you went to a website, you started getting spam. That’s no fun!

You only want that information from willing customers anyway.

And that’s your Honest SEO Tip for today! I’ll see you next time!