I started doing Data Dates a few months back and my goals was to have a monthly video/podcast episode. As usual, things got busy and now I’m going for quarterly data dates. I also think having a larger chunk of data allows for more interesting information. Click here to check out the Data Date I did back in April 2020.

What is a Data Date exactly?

A data date is the unique marriage of your creativity/ideas/business planning with cold data. This is a taste of something I do ongoing in my business (the full process can take over an hour).

In this episode 144 I walk through:

• What to do before even looking at your Google Analytics/Search Console data

• What questions to ask as you are looking through some specific reporting

• How to align your launches/marketing plan with what Google Analytics is trying to tell you

• Taking action from your data is something I’m so passionate about! I give you some specific examples of how to do this in this episode

Listen to the this episode here:

You can also watch the video version of this episode here:

Why am I so passionate about this?

I feel like Google Analytics is one of the most under utilized tools out there (that is why I created Google Analytics 101 f0r Business Owners and Analytics as a Service). I want to inspire you to not just look at your data, but take action from some basic metrics you pull from the tool.

Step 1) What is coming up for me this quarter?

You never want to approach your reporting empty handed. Pulling out a notebook or a blank Google doc and jotting down what you have coming up in the following quarter and what you’d like to specifically learn from the data.

In my case, I’m getting ready to launch one of my courses and prepping for a bigger launch in Q4. I’m also making a lot of changed to my 1:1 SEO services and I know there are people landing on those pages.

Once I take a look at my goals, I’ll want to identify pages or parts of my website that will contribute to these goals. I’ll make sure that all my Google Analytics Goals and configurations are setup correctly. More on Goal setup in this video.

I might also take this time to look at what blog post and podcast episodes have been the most popular and what has felt good for me.

Action Steps:

• Review your marketing/content/business goals for the quarter and brainstorm questions you have for your data

• Take the time to setup Goals to track Opt-ins/Email Sign-ups/Micro Conversions in Google Analytics

• If applicable, setup E-commerce or any other Tracking (etc. Teachable)

Step 2) Where are my people coming from?

Next we will want to review where my visits have been coming from in the last few months.

In Google Analytics, this report is under Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. Make sure the date range is correctly setup from the last couple of months.

Some metrics that are good starting points are:

• New Users

• Bounce Rate

• Conversion

Action Steps:

• Once you’ve reviewed which channels are most popular and written some notes about what these metrics could mean, revise your marketing plan with the information.

• Decide if you want to focus on continuing to do the things that are working well or if you want to improve things that aren’t working well. For example, in my case, Search Marketing is bringing in a nice chunk of traffic and the Bounce Rate is 84%. I’m going to work on bringing down the Bounce Rate by 3% in this quarter. Next steps here are to look at the specific landing pages that are contributing to this high bounce rate.

• Set aside time to do further digging as questions come up by looking at this report.

Step 3) Identify specific Keywords to target based on launches/services

I love using reporting in an intentional and aligned way with what you are selling in your business. Either wise, all this can feel a bit pointless.

In the Search Console (setup video here) go to the “Performance” reporting.

Then you can search keywords that are related to what you are selling. In my case, I searched “course” and “seo” and was interested with the suggestions that came up.

The great thing about these keywords is that I’m already ranking in them (even though I’m wayy down there in the search results). These are great starting points to either create new content or improve existing content.

Once I find a keyword I like, I can click on it to the filter the report even more and the look at the “Pages” tab. This gives me the specific pages I want to improve on using these keywords.

Actions Steps:

• Choose keywords to intentionally target your launches/services/courses/anything you are promoting this quarter. This will make SEO work so much more in line with the rest of your marketing. And it will also be more motivating too!

• Find the specific pages you want to work on and get specific about the changes you want to make. Maybe it’s about adding new content, video, or an infographic. Maybe you want to restructure the whole thing. Whatever it is, take the time to get as specific as possible, since that will make your life so much easier.

• This is important: set aside time to get all this done in the next few months. It’s so easy to sweep this stuff aside and assume it will just happen. If you work with a team, make sure you assign the right people to help you get this stuff going.

That’s all! Where are you at with your Q3 data review? Share your progress and what you’ve learned in the comments below.