Google Analytics gives you a lot of useful information, but some of it demands more of your scrutiny than others. Here’s which ones.
Website Visitors
First off, check how many people are stopping by your website each month. This is the starting point for any growth plan. If no one’s visiting your site, nothing else really matters. But just knowing the total number of visits isn’t enough. You need to find out where those visitors come from. GA4 breaks it down by channel: organic search, paid ads, social media, email campaigns, direct visits, and referrals. This helps you figure out which marketing efforts are pulling in visitors, and which ones might need some work. When we go over analytics with clients, we pay close attention to monthly traffic trends. If organic traffic slowly climbs over time, it usually means your SEO is doing its job, even before lead numbers rise.
Content Performance
Head over to Reports > Engagement > Pages and Screens in GA4. This gives you the scoop on which pages get the most views and how visitors interact with them. If your homepage gets, say, 5,000 views a month but your services page only gets 50, that’s a red flag—either a navigation issue or weak content there. Also, if a blog post you published a couple of years ago is still racking up the most views, you’ve uncovered a topic your audience really digs, so it’s smart to create more content along those lines. Check this report each month and ask yourself: are people landing on the pages that matter most to the business? If the answer is no, find out why.
Conversions
In GA4, conversions are called “key events.” These are the specific actions you want visitors to take—like filling out a contact form, clicking your phone number, downloading a guide, or making a purchase. If you haven’t set up key events yet, that’s the single best thing you can do to improve your analytics. Without tracking conversions, you’re just counting visitors without knowing if they’re doing anything useful on your site. Your developer or agency should set up key events for every important action. At the very least, track form submissions and phone clicks. For service businesses focused on boosting conversion rates, this data is gold.
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