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Seotistics - Web Analytics + Business + Strategy

The Reporting Stack Businesses Need

Published 2 days agoΒ β€’Β 6 min read

Use Data Or Be Used By Data!

The November 10 issue of Seotistics is here for you!

I keep seeing the usual issues in businesses and yes, they can be solved easily.

Small or big, it matters but not here.

There are some basic things that you can do now to improve your company reporting tenfold.

Consider this is as an introducition to what we will analyze even better in the next Seotistics issues.

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πŸ“£πŸ“£ Important Announcements πŸ“£πŸ“£

Working on some more content and product updates, I didn't forget folks πŸ‘€

And prepare your wallet for my next product updates and Black Friday sales (starting November 27).

OK... But Why Data Matters

We've been convinced for years the data is the new oil and it's super important.

It's not oil but it is extremely important... just why?

Think of data as a digital representation of how your business work.

Guess what, today what we do is digital, not physical.

So data measures what you do and what happens.

Unfortunately this concept taken to the extreme is super bad, like companies vomiting "data-driven".

You don't want to be data-driven ever, maybe data-informed, but for sure you want to profit from your data.

Web data in particular can be wildly inaccurate and directional.

But it doesn't matter in most cases, what matters is which decisions you make.

Did data alter your decision-making process?

Data isn't the new oil at all.

And what the majority of the companies get wrong is wasting time on useless reports and mismatches.

That's because they lack a single source of truth and play with spreadsheets too much:

Current Practices

There are some data practices that I teach people to relinquish because they are suboptimal.

You are familiar with most of them:

  • using Excel/Google Sheets for everything
  • not storing data in general
  • overcomplicating simple problems
  • n8n/Make for automating what shouldn't be automated (like content)

Most companies need simple stuff and clear roadmaps, this is what I learned from years in Marketing and Data.

The issue is that you still need to understand what is effective and what is not!

What Many Tried

Of course, it's not like all of the people tried to use spreadsheets...

some had more original ideas.

One of them was sell basic automation as the solution to all the problems.

Yes, throwing Python at everything until you build clunky app with no integration.

This is already some progress compared to spreadsheets but doesn't actually solve anything.

The 2019-2023 was also marked by hyper complex solutions that we still work with today:

  • undebbugable PowerBI dashboards
  • bizarre Python spaghetti code
  • amazing technical debt

The good news is that if you have some technical prowess, it takes less time to follow the right steps.

For example, no need to create dashboards in Python, be normal and just use Looker Studio!

What I Recommend

Based on my experience and tons of common sense, you must avoid to make it more complex than it is.

The only exceptions are enterprises that are by definition slow and complex.

In all the other cases, simple is always your first choice...

and let's be real, some businesses don't even need performance optimization.

A minimal Analytics stack like this makes the trick:

Most people in Marketing barely know GA4 or limit themselves to Explorations... which is OK but not suitable for serious projects.

So the 2 most relevant skills are:

  • Google BigQuery (too good to be skipped)
  • Dataform (for engineers mostly but a little bit of knowledge doesn't hurt)

I hope you have read my previous issue on how to upskill in Web Analytics in 2026!

A lot of people also sleep on Bing Webmasters Tools, really, it's a goldmine of keyword data!

Don't pay for 3rd-party tools if you can't even use the 1st-party tools first πŸ‘€

Important mention for other GA4 alternatives that have their reasons to exist:

  • Matomo/Piwiki Pro -> compliance, EU based
  • Amplitude/Mixpanel -> Product Analytics

They own very little market share compared to GA4 but have good use cases!

The Wider Enterprise Stack

Enterprises play on a different level and you will often see more data sources:

I have some familiarity with some of these non-web data sources and it helps MASSIVELY.

If you only work with B2B companies and have never touched a CRM... you miss out!

If you connect GA4 with a CRM, you could see much more and actually focus on what matters!

ERP systems like SAP have their nice use cases but they hardly relate to web data!

The rest is pretty much the same, Google tools are evergreen.

Sometimes you can see that:

  • GA4 is replaced by another strange enterprise solution or good ol' Adobe Analytics
  • They don't use BigQuery but some other warehouse
  • Looker Studio? Forget, either PowerBI or Tableau

And my personal take is that it's often a mess and they should adopt simpler tools.

Good luck developing something "quick" without Looker Studio πŸ˜†

Enterprises offer a LOT more learnings though and it's easier to get better when working in hard conditions.

A Basic Reporting Framework

The issue with reports or dashboards is that they aren't embedded into processes.

It's not always possible to ask the right questions or stitch everything to a process...

but you can work towards it!

As always, the important is having clear what are your KPIs (and metrics) and what you need to report on.

Once again, asking the right things and setting a course of action are the reporting framework lol

Reporting on revenue and "lagging" metrics looks sound...
​
until you realize none of that is actionable!

This is what I often see with dashboards that have the following formula:

  • Sessions, Users
  • Engagement Rate
  • Bounce Rate
  • Throw some average time there
  • Pie charts

And you have the perfect report slop.

Reports like this are all but optimal for most businesses. They are obvious and don't tell anything important.

This topic is so deep that I created an entire course on how to work on these skills:

And I will write more on this in my next issues too!

A lot of companies struggle with clarity and often end up preparing subpar reports that only hinder growth.

The Future Ahead

If I had to summarize what you can do to add value, I'd say the following:

  • store your data with the BigQuery exports ASAP
  • document the basics of what you do
  • think about what you need and what you need to answer

There are organizations that are more prone to change and others (corporations) where change requires years.

What's important is that you don't fall into the trap of being another person that follows the dogmas.

You know, doing what everyone else does incorrectly because "they say so".

Well... stay tuned and I will tell you more next week!

πŸ‘₯ Join Our Community

Our Discord community offers a small place where we can talk business and web data.

If you hate all the noise of social media, then this place is for you.

I will start posting more there as we have a forum channel now.

This is the best way to stay updated in real time on Seotistics:

πŸ”Ž Analytics For SEO Ebook - Course / Ebook

You will:

βœ… Use GSC and GA4 Data to their fullest potential

βœ… Learn Python/SQL for your needs

βœ… Get a complete blueprint for auditing websites

βœ… Learn how to 10x your productivity

βœ… Learn BigQuery to work on large websites

I teach you what's needed to go from 0 to a professional Data Analyst.

Even if you leave SEO, the foundations are the same for other jobs!

Also in ebook:

πŸ“š Recommended Reads - Peak Content πŸ—»

Some evergreen classics:

As usual, my most recent LinkedIn content is here.

❗️ Feedback and Recommendations

If you have ideas/recommendations for the next issues of Seotistics, you can simply reply to this email.

Marco Giordano
​Data/Web Analyst

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Bernerstrasse SΓΌd 169, Zurich, Switzerland
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Seotistics - Web Analytics + Business + Strategy

by Marco Giordano

The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.

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