I haven't finished taking the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course yet; I'm concerned that if I don't understand everything before I implement it on my companies site that I'll permanently screw something up;
I've used Google Analytics in the past, and I've noticed that you can only set a certain number of goals and I'm not even sure if you can change them after that. My boss is pushing for me to finish some tickets related to the marketing of our sites, but I'm concerned that if I do this too soon, I'm going to permanently screw something up with the Analytics account.
In particular, today I'm going to add our website to the local business directory websites; some of these are free and some of these are not free.
The following are local business directory websites I had in mind:
- Google Local Business Directory
- City Search
- Superpages.com
- Best of the Web Local Search
- patch.com
- merchantcirlcle
- yelp
- Bing Places for Business
- Yahoo Local Listing: Business Directory Listings
If I understand correctly, a local business website is a referral source, which makes it sort of a Marketing Channel? And with Marketing Channels you have to monitor them to make sure that your getting your ROI on them, so you aren't paying for marketing (a listing) that isn't bringing you any business.
I've seen several sites that advise you NOT to setup Google Analytics until you have your goals setup and implemented on your site.
What parts are absolutely essential to setup first? (off the top of my head I can think of excluding people from within your own organization from the Analytics, and setting up goals)
I'm going to add our website to the local business directory websites
You should be aware that Google and other search engines refer to most directory sites as rubbish in terms of SEO value and enough low-quality links can be marked against the business. Ideal directories are citations such as Yelp, Yell, Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else that is 1) High Quality 2) Allows you to add the company address, links should be seen as bonus and most will be nofollow on most quality sites. Nowadays its best to have less links but more quality.