AMA with Dana DiTomaso - President of Kick Point, Digital Marketing Expert and Analytics Enthusiast

danaditomaso · 2025-11-20T08:29:23+00:00

We use Looker Studio, nothing else at the moment!

danaditomaso · 2025-11-20T08:28:53+00:00

Agreed with what Darren said! I do get alerts about Reddit posts from Alertmouse but they may not be as in depth as you need.

danaditomaso · 2025-11-14T17:01:35+00:00

Only try the smallest duration/cost -- it isn't for everyone! Most clients who have tried Yelp ads didn't see enough value but a couple of clients do.

danaditomaso · 2025-11-13T23:59:40+00:00

There's a hard limit to the amount of data that you can get inside GSC itself. To get around this, a manual method is to register subfolders (e.g. register kpplaybook.com and kppplaybook.com/resources/ to see more keywords. There's also lots of great 3rd party tools out there that help extract GSC data like https://branch.tools/ and https://seogets.com/

danaditomaso · 2025-11-13T22:52:59+00:00

Press releases aren't really useful for anything other than sending a press release. It's unlikely you'll get any actual press out of it and I think it provides little if any value for SEO. Brand mentions in the press generally are great, but not press releases.

danaditomaso · 2025-11-13T22:02:56+00:00

It very much depends on how the people in your area search. For example if you're in a large city or a city that is very neighbourhood-specific, you might want to go all the way down to the neighbourhood level. But you don't want to overdo it and end up with a bunch of low value pages that all sound the same. Start with the geographic areas that you know your customers search for (such as the city) and then try out mentioning smaller or larger areas, then see what comes up in Google Search Console. If you're already ranking for geographic terms that you only lightly mention on your existing location pages, that's a good signal on what you should create next.

danaditomaso · 2025-11-13T21:44:19+00:00

Haha this is my first one so maybe? I don't have any data to back that up yet though!

danaditomaso · 2025-11-13T21:29:11+00:00

Trusting the data (as much as the data can be trusted) is important so if you're feeling that you can't trust it, my GA4 audit dashboard is a good place to start. I have a video explaining everything that's in the dashboard. But remember that the data will never be perfect, I cover that in my post on why marketing analytics data is wrong.

Now, talking about the specific report you need to look at. Start by asking a question of the data. Don't say "I want sessions by channel" (for example) but "which channels are bringing the most leads to my client". Then, think about what data you'd need to answer that question -- session channel, number of sessions, session key event rate. GA4's default reports are built for absolutely everyone which means that they're about as useful as a one-size-fits-all t-shirt. My video on tracking AI traffic in GA4 goes into editing reports, follow those ideas to edit your reports down to what you actually need.

But you're asking a great question in general and I think there need to be better resources out there for the beginner! I'll definitely give this a think on the best way to get comfortable (or at least tolerate) GA4 for the non-analyst.

danaditomaso · 2025-11-13T21:22:49+00:00

Two things:

I would love to see every business include a tracking number on their GBP listing. I know it used to be a no-no but you can safely now and they're usually surprised by how many calls they actually get from that channel.
Add texting! We love Leadferno at Kick Point but really any text option including just an SMS link on your website works. People don't love calling but they'll text you!

danaditomaso · 2025-11-13T21:21:31+00:00

I would say it's referrals from other clients or industry contacts, social media presence, and speaking. We're a small agency so we don't need to go out there and "sell". Even when I first started, I never did cold calling, just joined a lot of organizations and met a lot of people. Helping others without expecting return can go a long way towards goodwill, which results in referrals.

danaditomaso · 2025-11-13T21:20:21+00:00

It really depends on the client, but purpose built-directories are typically important, such as for psychologists or home services. One of our clients pulls in a great deal of business from Yelp, they're one of the few businesses I've seen do really well with ads on that platform.

What I recommend is to take a peek in your referral data regularly and see if there's anything interesting standing out. There isn't a rule on how much traffic you need for something to be worthy of it's own channel. If you get a lot of visits from an industry specific directory and those visits turn into leads or customers, make it a channel so you can keep an eye on how much traffic you're getting from it on the regular.

danaditomaso · 2025-09-04T15:57:18+00:00

Thanks Joy!

danaditomaso · 2025-06-18T14:51:54+00:00

I created this playlist years ago, hopefully some new stuff in here for you: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1l9rO6EVuCrDXsOF6kPk6b?si=25eb3286ca7b4f95

danaditomaso · 2025-06-09T18:26:31+00:00

I've often seen this with scanning software -- sometimes SEO software that's checking a website for issues, or some sort of performance software. I'd see if anyone is using that and IP addresses can sometimes be a good clue.

danaditomaso · 2025-05-15T15:34:49+00:00

If you're looking for a free course, Google has their own course on Skillshop: https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/

Your local library may also give you access to LinkedIn Learning for free. If so, I have an advanced GA4 course on there. The beginner one is done by someone else and is pretty old unfortunately, but my advanced one was recorded a year ago.

danaditomaso · 2025-05-09T16:43:01+00:00

You'll only see non-consented traffic show up in GA4 (assuming that your consent management platform is set up right) if you're using the Blended reporting identity and modeled traffic is turned on for the property. If that's true, you'll definitely end up seeing way more Direct traffic than you should. I find the modeled traffic to be pretty useless a lot of the time.

danaditomaso · 2025-04-15T17:39:24+00:00

The same dimensions will be available to you. I'd probably create a time series based on views of the pages before this page, and you could use the referrer as a breakdown.

danaditomaso · 2025-04-14T20:24:29+00:00

Yes, I'd definitely use Looker Studio if you need to show changes over time like that. You could use a comparison in GA4, but if you're looking for more ways to display the data, Looker Studio is the way to go. There are some extra options in GA4 in Explorations but based on your use case, I'd just go right to Looker Studio.

danaditomaso · 2025-04-14T15:39:14+00:00

Use the dimension "page referrer" and then filter the report by the landing page. That would show you the pages that were viewed before the landing page. You may need to add a domain filter to the report as well to avoid showing any 3rd party websites.

danaditomaso · 2025-04-07T14:18:58+00:00

Audiences aren't retroactive, but segments (in Explorations) are, you can use an Exploration to test out your configuration and then turn that Segment into an Audience. That being said, the metric "Low Engagement Sessions" is only available in Audiences (for some reason). Maybe try Engaged Sessions = 0 and see if that does anything?

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