5 Analytics Mistakes Small Business Owners Make (and How to Avoid Them) Dev Basu , Powered by Search - Oct 4, 2011

In marketing, "what gets measured, gets managed," as was famously said by Peter Drucker, often called the father of modern marketing. Why then do most small business owners have no clue about how well their website is performing? In a recent poll of small business owners attending a Local SEO seminar, only 20% of attendees even admitted to having an analytics package such as Google Analytics installed.

As I work with small business owners day-to-day, I see five mistakes being made most often:

Mistake 1. Counting Your Own Visits towards Marketing KPIs

Have you set up a filter to exclude all internal traffic from your own computer, your office network, or even from your suppliers and contractors? Chances are, you're probably not keeping your analytics data honest, because you're counting your own visits and user behavior as part of the great set of analytics data you have. Here is how to fix that:

1. Find out what the IP addresses of all your computers are by visiting a site such as What is my IP and note down the individual addresses.
2. Create a Filtered Analytics Profile -- Click "add new profile" in your analytics dashboard and setup an identical profile with the excluded IP addresses.
3. Follow this guide to exclude a single IP address or a range of IP addresses.

Mistake 2. Not Using Advanced Segments to Separate Branded vs. Non-Branded Keywords

When you dive into your keyword report, are most of the keywords driving traffic and conversions your own brand name? If so, you're missing a critical view of potential customers who are searching for "what you do" but not "who you are."

Using advanced segments in Google Analytics, you can segregate branded keywords, which people type in as a by-product of good branding, traditional advertising, or word of mouth from your online marketing campaigns such as SEO or SEM campaigns.

Setting up an advanced segment is easy if your brand name is relatively simple, but if it isn't, this handy guide provides an illustrated way to set up an advanced segment.

Mistake 3. Relying on Lazy Dashboard Metrics. Ditch the dashboard for Custom Reports.

What do visits, page views, bounce rates, and goal funnels really mean to you as a small business owner? Chances are, you're more interested in knowing which particular online investments are driving leads, and whether you should invest more in SEO vs. PPC or vice-versa. Setting up a custom report in Google Analytics, which presents you with a unique dashboard with metrics that matter to your business, is the right way to start. Here are three downloadable custom reports to get you started.

Mistake 4. Not Tracking Overall Social Media Engagement and Outcomes

Are you involved in content marketing such as writing regular articles for your company blog or guest-blogging for complementary businesses? When looking at top content reports in Google Analytics, segment out user behavior and engagement metrics for major social media sites by setting up a fairly comprehensive all-up social media advanced segment.

Mistake 5. Not Keeping up to Date with Unusual Traffic and Conversion Patterns

Waking up to see your analytics dashboard out of whack can be a traumatic experience for any webmaster and a frustrating experience for a small business owner. You would be surprised to know how many times Google Analytics code gets removed unintentionally from a webpage or even a website template, resulting in a complete loss of data. Setting up Google Analytics e-mail alerts is a quick and easy way to know when unusual (positive or negative) traffic and conversion patterns occur on your site. Here are a couple of very easy-to-import analytics alerts.

Dev Basu is the owner of Powered by Search, an SEO Company and Internet Marketing agency specializing in SEO, Local Search, Paid Search, and Social Media solutions for SMBs and SMEs and national enterprise clients. Follow Dev on Twitter for more SEO tips and tricks.