How To Use GA4 and AI To Discover the Gold In Your Information

Open a marketer’s treasure chest and also you’ll see an abundance of knowledge.

How do you choose the precious gold amongst all of the nugatory pyrite? And the way can AI aid you discover that gold?

Dana DiTomaso has some ideas primarily based on her expertise because the founder and lead teacher of Kick Level Playbook, which offers on-line advertising coaching. She not too long ago shared her insights at CMI’s Content and Marketing Trends for 2025 occasion.

Watch Dana’s tackle methods to take advantage of Google Analytics 4, AI instruments, and all of your different information, or learn this edited transcript.

Settle for that information isn’t good

Let’s discuss information. We’ve by no means had extra of it. We now have Google Analytics 4 and all types of different information we are able to consider on our web site. We now have our CRMs. We now have all this AI info being tossed at us. We now have tons and tons of knowledge.

Sadly, information has by no means been much less correct.

Market analytics information is incorrect. Can or not it’s fastened? No. Why? As a result of folks use advert blockers. There are all types of different causes, and so they all imply that your analytics are actually not correct.

I really need you to simply accept in your coronary heart that analytics won’t ever be good. As an alternative, work with what you could have.

Know that Google Search Console information is just not going to be 100% correct by way of the amount or variety of impressions or clicks. However directionally, it is kind of helpful. Don’t concentrate on the numbers; take a look at the tendencies.

Assess whether or not a web page is doing its job

Are you matching search intent? This can be a difficult query. Folks will take a look at search intent and suppose, “Effectively, I assume I bought loads of site visitors right here. I don’t need to look too far backstage and resolve if the search intent isn’t superb or not as a result of if I higher match the search intent, I’d get fewer guests to the web site. That might look unhealthy in my experiences.”

Nonetheless, wouldn’t you quite have 500 guests who usually tend to convert than 10,000 guests who aren’t going to transform? Matching search intent is vital. You should utilize GA4 and AI to raised match search intent.

When you’ve labored in software program improvement, you is likely to be accustomed to the idea of “jobs to be finished.” A web page has a selected job. The contact web page has a job of enabling folks to contact you. The privateness coverage web page has the job of creating positive that you simply’re fulfilling your authorized necessities.

If folks landed in your privateness coverage web page one way or the other, would you anticipate them to transform? No. Some pages could have individuals who have already got purchased your service taking a look at them, so are you anticipating them to transform once more? No. Then why are you together with these sorts of pages if you listing touchdown pages with conversion charges?

So, acknowledge the job of the touchdown web page.

Then, ask if the (search) queries that land guests on a web page match the job of that web page. In the event that they don’t, do you want a brand new web page, or do you simply want to repair the web page that already exists?

That is the place AI actually shines as a result of it will probably simply establish new alternatives. I actually like Claude. I’m not doing something at scale simply but. I’ve a textual content file of a web page on our web site, after which I am going into Google Search Console and ask it to offer me all of the queries that led folks to this web page for the final 16 months. That’s the utmost quantity of knowledge you may pull natively out of the Google Search Console interface.

I take a look at which queries are exhibiting up for this web page. You may need a chance to rank for these phrases as a result of in case your web page, which isn’t completely related for that time period, reveals up, Google’s actually attempting to determine one thing that ought to rank for them. These are in all probability good content material alternatives as a result of they is probably not served effectively by present content material.

Then, I pose this query to Claude: “Are you able to establish any queries that aren’t effectively served by this web page? And if that’s the case, what new content material ought to I create to fulfill these queries?”

The question posed to Claude: "Can you identify any queries that aren't well served by this page? And if so, what new content should I create to satisfy those queries?"

Claude comes again with a niche evaluation and identifies some actually improbable items that we should always write about on our website. My subsequent query to Claude is, “Now, I need you so as to add up all of the impressions and inform me which of them have probably the most prospects.”

Search query gap analysis results

Comply with the customer journey in GA4

What’s the consumer journey from that touchdown web page? If that touchdown web page is wanting good, however it is probably not the place the place folks convert, the place else can they go from it? I encourage you to make use of the trail exploration in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Have a look at the occasion’s “session begin.” What’s the path of that web page? The place do they go subsequent? You possibly can simply preserve clicking on these (choices) till you get to the place the guests ended up. You can also do a path evaluation by beginning with the tip level.

Path exploration in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Path exploration in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

When you take a look at the hole between the touchdown web page and the high-value pages, you’ll find alternatives. Folks began on this web page; they clicked right here, however they didn’t proceed. How are you going to get folks from level A to level B?

Understand how guests have interaction

Are you aware how customers are utilizing your web site?

I don’t simply imply web page views. I imply taking a look at different metrics that inform you if customers are having or unhealthy time along with your web site. You will have used bounce fee in Google’s common analytics. It was not metric. GA4 has a brand new metric referred to as the engagement fee. A session turns into engaged when a consumer does at the very least one in all these three issues:

  • Had your web site in an energetic tab for at the very least 10 seconds
  • Visited a second web page on the location
  • Had a key occasion

Because of this it’s necessary to ensure your key occasions report issues that relate to your objectives on your web site. engagement charges can actually assist if individuals are partaking along with your content material the way in which you need them to. Person conduct additionally outlines the standard of your site visitors. You possibly can establish unhealthy site visitors by taking a look at sources with unhealthy engagement charges.

Engagement charges don’t inform your complete story, both. We regularly measure content material consumption to inform us what content material is partaking. It’s a Google Tag Manager recipe. It’s also a WordPress plugin. It takes the piece of content material and measures how lengthy it could take to learn that piece of content material. If the individual dwelled lengthy sufficient to view it and scrolled to the underside of that content material, the content material was consumed. It provides a place to begin (to know) which content material to enhance to ensure individuals are studying the whole lot on the web page.

Nonetheless, keep in mind, content material isn’t simply the written phrase. Movies have by no means been extra in style. You need to report content material consumption primarily based on how individuals are viewing your movies. We regularly observe somebody viewing 90% of the video as (content material consumption) completion.

Then, by evaluating the content material consumption charges between textual content and video, you may see for this viewers what’s extra compelling. Does textual content communicate extra to the viewers, or does video communicate extra? Now, what to prioritize relating to creating extra content material.

Use AI to investigate the info for alternatives

What new content material alternatives must you pursue?

Take your AI software of alternative. Feed it the whole lot you could have, from content material belongings to key phrases and viewers analysis. Then, feed it along with your efficiency information from GA4, Google Search Console, your CRM, and so forth.

Together with your total web site and content material belongings in its mind, it will probably draw connections between the efficiency information and the content material on the web page. Then, you may ask it questions that can assist you make higher content material selections, equivalent to:

  • “Right here’s our efficiency information from GA4. Right here’s what we’re saying in Google Search Console. What content material will we have already got that fulfills these search queries?”
  • “Which content material is doing effectively on search versus social?”
  • “Primarily based on this analysis, what content material is lacking?”
  • “What content material is doing an excellent job of bringing these high-value gross sales?”

The final query is the place your CRM information is available in. I’m a giant advocate of tying collectively GA4 information along with your CRM information.

For instance, folks fill out a type and you understand how they bought to the shape, however are you aware the precise worth finally of that sale? It’d take months or years, relying on the sector. By tying the GA4 and CRM information collectively, you may say, “This advert marketing campaign truly drove X variety of {dollars} of worth.”

You possibly can feed that info to your AI mind and say, “Inform us which content material is doing the perfect job of driving these high-value gross sales.” Then, you may ask, “Now what content material is bringing within the high-value gross sales; what different content material do you expect can be of excessive worth for our enterprise?”

It could actually establish these alternatives and aid you prioritize your work for 2025 within the place the place you make probably the most cash.

Get probably the most from GA4

What else must you begin monitoring in GA4 in 2025?

Monitor picture views. I report each single picture seen on our web site. I can report scroll depths of 25%, 50%, 75%, and so forth. It provides me a extremely fine-grained information of precisely the place folks bail. I get sense of the place folks get bored and cease studying our weblog posts. And it’s a very useful strategy to optimize that content material.

I additionally advocate utilizing audiences in GA4. I really like utilizing audiences for all types of various stuff, equivalent to areas or pages that folks have engaged with. For instance, I usually use it to grasp the viewers, excluding individuals who seen a careers web page. They’re in all probability not going to purchase stuff; they only need a job.

Nonetheless, a very powerful factor is to make sure that you arrange insights in GA4. On the homepage of GA4, scroll right down to the underside of this web page and click on on “create customized insights.”

On the homepage of GA4, scroll down to the bottom of this page and click on “create custom insights.”

That’s the place you arrange your alerts for issues like no natural site visitors or no conversions to know if one thing is incorrect. The very last thing you need is to have one thing horrible occur and also you don’t discover out till you pull the report for the following month.

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Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising and marketing Institute