Your Most Valuable Asset: Why You’re Not Using It (And How to Fix That) Featuring Brie Anderson

Garrett: All right, welcome back to The Next Chapter of Search produced by SEO Week and iPullRank. If you haven’t already got your tickets, I’m talking April 28th to May 1st in New York City. It is going to be the best SEO conference in the history of the universe, probably. And you know why? Because Brie Anderson’s going to be there. Brie is the owner at Beast Analytics. She’s being joined by 35+ amazing speakers across AI, SEO, data, content, you name it. Brie, what’s up? Thanks for joining me today.

Brie: I’m stoked and I gotta say this lineup, legendary. I mean, easily the most stacked lineup ever. So, I’m stoked.

Garrett: Dude, I can’t wait for all the conversations that we’re going to have after every single presentation, let alone being able to learn so much info in such a short amount of time. But let’s dive in. The world is nuts. The search world has been crazy for the past 12 to 24 months and beyond. What’s your perspective on the current state of SEO and search?

Brie: I cannot believe how fast, constantly changing. I mean, listen, I think, you know, two, three, four, five years ago, you asked any search marketer, like, you know, “what brings you to search? Like, what do you love about it?” And everyone would be like, “oh, it just changes all the time,” you know? And we love that ’cause so many of us love to like, to learn new things and be constantly challenged and whatever. But I think Google took that a little too seriously. And so did just like the technology world in general. And they went, you want to challenge? And it has been nuts.

So, you know, my background, I did like, I did social stuff that turned into paid social, that turned into paid Google, that just turned into SEO. And so, and now I’m like, the one thing that connects all of that is data, and that’s great, so I’m focused on the data more. So, I’ve taken a little bit of a step back from SEO specifically. And anytime somebody comes to me from the SEO world, I’m just like, “how are you doing? Like, are you okay?” Because even on my end, trying to keep up with, you know, what should we be tracking? What, you know, is even worth tracking? Because what do we control at this point? I think one of the biggest changes is the control that we have now is nearly non-existent. So, there’s only so much we can do, you know? Or at least that’s what it feels like from my point of view.

Garrett: No, I love the perspective. And it is, it’s so hard. And analytics is so hard because you have this like push and pull of like, are we losing third party, you know, third party cookies? Like, are things changing across Google? They are, they aren’t. Attribution is always this conversation because we always have this mindset of performance marketing. And then everything all of a sudden is brand. And that’s just not the way SEO is anymore.

And so, you are going to be presenting all about, you know, what you should be doing when it comes to analytics in 2025. Can you give us a preview of what people will be learning from your talk at SEO Week and like, why should they come? It’s going to be juicy, but give it to me.

Brie: Yeah, so I think the biggest thing is like, we need to have, I mean, we need to go back to tracking 101 and go, what is our plan here? What are we tracking and why? What are we going to do with it? Because that, like, it seems in the moment, like an obvious, right? But like, we really have to take a step back and especially in the times that we’re living where everyone’s job is constantly on the line, which I feel like I’ve been saying that for five years, which is just a terrible thing to think about. But what are, you know, we have to report out to clients or we have to report out to CEOs. Like, we know that there are certain metrics they want to see. And those are the things that we need to make sure are being tracked. But then also we need to make sure that we’re looking at, you know, these new launches that we’re doing, campaigns that we’re doing, are we tracking those and the efficacy of those? And then also changing into, how are we making these numbers accessible? How are we making them easy to read? And then how are we leveraging that data?

To be honest, I mean, if you think back to the scientific method, which is like basically what I preach, the one thing that’s really hard about it right now is that change piece, right? We don’t have a ton of constants or control variables. So we need to make as many of those as we can. We need to be aware of what are not controlled variables. And then we need to create a plan for how are we going to track this? And then how are we going to look at the data? How are we going to make the data so easy to look at that anyone on our team can look at it? Big hint here, these are things that we learned in elementary school, patterns, and then outliers. One of these things just doesn’t belong here. I mean, that’s a Sesame Street song. And we can spot those. We can create ways that finding these patterns and these outliers are easy. It’s just a matter of making sure you’re tracking the right things and then putting them into formats that are easy to digest.

Garrett: I love it. And I love the way that you frame it. I mean, it’s like you live it and breathe it, but it’s so true when it comes to scientific method. And it is so overwhelming. We have a chaotic world where things are changing constantly. And it’s really hard to ever feel like you do have a grasp on whether you’re thinking for the future or whether you’re thinking what worked on the past because data, you know, like it’s, I think about like going back to the pandemic, it’s like all the data we collected then is not always applicable to going forward because it’s a completely different market, a completely different user behavior.

What is one thing that this audience can do right now from your perspective, from analytics that they should get on their butt and do that would really move the needle for their business?

Brie: I mean, I think the biggest thing that, you know, was kind of kicked into gear with the shift to GA4, but kind of not is to just like, let’s review and document our tracking, okay? Let’s start there. Because you might think you know what you’re tracking and it might not be what you think it is at all. Analytics properties are things that are handed from team to team, agency to agency, person to person, no dev controls it, no IT controls it, no marketing, no growth, no. So, let’s all just take a step back, get our analytics properties, take everything out of it, compare it to our tag managers, whatever you’re using, and then let’s document it. And say, hey, we thought donate event happened when people were making donations, it turns out it’s just when people click on the donate button. Well, those are two very different things.

So, you know, I think really, really, really truly, we’ve got to get back to basics a little bit and all of that starts with making sure you know what you’ve got going on. And again, it’s one of those like, oh, that sounds like an easy thing and it sounds like something that everybody should have. It’s not, I’ll tell you. All of my clients come to me because they actually don’t know what’s going on in their accounts. And I’ll say it, I’ve got a good number of clients. So, I can’t imagine that they’re outliers in this instance.

Garrett: I love it. It’s almost like the don’t be the Chris Pratt meme where it’s like, you know, like, I don’t know what’s going on with my analytics and I’m too afraid to ask. Like, don’t be that person.

Brie: Yeah, ’cause we need reliable data. I mean, in the Cambridge Analytica documentary that came out on Netflix, I can’t remember what it’s called, but you know, they’re quoted in that special saying that data is the most valuable asset in the world. And it is, but really only when you use it. Only if it’s good data and only if it’s being used. And so much of what we do right now is we collect all this data going someday, this is going to be helpful. And then we just never get to it. So we’ve got to make it so terribly easy that it would be dumb not to. And that’s what we’re going to do at SEO Week.

Garrett: I love it. It’s a don’t be a someday marketer, which kind of leads perfectly into the someday of the future. Like, what direction are we going? Either like in terms of the industry of search, but especially in the context of data, like what do you think that’ll look like?

Brie: You know, things are going to be harder and harder to attribute to specific channels, but I’ll tell you what, for a long time, things really should be attributed to one channel. So, you know, user journeys today are so wild. I mean, unless you’re buying a $5 spatula off of Amazon, so where there’s like no decision-making happening, you’re just like, I need this in two days. And I know that I can get one on Amazon. And all I care about is that it’s cheap and flips pancakes. Like, yeah, but most of us don’t have a product that’s sold that easily. And so, to me, in my opinion, kind of silly to be like, oh, this conversion came from Google.

Like we need to have, I think we’re going to have to lean into more of correlation studies, LLM studies, where we’re going to have to be looking at like, okay, we know if we’re running Facebook ads that we also get this secondary lift in like Google searches because people see our ads and then they’re thinking about it later on. And they’re like, “oh, well, I saw this.” And like, we’ll see the click come from Google search, but like maybe not Facebook ads. But like, if we didn’t have the ads running, they wouldn’t be looking for us ’cause they never, you know what I mean? So, I think we’re going to have to get away from that.

It was so nice that we could go click, click, boom, right? That’s not working anymore though, because it’s getting so robust that we’re going to have to be a little bit more out of the box in the way that we’re analyzing data and the way that we’re looking at, yeah, efficacy of our campaigns. In search, especially, I mean, AI overviews. I mean, people talking to Cursor, people talking to ChatGPT. So much of this is turning into brand as a new entity. I know we’re hearing that a ton and ton. And what does that mean? That means that when people are ready to work with us, we’re going to see it as organic search, which, hey, for my SEOs, that’s going to be great. That’s going to be great. But for everybody else that’s working on it or it’s going to look like direct. And by the way, that sucks because then nobody gets the piece of the pie for that. So, I think it’s just going to be a little bit more complex. I think we’re going to have to kind of let go of the idea of like first touch, last touch. We’re going to have to be more comfortable in going, “these things are probably related,” and testing them – by the way, do your own tests. And that’s what we’re going to have to do.

Garrett: And especially like in the context of what you’re saying about the scientific method and these studies, it’s, you have to be responsible with the way you analyze a correlation study at the same time. Remember, I gotta say it every time it comes up, correlation does not mean causation. Like you need to be, you need to learn how to use data and actually come away with hypotheses that you can test and not just assume that this is happening because of this, because that’s going to point you in a completely wrong direction most of the time.

Brie: So, our Facebook ads been went up, our organic search went up. Great, those things are correlated. Hey, here’s the next test, turn them off. Or organic search then. And also make sure you look at Google Trends ’cause they’re just a huge spike and people searching for mattresses that week and you sell mattresses because something happened, I don’t know, you know what I mean? Like, these are the things where it is, like I always build in an exploration step. You can’t just look at those two pieces of data. It’s like, what else could have affected this data? And then if you still think there is a correlation, great, turn them off, see what happens.

Garrett: Exactly.

Brie: So, you know, so.

Garrett: Check your biases, check your incentives. It’s going to be such a great presentation, and I can’t wait to meet you in person. We’re going to have a fun time. Brie, if you haven’t gotten your tickets, make sure you get them for SEO Week, end of April.

Thank you for joining me today, Brie. This has been awesome.

Brie: Thanks for having me.

Garrett: Okay, we’ll see you next time, SEOweek.org. Come get your tickets, peace out.