Episode 5: I have no problem scrolling on my phone all day

Welcome to a special fireworks edition of I Think You Should Read This.?

What’s so special about this edition??

It includes a truckload of AI-generated fireworks images, like this one:

Okay, let’s talk about what we’re going to talk about in this issue:

1. Celebrating the return of pagination (and what it might mean for your organic traffic)
2. Are you tired of people complaining about GA4??I sure am. Here's how to stop it.
3. How to handle the plural form of “call to action” (and a few other fun words)

Section 1: Infinite scroll is dead! All hail the return of pagination!?

It’s official: no more endless scrolling in Google search results.?

Like all great things eventually do, pagination has come back to life.?

And that means we can revive the greatest SEO joke in history:

Where’s the best place to hide a dead body?

On page 2 of Google!

Get it - because no one clicks to page 2 of Google.?

I know you laughed at that. It’s funny because it’s true.?

If you’re on page 2, it’s like your website doesn’t exist at all.?

Which is exactly why we need to talk about how pagination might impact your SEO.?

How pagination may impact your SEO

First, let’s do a brief review of the purpose of SEO.?

SEO exists to increase the visibility of your website.?

It does that by getting your website to rank better for the search terms that matter to your target audience. Or at least it should. Some people try to rank for all kinds of crap, but that’s another story.?

But rankings aren’t the only thing.?

If you rank well and no one clicks through to your site, then are you even ranking, bro??

You gotta have the clicks.?

And getting the clicks means more than just ranking. You need to optimize your SERP listings so you get those clicks.?

The gold standard of SEO has always been (and always will be) to get to the top of page 1 of the SERP (that’s an abbrev. for Search Engine Results Page).?

Traditionally, it was really, really hard to get clicks if you weren’t on page 1. Almost no one went to page 2 of the search results. We’re talking well under 1% of searches.?

But then Google switched to endless scroll, and page 2 stopped being a thing.?

Which ever-so-slightly elevated the click-through rate (CTR) of websites that ranked 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, etc. You know, those things just off the traditional page 1.?

But now all those things are going back to page 2, which means those CTRs are going back down to pretty much 0% (instead of the amazing 0.15% they’ve been experiencing with infinite scroll)?

Of course, the goal was never to get to spots 11-14 of Google anyway. The goal should always be to rank in the top three (which isn’t always possible depending on what kind of content you’re trying to rank).?

That’s where all the clicks have always been.?

Top three.?

Gold standard.?

Get top three, and you get fireworks (sorry, no sarcastic rocket ship emoji yet).?

How to measure the impact of pagination

This marks the end of people endlessly scrolling the Google search results getting lost in all the great things Google has indexed.?

Spoiler alert - that wasn’t really happening. If people didn’t find what they needed quickly, they weren’t spending much time scrolling. They were doing other searches. Google isn’t Facebook or TikTok, after all. We aren’t wasting away our lives on Google SERPs trying desperately to find something that makes us feel human and loved.

Sorry, that was a little bleak. Back to SEO stuff.???

If the removal of endless scroll and the reintroduction of pagination in Google search drastically changes your SEO strategy, then you were doing it wrong.?

But that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to see some impact.?

The key thing is having a plan for measuring that impact.?

Here’s a simple thing you can do.?

Go to your Google Search Console (you have that, right?).?

Once in GSC, navigate to the performance report and do the following:

• Set the date to a custom comparison range using the day pagination rolled out as the start date. Note: this is still in its infancy (is it still infancy if it died and was reborn years later?), so you won’t have a ton of data yet. Eventually, this will be a great way to check.
• Next, filter by queries with an average position over 10 in the current period.?These are going to be your non-page 1 keywords. Sort of. Since we’re talking average position, some of these keywords might sometimes be page 1 keywords, but for the sake of simplicity, we’re going to assume they aren’t showing up on page 1 most of the time. If you really want to get specific, then export the data to a Google Sheet and look only at the queries with average position between 11 and 20.?

So what are you looking for here??

You’re checking to see if your CTR dropped (assuming the other metrics stayed the same).

If the average position is steady but CTR went down significantly, then you might be a victim of pagination.?

So what should you do about it??

There’s only one answer.?

Rank on page 1.?

Duh.?

Here’s the reality - the impact of pagination shouldn’t impact your SEO strategy.?

Unless your SEO strategy was to rank on page 2.?

In that case, here’s a dozen sarcastic rocket ship emojis for you:

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Section 2: Can we stop ranting about GA4 already? A rant against ranting.?

Okay, so Universal Analytics is now officially, officially dead.?

UA, or GA3, stopped processing data last summer. But those properties have been sitting there with a treasure trove of old data ever since.?

Until this week when Google officially deleted all the data. If you thought they were bluffing, then you got a rude awakening. All that data is really gone, so if you wanted it, I hope you backed it up.?

And now we’re stuck with a bunch of empty UA properties in our Google Analytics accounts. Hopefully Google will eventually remove all these old profiles. Otherwise, Google Analytics accounts are going to be quite messy with useless empty properties moving forward.?

That aside, let’s talk about what’s important.?

There’s no going back now. It’s time to be all-in on GA4.?

Actually, the best time to be all-in on GA4 was about 2 years ago when Google announced UA was going away.?

But people delayed.?

And they complained.?

And they said Google wouldn’t sunset UA.?

And they were stubborn and refused to migrate until the last minute.?

Or they let Google migrate for them (which was a complete shitshow).?

And so when GA4 was the analytics platform, most people didn’t know how to use it.?

So they blamed Google for everything:

Because they decided to continue using the old thing they knew was going away rather than learning the new thing they knew would replace it.?

Which led to a boatload of frustration (and a lot of misinformation).?

GA4 things people complain about

Now, a year later, people still regularly complain about GA4 for all these reasons and more:

• The UI sucks (party true, but so does every new platform because we aren’t used to it yet)
• There are data retention limits (mostly true, but there are workarounds)
• There are metrics missing (true, but those metrics sucked)
• There are no more annotations (true, which is a big bummer, but there are Chrome extensions for this)
• There are no more goals (true, but goals in UA were limited and awful)
• I can’t find anything (that’s your problem; you would know how to find stuff if you’d been using it for the past 2 years)
• It doesn’t connect to Looker Studio (false, although there were some API and data timeout issues when it first launched)

GA4 things you should love

They do all that complaining without recognizing all the benefits of GA4:

• It’s more flexible for customizing data
• Event tracking is infinitely better and allows you to collect the parameters you need instead of cramming it into the rigid category, action, label structure of UA
• It automatically tracks the most common events, reducing the technical requirements to configure analytics
• It seamlessly connects with BigQuery
• It allows you to switch data modeling and attribution on the fly (and then switch it back)
• You can set up as many key events as you want AND change the counting method
• Explorations and page pathing reports blow away anything UA had in terms of analyzing user journeys
• You soon will be able to import third-party data from ad platforms such as Pinterest, Reddit, and Snap

And that barely scratches the surface as far as why GA4 is better.?

It’s also improving all the time with new metrics and new features, including AI insights coming soon (okay, okay, I’m a little skeptical at the moment, but we’ll see).?

What to do about GA4 now

A marketer has three choices at this point:

1. Learn how to use GA4 and make the most of it (which is more than UA, trust me)
2. Switch to a different analytics platform (okay, but you won’t get exactly what you want from any platform)
3. Continue to complain about GA4, never learn how to use it, and make poor decisions not informed by good data because you don’t know how to find and analyze the right data

It’s been a year since GA4 fully replaced UA, and it’s been over three years since GA4 first launched. The only excuse you have for not knowing GA4 at this point is not trying .

If you are a GA4 hater, share what your biggest complaint is in the comments.?

If you are a GA4 lover, share your favorite thing in the comments.?

If you are on the fence, then go study it more so you have something to say in the comments.?

Here’s the final thing I’ll say about GA4 - it’s a data collection tool. That means you have to set it up properly to collect the data you need. GA4 doesn’t give you the answers. It collects the data. You find the answers yourself.?

And with the right data, you can make fireworks:

Section 3: What to do when you have more than one call to action

Ever seen these words before?

• Sister-in-law
• Passerby
• Justice of the peace

What do all these things have in common??

To make them plural, you don’t put the “s” in the end.?

Here are the plural forms:

• Sisters-in-law
• Passersby
• Justices of the peace

That’s kind of screwed up, isn’t it??

Not really.?

It’s pretty logical. We could explain each one, but let’s focus on a marketing usage instead:

Calls to action.?

Yup, it’s “calls to action.”?

But most people say “call to actions.”?

That’s not what it is.?

Because it’s multiple “calls” not multiple “actions.”?

At least that’s how it should be.?

Think of it this way.?

I have three buttons on my website:

• “Request a demo”
• “Get a quote”
• “Call us now”

Those three buttons are the calls.?

And each call has one action.?

So these are the calls to action.?

Here are a bunch of them on one awful website:?

See how each call is separate, and each call is asking you to perform a specific action? Like “Learn Mop” and “Dign Lop”??

Good stuff there, ChatGPT. Can you build my next website??

“Call to actions” would be a single call that had multiple actions for you to perform.?

Like a single button that said:

“Request a quote, get a demo, call us now, and follow us on X.”

One call, multiple actions.?

That would also be a very stupid button to put on your website.?

Each call to action should have one clear action.?

And every page should have a clear call to do that action.?

The moral of the story is this:

Use the right “calls to action” on your website.?

Don’t use any call to actions.?

You will confuse your users.?

And a confused user never converts.?

The I Think You Should Read This roundup

And your takeaways for the week:

1. Benchmark the impact the return to pagination has on your CTR, but the more important thing to focus on is ranking on page 1 so you don’t have to worry about pagination at all.?
2. Instead of complaining about GA4, either embrace it by actually using the platform or just go use something else (which will have another set of problems).?
3. It’s “calls to action.” It’s not “call to actions.” Unless you have a single button that asks them to take multiple actions. Like “Click here to submit this form, call us, email us, and follow us on TikTok!” Or you can make it simple and just use CTAs (but please don’t ever use CTA’s). No matter how you spell it, make sure every page on your website has a clear Call To Action.?

Okay, that’s a wrap. Have a safe and relaxing 4th of July.?

We’ll see each other again in a couple weeks.?

In the meantime, stay off page 2 of those Google search results. You never know what wretched things you’ll find there.?

And just for fun, one more AI-generated image of fireworks: