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GA4 Setup Services

GA4 That Counts Your Leads.

Plenty of GA4 properties report traffic and miss the things that matter: form leads, phone calls and booking requests. I set up or repair GA4 for service businesses so every enquiry is recorded, tested and traceable to the page and channel that produced it.

John Akande — Los Angeles SEO consultant for service businesses, ecommerce, SaaS and B2B

The Problem

Installed Isn't the Same as Set Up.

Adding the GA4 tag to a website takes a few minutes. Getting GA4 to answer the question an owner asks, which is where the leads came from, takes more work. Out of the box, GA4 records page views and a handful of automatic events. It doesn't know which form is your quote request, it can't tell a lead from a newsletter signup, and it keeps detailed event data for explorations for only 2 or 14 months, depending on a setting most people never change.

So the reports look busy and the important number is missing. Marketing decisions get made on traffic, because traffic is the only thing being measured properly.

Common Problems

Five Ways GA4 Goes Wrong.

No key events. Leads aren't marked as key events, so GA4 can't report which pages or channels produce them.
A form event that doesn't fire. The form works for visitors, the tracking doesn't, and the lead count in GA4 sits at zero while real enquiries arrive.
GA4 installed twice. A hard-coded snippet plus a tag in Tag Manager doubles page views, and duplicated event tags inflate leads.
Calls nobody can see. Phone taps go unrecorded, so the channel that sends the most callers gets no credit.
The wrong owner. The property sits in a former agency's or employee's account, and the business can't get admin access to its own data.

What's Included

A GA4 Setup Built Around Leads.

01 · Audit

Tracking Audit

What's installed, what fires, who owns each account, and where the numbers disagree with your real enquiries.

02 · Foundation

Property & Tag Manager

GA4 installed once, through Tag Manager, with 14-month retention, internal traffic filtered and your business as admin.

03 · Key Events

Forms, Calls & Bookings

A tested key event for each form that brings leads, plus phone taps, booking requests and chat starts.

04 · Privacy

Consent Mode

Consent mode wired to your cookie banner where your visitors or ad platforms require it, tested in both states.

05 · Connections

Search Console & Ads

Search Console linked for search data. Google Ads linked with key events imported as conversions, if you advertise.

06 · Reporting

A Dashboard You'll Read

A Looker Studio report showing leads by page, channel and month, plus a written list of every event and what it measures.

How It Works

From First Check to Handover.

It starts with the free tracking check. I look at what you have and send back what's broken, what's missing and a fixed price for the work.

Once you're happy with the quote, you give me user access to GA4, Tag Manager and Search Console, and we agree which events count as leads. Then I build. Every event gets tested in Tag Manager's Preview mode and in GA4's DebugView, including a real test submission of each form, because a tag that fires in the editor can still send nothing useful to GA4.

At handover you get the dashboard, the event list and a short recorded walkthrough. Access stays in your name.

Pricing

One Fixed Price, Agreed Up Front.

A standalone GA4 setup or repair starts at $[PRICE]. The final price depends on how many forms, booking tools and call sources need tracking, and you get it in writing after the free tracking check, before any work begins.

If the site also needs SEO, speed or conversion work, GA4 setup is included in the Website Optimizer Pack. For tracking connected to a CRM and the rest of your lead pipeline, see GTM engineering.

Is This Right for You?

Who This Is For.

  • You run a service business and can't say which pages or channels bring your leads
  • GA4 is installed but shows no key events, or the lead count doesn't match your inbox
  • You're spending on Google Ads and want conversions measured from real enquiries
  • An agency or former employee set up your analytics and you're not sure who has access
  • You'd rather have a working setup and a short dashboard than learn GA4 yourself

Free Guides

How I Approach GA4 Tracking.

GA4 Conversion Tracking for Service Businesses

Which actions to track as key events, and how to set them up.

Read the guide →

Google Analytics 4 Events, Explained

Automatic, enhanced measurement, recommended and custom events in plain English.

Read the guide →

Google Tag Manager Mistakes

The quiet errors that corrupt tracking data, and a 20-minute audit to find them.

Read the guide →

GA4 Setup Questions.

A working Google Analytics 4 property, installed through Google Tag Manager, that records the actions that bring you business. For a service business that usually means form submissions, phone calls, booking requests and chat starts, each set up as a key event and tested end to end. It also covers data retention, internal traffic filters, consent mode where you need it, links to Search Console and Google Ads, and a short dashboard you can read without logging into GA4.
Usually, yes. A common pattern is a base tag that works while the important parts are missing or broken: no key events, a form event that never fires, GA4 installed twice, or nobody sure who owns the account. I start with an audit of what's there, then repair it. A rebuild only makes sense when the account itself is in the wrong hands or the data is beyond saving.
Enhanced measurement can record form_start and form_submit events, but it doesn't know which forms matter or whether a submission succeeded, and modern forms that submit without reloading the page don't always trigger it. For the forms that bring you leads, a dedicated event fired on a successful submission is more dependable. I test both and keep whichever is accurate.
GA4 can track taps on a phone number link, which tells you who tried to call. It can't see whether the call connected or how long it lasted. For that you need call tracking, either through a call tracking tool's own GA4 integration or Google Ads call reporting for calls from ads. I set up the click tracking and connect a call tracking tool if you use one.
Key events are the events you mark as important to your business, such as a lead form submission. Google renamed them from "conversions": in GA4 a conversion now means a key event you've imported into Google Ads to measure and optimize campaigns. If you run Google Ads, I set up both.
Not strictly, since GA4 can run from a snippet in your site's code. For most service businesses Tag Manager is the better choice, because events can be added and changed without a developer and every change is versioned. I cover the trade-off in GTM vs gtag.
It depends on how many forms, booking tools and call sources you have, and on whether we're starting fresh or repairing. The free tracking check at the end of this page tells you the scope and a fixed price before any work starts.
You do. Your business Google account is the administrator on GA4, Tag Manager and Search Console, and I work as a user you can remove at any time. You also get a written list of every event and what it measures.

Find Out What Your GA4 Is Missing.

Request a free tracking check. I'll look at your GA4, Tag Manager and forms, then tell you what's broken, what's missing and what a fixed-price setup would cost.

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