WordPress SEO in 5 Minutes – What is Google Tag Manager?
As you already know, data is the backbone of digital marketing. Collecting and understanding the data on how people interact with your brand online is an essential step for a successful marketing campaign. One critical tool that helps in this is Google Tag Manager. If you use Google Analytics, chances are you have heard about Google Tag Manager. Our web development team in Perth helps you understand what Google Tag Manager (GTM) is and why you should use it.
What is Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free tag management tool to deploy, track and manage all marketing tags. This is done by adding tags to your website or app. Tags are code snippets or tracking pixels to collect marketing information like how people arrive on your site, scrolling information, items added to or removed from cart, clicks on links, form downloads etc.
Why should you use Google Tag Manager?
- GTM allows for easy management of tags, as all tags are stored in one place.
- Advanced tracking is faster and easier, with the availability of built-in tags.
- There is no need to touch the source code of your site, every time you need to add, edit, or remove tags. This can be easily done in the GTM interface with the help of a few steps.
- GTM works well with most third-party tags, including Twitter and Bing Ads. And you can add your own custom code too.
Is it a substitute for Google Analytics?
GTM does not replace for Google Analytics (GA). Google Analytics is a tool for reporting and analysis. All reporting goals and filters are set in GA. GTM is a tool to manage tags. It does not have options for reporting or analysis. Both tools can be used together to create a flexible tracking, reporting and analysis system.
Do you need professional help to install Google Tag Manager?
GTM is offered by Google to ‘make tag management simple, easy and reliable’. However, there is a learning curve. You do need some technical experience with code insertion; otherwise, you could end up with breaking your page structure and slowing down page load times.
The Computing Australia Group recommendation – Use a combination of technical and marketing resources for the management and maintenance of your GTM account for maximum benefit and minimum errors.
Components of Google Manager
Containers
The first thing you need to do is to create a container. A container holds or contains all your tags. You will need to add the container code to your source code. Once that is done, you can add, delete, or edit tags.
Tags
Tags are code snippets or tracking pixels that tell GTM what function to perform. Example AdWords Conversion Tracking code, Facebook etc.
Triggers
Triggers specify the purpose or function that a tag needs to perform. For example, you need a tag to track whenever someone submits a form. This is the trigger. Every tag at least needs one trigger to be specified and assigned to it.
Variables
Variables are information that triggers and tags, need to perform. A tag will check whether a variable matches the value specified in the trigger; the tag will fire only if the variable value matches. Google Analytics tracking ID number is the most common variable.
How to set up GTM
- Go to tagmanager.google.com
- Create Account and Containers
- Add container codes to all pages
- Create Tags in the GTM Dashboard
- Create and assign Triggers
- Check if the tag is firing correctly in the ‘Preview’ mode
- Check the Google Analytics real-time reports to ensure that the tag functions are being recorded
- Once you are sure the tags are working fine, you can publish the container
The setting up is easy if you have some technical experience – you just need to follow the steps that are prompted in each option. Otherwise, we recommend using professional help.
Google Tag Manager is an amazing tool that lets you work wonders with tags. If you would like to keep out of the nitty-gritty and just see the final reports, our web development and SEO experts in Perth can help you. Contact us or email at sales@computingaustralia.group and speak to our experts.
Jargon Buster
Google Analytics – a web analytics platform from Google to track, report and provide insights on traffic to site.
Load times – the time that a page takes to show up fully on a device screen.
Code snippet – a small portion of re-usable source code.
Tracking pixels – tiny code snippets to track visitor information to a website.
by The Computing Australia Group