Google Tag Manager for Beginners — 1.0
Redundant or incorrect tags can distort data measurement and reduce your site performance. In this self-paced blog, you’ll learn how to setup Google Tag Manager
The past couple of weeks with the advanced SEO research, I have been pretty focused on understanding how human brains react, how to apply neuroscience in marketing, and effective conversion research — in other words, how to efficiently lure people to act what we desire.
This week, I decided to go over the Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. I feel like reviewing tracking and analytics with experts is a good middle point of my journey with SEO as only with proper data gathering would the other conversion optimising efforts matter! Both tools from Google are best friends of any digital marketers, business owners (even with only a startup), and anyone who want to make better online decisions. The best part: they are completely free with lots of tips and resources on the internet for both beginners to get a hang of it or advanced users to get one step closer to their audience.
In this article, I will focus on discussing what GTM does and how to use GA and GTM together.
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a marketer’s best friend. It’s the go-to solution for adding tracking codes, pixels and scripts to your website.
Adding them manually through plugins or directly into your HTML may seem the obvious way to go. But when they start to pile up, managing them can quickly become a tedious task. You’ll need to test them manually and update them when a new version comes out.
What’s more, the more code you add to your website, the slower it loads. For more details on how page speed can impact your performance, check out: How To Optimize Your Page Speed For Conversions And SEO
Luckily, Google Tag Manager helps you to manage all of your tags in one place efficiently. So instead of you rushing to the IT department to add a Facebook Pixel to your website and waiting until to gets added to the sprint — you can just add it by yourself.
To get started with Google Tag Manager, you’ll only need to install one piece of code on your website. Here we guide through our Google Tag Manager tutorial to show how to setup and install it.
What are TAGS and why do they need to be managed?
I had absolutely no idea what a tag is when I first met GTM. The only tag I could think of back then was the social media tags @, and I knew it was definitely not those that need to be managed. Tags here, are JavaScripts that work at the back of a website, responsible for collecting user data such as remarketing, behaviours, or e-commerce information, et cetera. It is normally activated by an event or interaction — say, for example, you want to know more about those who have purchased your products, you fire a tag just after they reach your thank you page. Or you might want to know more about those that read through your landing page, you only fire a tag when the visitor meets a scroll depth threshold.
Still with me? Now imaging you are responsible for a website that has over 100 products, or you are an account manager and have multiple businesses to keep track of — things will definitely get messy no matter how organised you are. This is where Google Tag Manager can help. It allows you to manage tags within a single place with a pretty straight forward structure. In short, Google Tag Manager is a tracking tool that allows users to easily track marketing tags across their different online presences.
Advantages of using Google Tag Manager
Ok, now we know GTM makes it easier to manage tags, but how is it easier? What does it do that is different from Google Analytics’ offers?
1. Easy to use: As mentioned earlier, tags are a bunch of JavaScripts. GTM allows users to fire tags without having to always ask for the help of developers.
2. Easy to manage: Best part while doing rapid experiments — GTM makes it easy to add, pause, or remove any tags anytime. Very convenient while doing ab testing or any conversion experiments.
3. Easy to organise: it’s like a one-stop shop if managing different accounts at the same time, or have a different digital presence for one business.
Structure of Google Tag Manager
One of the beauties about GTM is that its structure is straightforward and can be easily understood. It is designed based on the hierarchy of ACCOUNTS -> CONTAINERS -> TAGS -> TRIGGERS -> VARIABLES, each of them is explained as below:
· Account: an account is named according to a business or an organisation and will at least have one container
· Container: a container is normally about the property. For example, an official website, or a mobile app etc
· Tag: a tag is responsible for collecting information from a website
· Trigger: a trigger is where the tag is fired
· Variable: a variable is where you set and customise what conditions to meet before a tag is triggered
Why do I need GTM if I am already using Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is an analytic tool. It offers you information about your visitors and customers, and also helps interpret how effective you are as a marketer. Google Tag Manager, on the other hand, is a tag managing tool. It works with Google Analytics and offers further customisations to track actions and conversions. Using GTM allows you to do more than just with Google Analytics.
Google Tag Manager Tutorial
1. Create an Account
Head over to Google Tag Manager and sign in, using the same login credentials as your Google Analytics account.
Once you’re in you’ll want to create an account inside Google Tag Manager.
Each account contains a container ID for your site. When setting it up, you need to pick which container you want (Web, iOS or Android) and then press “Create” to get your Google Tag Manager installation code.
2. Create a Tag
Once your account and container are created, you’ll want to add tags by hitting the “New Tag” button.
In most cases, the first tag you need to add is Google Analytics. Here you’ll need to click on the pencil icon to add Google Analytics from the list.
3. Adding Tracking ID
Next up you’ll need to add your Tracking ID into the field. You can do this by clicking on “Google Analytics setting” and then choosing “New variable…”
From there, you’ll need to add your Google Analytics tracking ID to link it to your Google Tag Manager.
4. Choose What to Track
After you’ve put in your Tracking ID, you’ll want to specify what you want to track and when the tag should fire.
For Google Analytics, use “All pages” so that you’re tracking every page view on your website.
5. Add Google Tag Manager to Your Website
Now you’ll want to install and activate Google Tag Manager on your site.
If you’re using WordPress, then the easiest way to do this is through a plugin. The Insert Headers and Footers plugin from WPbeginner will do the trick.
Once activated, head over to Settings » Insert Headers and Footers and paste your Google Tag Manager code in “Header” and “Footer” sections.
Alternatively, you can also insert the code directly into the theme files of your website in the <head> section and after the opening <body> tag.
6. Publish Container
Once you’ve inserted the code on to your website, you can preview it first to check your tags are firing. But you can also publish the container immediately if you like.
7. Confirm Google Tag Manager is Working
When you’ve published your Google Tag Manager container, it’s always a good idea to be on the safe side. So you’ll want to make sure your tags are sending data back to you.
For the Google Analytics tag, log into your account after a couple of days to see whether you’re registering page views.
And that’s it. You’ve successfully completed the Google Tag Manager tutorial and got it set up on your website with Google Analytics.
Start Using Google Tag Manager from Day1
It is never too early to start using Google Tag Manager. If you already have some experience tracking website online performance by using Google Analytics, you might have faced the following situation before: you want to find out more about those who did A action on X page specifically, with the condition of M and N, but Google Analytics did not provide you with the specificity? Don’t waste all the good traffic that has gone through. Think about the goals from day1 and figure out some customised tags by GTM. Don’t worry if you don’t have the right traffic just yet. Start with small practices that are as simple as tracking downloads or scroll sessions. Use built-in tags as a start, with some practices it gets easier and easier to design and send custom information to analytics.
Remember to Configure Google Analytics with Google Tag Manager. Do NOT Put Both Codes onto Your Site
View Google Analytics as one variable of tag managing. It only connects when you tell Google Tag Manager that you want data sent to the analytic platform. As a result, always remove Google Analytics code before implementing GTM codes, and add a variable on GTM with GA codes.
How GA360 and GTM works perfectly together
The entry chapters to Google Analytics treacherously boost my confidence as I already think I’m familiar with the basic reports. I’ve used the menus to look for relevant metrics and charts that we could plug into our monthly reports. Yay, look at me, browsing the obvious menus!
Audience — who are the users?
Acquisition — where do they come from?
Behaviour — which actions are they taking?
Conversions — what are the results of user behaviours?
Setting up GA account
Going through general settings sounds like a bore, but Analytics comes with many layers that really need to be set up (and contain lots of core funtions):
- Accounts — company level
- Properties — domain or domains the users visit during one customer journey
- Views — customizable data pools that should be optimised to answer different questions.
Each level only starts recording data only after it’s set up, so when I create a new property, they only start recording user activity from now on, and it’ll be some time until I can use them.
But I’ll still go and create the recommended structure — it’s said one should have multiple views for each property — at least a) production, b) testing and c) backup. But here’s where it starts to get complicated.
Google Analytics has just recently updated the way the properties work. All new properties are now created as version 4 properties (GA4). And GA4 properties don’t have views. Without views GA4 properties don’t have goals. Instead of Behaviour, the menu now says Engagement.
A quick search tells me that smart marketers don’t yet recommend 100% migration to the new version. Don’t give up on your Universal Properties! I create and delete a few — a brand new GA4 property, a GA4 property linked to the Universal property, a copy of my original Universal property with multiple views…
Tag Manager is much simpler to set up, however the tags within Tag Manager also need to target either GA4 or GA Universal. The same tag won’t work with both, and will need to target one property only.
I also manage to direct the FB pixel through Tag Manager, but first spent what felt like hours figuring out how to remove the current pixel code from the site. It’s so easy to forget why you installed some plugins and why.
Good traffic tells a story
The major lesson from looking at the good and the bad data is about the importance of cleaning up traffic so the story is easier to find. Start with asking the right questions, then set out to find the information.
With data, you need to have a good plan on how to answer the questions with a sensemaking story. And don’t forget to have a plan for taking action based on the upcoming answers. Never ask if you don’t need the answers!
Simplifying fractured referrals
Referred traffic often causes their sessions ending up on multiple rows, while they should be the same type of traffic:
facebook.com — desktop traffic
l.facebook.com — scanned desktop traffic
m.facebook.com — mobile traffic
lm.facebook.com — scanned mobile traffic
Sky is the limit
While I’m working on a pretty limited website with even more limited traffic, it probably doesn’t make sense for me to go too crazy with the funnels and events.
