New Google Analytics Tagging Tool; 4 Easy Steps

Tiffany Weimar - March 1, 2011

Properly tagging URLs with Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) is one of the most important and useful tools at your disposal. Tracking code gives marketers and other decision-makers insight into the success of all marketing efforts. While the process may seem like learning a foreign language in the beginning stages, adding code does get easier with practice. The second challenge with having analytics data is learning how to analyze it. The best part is, MoreVisibility just created a free Google Analytics Tagging Tool that will formulate analytics tracking code automatically for you! Now that there is a tool to minimize human error in generating the data, more focus can be placed on learning how to analyze and make decisions accordingly.

When tagged correctly, Google Analytics will know where to attribute referring traffic. This information will let you know how people got to your website (where they were immediately prior to landing on your website). With this data, you can start to focus your energy on marketing channels that are most successful and rid those that are underperforming. For example, if referring traffic is highest from a particular social media channel, continue efforts in that area (and possibly look to increase the amount of marketing campaigns there).

Analytics data is only useful if it is accurate and consistent. Being able to compare data over periods of time allows for the best decision-making. For the most part, it is human error that causes any discrepancy with information. To help eliminate inconsistencies for clients and others MoreVisibility created new Google Analytics Tagging Tool. The easy four step process allows users to enter four types of required information. After this information is submitted, the tool shoots back a URL with GA coding in the proper format. The four steps are listed below.

1. Step 1- Enter the destination URL of the page that you want your visitors to land on.
2. Step 2- Enter the source where a visitor is originating from. Examples are Facebook, Twitter, Newsletter, AOL, etc..
3. Step 3- Enter the means a visitor accessed your website; or, what marketing method (“medium”) brought the visitor to your site. Email, banner, cpc, and remarketing are all common mediums.
4. Step 4- Enter a name for the Campaign associated with the visit. Examples are Branding, Spring, March 2011, etc.

*The following two steps are optional and will give you additional information, if desired.

1. Enter in a term (keyword) that represents the click. Logo, Custom Framing, and Black Shoes are three examples.
2. The content query parameter is the appropriate place to provide additional information or the link. Examples may be Top Link or 300×250, Product Ad, or Branding Ad #1.

The tool is illustrated below and can be found on MoreVisibility’s website here:

https://www.morevisibility.com/TagLink/

Handling the Corporate Marketing at our company, I can attest to the usefulness of this new tool. To give you a “real life” example of how we would use this tool for our marketing, I have included an example below.

Step 1- Destination URL= https://www.morevisibility.com/mobile-website-form.php

Step 2- Source= google

Step 3- Medium= cpc

Step 4- Campaign= March 2011 (Step 5 wasn’t necessary)

Step 6- 300×250 (put the dimensions of the banner that we used)

Mastering Google Analytics tagging is just a small part of Google AdWords. However, Google AdWords is the foundation that allows you to utilize all of the other tools available within the platform. Furthermore, Google Analytics data is pulled into goals, funnels, annotations, and custom reports that you are able to create in the Google AdWords Platform. For the “rookies” in the analytics world, start tagging every URL possible (feel free use our new tool for some help), collect as much data as possible, start analyzing efforts, and market for success!