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The Beginner’s Quick Guide to Google Tag Manager

Keeping track of your website’s performance is necessary for making more sales and driving traffic. Armed with the right information, you can optimise your content and offerings for maximum success.

Tags are often required to track website statistics. These are bits of code that monitor user behaviours, and you need to add them to your website.

However, if you want to track different things, you may need to use several tags. It may be difficult to even remember which tags are for which purpose. Some tags might even fail to work together properly.

This is where Google Tag Manager comes in.

In this blog post, we’re going to discuss Google Tag Manager and how it can help improve your website’s overall performance.

Let’s get started.

What is Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager is a free tool that helps you keep track of various tags. It saves you from having to manually code tags, automatically generating the code for you. If you’re a business owner with limited programming knowledge, it can definitely come in handy.

Let’s say you’d like to install Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that tracks user behaviour. You can see which pages received the most number of visits, how long users stayed on each webpage, and so much more. It can give you plenty of information that could re-energize your current digital marketing strategies.

Google Tag Manager makes it easier for you to install Google Analytics with minimal professional assistance. You can then create and update tags on your own.

Before we proceed, here are some terms you should keep in mind.

• Container – A group of tags for a specific platform or URL.
• Trigger – This signifies when a tag should perform its function. For example, it will start tracking when a user downloads a PDF file or clicks on a link.
• Variable – These are conditions that need to be met before a tag starts tracking something.

Creating a Google Tag Manager Account

You can log into Google Tag Manager at this link: https://tagmanager.google.com/. If you already have a Google account, you can log in right away.

Click on Create an Account on the top right corner. Enter information like the account name and country. You will then need to create a container, a group of tags for the same URL. Enter your URL in the “Container name” field, and select your target platform. Since you’re creating tags for your website, choose the Web option.

Google Tag Manager will then prompt you to accept their terms and conditions. Once you’ve accepted, the tool will generate lines of code that you’ll need to copy and paste on every page of your website.

This step may sound daunting, but if you’re using WordPress, you have two options. You can add the code directly to your theme. You can also use a WordPress plugin. Popular Google Tag Manager plugins include Google Tag Manager WordPress and Metronet Tag Manager.

You can install a WordPress plugin with one click. Afterwards, you can enter your container ID in the plugin’s settings. It will do the rest of the work for you and add the necessary code to all your webpages.

The steps may differ slightly if you’re using a different platform.

Once that’s done, you can start adding tags to the container for your website.

Different Uses for Tags

Tags track user behaviour for you across all sorts of platforms, including Google ads and social media websites. You can quickly see how people are interacting with your content, and determine how your website can perform better.

You can track user behaviour with Google Analytics. You can clearly see which pages users visited, how long they stayed on each page, where these users are from, and so much more.

Once you gain access to this information, you can determine which blog posts or web pages users were most interested in. You can then start making necessary changes.

Let’s say you have two service pages. A lot of people are reading the content on Service Page A while most people leave Service Page B within seconds. Examine the difference between the two. What type of images, headings, and copy are you using in both pages? What sets Service Page A apart from Service Page B?

You can integrate Google Tag Manager with Google Ads. You’ll determine which ads people clicked and what did afterwards. Like your webpages, you can clearly see which ads are working and get enough information to make the necessary changes.

Google Tag Manager also works well with Facebook pixels. If you’re unfamiliar with Facebook pixels, these are lines of code that help you track your Facebook ad’s performance. You can see which ads people clicked and what they did on your website afterwards.

Conclusion

We could go on all day about Google Tag Manager’s seemingly limitless functions. Aside from other Google products, it also works with other platforms.

For more information on tracking conversions on your website, call us on (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

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Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.