As Google Tag Manager starts to go mainstream, here’s what you need to know

If you have no idea what Google Tag Manager (GTM) is, read What is GTM? first.

Google first made insightful site analytics mainstream when it introduced Google Analytics (GA). Today, most sites use GA and that means they also use GA tracking code on their site. They also use lots of other advertising and event tracking code on their site too. However, that’s starting to change as more sites are now switching to GTM.

It was a rough start for GTM, mainly because nobody knew what it was. And if they did, it was too difficult for most people to use. Google didn’t give up though. They’ve continued updating and improving the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of GTM. In fact, they just launched a major UI/UX update a few days ago (as of this writing).

We also know that more people are switching to it, because we've had so many requests to have our SEO Site Auditor detect GA tracking code via GTM. I’m happy to say that it now supports that :)

Now is the time to start using GTM

There are few reasons why you should be using GTM:

1. It consolidates all of your advertising and analytics tracking code into one small piece of code on your site.
2. You no longer have to insert onclick event tracking code into elements like links and buttons.
3. It’s free and it’s how you should be managing all of your code.

When you add it, I recommend that you test it with GA first. The best way to do that is to add the GA tag in GTM and then replace the GA tracking code on a handful of pages with the GTM code. Next, visit GA and navigate to the Real-Time > Overview page. Visit the pages you put the GTM code on and then check the Real-Time page to see if it’s recording the visits. If you don’t see the visits, make sure you aren’t accessing GA from a network (like your office) that is purposefully being filtered from your GA results.

If GTM sounds great to you, but you have no idea how to set it up yourself, get your webmaster or marketing agency to do it for you. If you don’t have either of those, there should be plenty of analytics consultants that can help you at Credo.