Check a guide & tutorial for Google Tag Manager, that helps make tag management simple, easy, and reliable by allowing marketers and webmasters to deploy website tags in one place.
Perhaps you’ve heard about it: G Tag Manager. Google introduced this tool 5 years ago, a device that would make marketers less dependent on developers and that would, therefore, speed up your marketing process. Google Tag Manager has evolved over the years, becoming a more complete and easy-to-use tool. I want to explain why you should sign up today if you aren’t using Google Tag Manager already.
Before I go on to introduce Tag Manager, I do want to say a word of warning. Tag Manager is powerful; like any power tool, it should be used with care. Don’t just add tags that look appealing to you but you don’t fully understand. For instance, you might bring in a title that could harm your site because the code is unsafe.
Or use a tag that influences your data tracking. If you’re not sure or in doubt of a specific title, have someone who knows JavaScript take a look at it. Luckily, Tag Manager has a great Preview and Debug mode that lets you validate code before you publish.
What’s a Google Tag Manager and Why a Guide For It?
If you look closely at the term Google Tag Manager, you can guess what it’s about. It’s a tool developed by Google to manage your tags. But then the next question arises: what’s a tag? A title is a snippet of code.
There’s a whole bunch of analytics and marketing tools out there that work with JavaScript code. For instance, the Google Analytics tracking code. The one you add to your site to track traffic with Google Analytics – is JavaScript code.
Did you ever have to wait for a developer to add a piece of JavaScript to your site? Or to test whether that code wasn’t harming your website? Then you know how much valuable time that can take. With Google Tags Manager, you can add these JavaScript or tags yourself. G Tags Manager even can test whether you’ve implemented the label correctly.
Running every tag from G Tags Manager has two significant advantages. First, you’ll have an overview of the tags you’ve added. Secondly, you’re in complete control of measuring the effects of your marketing efforts.
What is it for?
Because G Tags Manager allows you to add JavaScript to your site, you can use it for many things. You can use it to get more insight into the behavior of visitors on your site. Events, like clicking on a button. So, get tags of third-party tools on your site. It will even help you to add structured data to your pages!
Analytics and Tag Manager
One of the most used tags managed in G Tags Manager is the Google Analytics tag. Not only can you add the Google Analytics tracking code, but you can also use GTM to create, for instance, custom dimensions, events, or content grouping.
This means that you can track if people click on your buttons, if they scroll down to a certain point on your page, if they watch your videos, and so on. You can now manage all the cool things you can do with Google Analytics events in GTM. And you won’t need a developer for it!
Other third-party options
Google Tag Manager guide supports many third-party tags like Adwords, Adobe Analytics, Bing ads, Hotjar, Crazyegg, etc. You can find the complete list on the G Tag Manager support forum. You can use Hotjar tags to get those heat maps, finally. A visual representation of where people click on your site – you always wanted to have. Or run surveys and A/B tests on your site. Getting data like that can help you bring your conversion rate to the next level.
Google Tag Manager and structured data
But there’s more! You can also use G Tag Manager to implement structured data on your site. Structured data is extra information you add to your page in a specific format. Google can show this information in the search results, which makes it more likely for people to click on your development and engage with your page.
Where is Google Tag Manager?
Google’s tools are ubiquitous. If you visit: google.com/analytics/, you can find all the tools Google has developed to help you with your marketing strategy. In addition to Google Analytics, there are tools to help you boost conversion or perform customer surveys. And, of course, there’s G Tag Manager. You can sign up for free! Wait! Free, you say? Yes, free!! So what’s stopping you?
After you’ve signed up, you can create an account for your website, your iOS or Android app, or your AMP pages:
Just provide the URL of your site as the container name and then select web. If you want to implement it on your website. After creating this container, Google-tag Manager will ask you to add a piece of code in the page’s <head> and <body>. I promise this is one of the few things you might need a developer for when using G Tag Manager.
Luckily, if you’re using WordPress, you can easily add the Google Tag Manager code using a plugin DuracellTomi’s Google Tag Manager for WordPress. Please note that you only have to use the GTM-XXXX code.
If you’re using another CMS, check out the quick install guide for more information on how to get started.
After you’ve inserted the G Tag Manager code into your pages, you’re ready to create your tags. This can be done in a so-called workspace that looks like this:
So now you’re all set up and ready to add those tags to your site.
Tag Manager for WordPress
If your business uses WordPress to host its website, you can integrate Google Tag Manager with WordPress in a simple two-step process.
If you have paid for the commercial version of WordPress, you can use plugins such as G Tag Manager by B. DuracellTomi.
However, it’s relatively easy if you prefer to do it manually. It only gets tedious if you have a lot of different pages on your site and want to use tags on all of them. You must copy and paste some code under the tag on each page. Copy your tag code.
Copy the Google Tag Manager code you received during setup. If you’ve already set up an account, click the blue “Google Tag Manager” code (circled in red below) next to “Workspace Changes” on your Google Tag Manager home page. This blue code will also give you a specific Google Tag Manager code. Copy your Google tag code. Install the code in WordPress.
Now paste this code under the tag on every WordPress site page. Paste the code into the WordPress site
Your WordPress site is ready to create any tag in Google Tag Manager. Google Tag Manager will automatically encode future tags and embed them in pages of your choice.
Conclusion
We’ll be doing more posts on Google Tag Manager and guide / tutorial soon. Moreover, explain the practical side of things, like how to create variables, triggers, and tags and how to implement structured data with it. We’ll also help you understand how to combine Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics to use it to its full extent. So stay tuned!