The URL builder helps you add parameters to URLs you use in Custom Campaigns. When users click one of the custom links, the unique parameters are sent to your Google Analytics account, so you can identify the URLs that are most effective in attracting users to your content.

Source: Google

When you try to analyze trafic on your website, one of the most important reports is an “Acquisition” – info where does your trafic come from.

Acqusition Report in Google Analytics
Acqusition Report in Google Analytics

Of course, there is no problem when you don’t run any marketing campaigns. Information about sources divided into basic groups (organic, refferal, direct etc) is enough. However, if you want to compare trafic from different sources, compare users behavior you have to have possibility to distinguish not only sources but clicks from different placements and campaigns. Escpecially when you pay for it and you want to calculate ROI.

This is what UTM tags are for. UTMs arearguments or parameters which are added to destination links to give us possibility to send more information to Google Analytics. There are 5 UTMs:

  • utm_source – (mandatory) – source of your traffic – website where link to your page will be placed – so it can be portal name or social network name (onet.pl, wp.pl, facebook.com etc)
  • utm_medium – (mandatory) – type of marketing medium which is used with link (socialmedia, affiliation, baner, video etc)
  • utm_campaign – (mandatory) – name of your campaign which groups all ads for campaign in your analytics (15-percent-for-greece, mother-day-flowers etc)
  • utm_content – used for A/B testing, but what is more important, it can be used to distinguish one ad version from another (for example red-CTA-button vs blue-CTA-button etc)
  • utm_term – the keyword which you are paid for in PPC ad – used for paid search, it can be found in ‘keyword’ report in Google Analytics

There is, of course, Google URL builder which works perfect and can be used to build URLs with UTMs however it doesn’t remember tags names which have been used before.

Google URL builder
Google URL builder

We should think globally and try making our Google Analytics reports simple and reusable. This is why we have to remember to use uniform tags for all our sources and campaigns.

Solution? Create your own URL builder which has predefined tags collection. How to do it? Next time I will show you how to create simply spreadsheet with Google Docs.

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