What are UTM tags and why are they useful?

It is necessary to gradually and constantly work on the effective promotion of the site, and at the same time - the business. How to understand which advertising platforms are more useful for your project? How justified are the costs for each of the advertising channels? It's simple: you need to track the effectiveness of each of them using Google Analytics and UTM tags.

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) is a set of variables that are added to the URL. With their help, the analytics system receives additional information about clicks on a specific link.

Classification of UTM tags

There are mandatory labels and optional ones.

Mandatory:

• utm_campaign: shows the name of the advertising campaign;
• Utm_medium: used to determine the specific advertising channel that led to the landing page (Email, Social, Direct, etc.);
• Utm_source: shows the source, that is, from where the transition to the page was made (Google, Newsletter2, etc.);

Optional:

• utm_content: used in case of A/B testing when it is necessary to distinguish between different links or ads leading to the same URL;
• Utm_term: used for paid search, adds a keyword to the link.

The presence of UTM tags in links allows you to compare the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, analyze the content of email campaigns in detail (see which link led to an effective action), track the effectiveness of working with banners or advertising platforms.

How UTM tags work

To understand exactly how UTM tags work, we suggest considering a “live” example.

Task: to promote a site for the delivery of sushi.

Solution: place a banner with the announcement of the promotion (for example, “Every third set is a gift!” + promotion conditions) on a popular thematic resource.

Expectation: increase in traffic and orders due to the placement of the banner.

How to understand exactly how many sales, and what influx of targeted traffic was generated by this particular banner? Everything is simple.

Working with the URL Builder Tool

1. We pass to this address;

2. Specify utm_source - the source of the advertising campaign, that is, the address of the resource on which we will place the banner. Let's give it the name blogblog.com.ua:

   

3. We prescribe utm_medium - the channel of the advertising campaign, in this case - our banner:

   

4. Give the name of the campaign (utm_campaign). Let it be - kajdyj_tretij_set_v_podarok:

   

5. When all the required fields are filled in, click the "Submit" button and get a ready-made url-address with utm-tags:

   

We use it when placing a banner on an advertising platform. The results of this advertising campaign will be displayed in your Google Analytics account. Therefore, it is necessary to correctly analyze the statistics and draw correct conclusions on the effectiveness of the advertising activity carried out.

Utm tags and SEO

It would seem that we mark links, analyze the result, draw conclusions and take them into account in subsequent campaigns. However, SEO requirements should also be taken into account in order to be able to track the result of the work done as correctly as possible.

What can be difficult? In page duplicates:

• there is a main page of the site http://primer.com.ua, which is a priority for ranking in the Google or Yandex search engine
• there is the same page, but at a new address (created by us): http://primer.com.ua/?utm_source=blogblog.com.ua&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=kajdyj_tretij_set_v_podarok . Since the content on these two pages is the same, search engines may consider them duplicates and treat either of them as the main one. Consequently, only one, for example, a page with utm tags, will get into the search results, thereby preventing the main page from ranking correctly.

There are several ways to avoid this:

• use the robots.txt file and close all pages with utm tags from indexing there;
• write rel="canonical" for the main pages, without utm-tags, and specify them as canonical.

UTM tags are a convenient way to track the performance of each advertising campaign. With their help, you can get detailed information about the sources and quality of traffic, analyze the volume of goals achieved, segment traffic and simply understand which advertising tool is more or less useful.