If you want to be a successful online business owner, then you need to know what has made you successful. This requires you to monitor the traffic coming into your site and determining certain statistics from it.

Tracking incoming traffic and behaviors on your site is important because it can help you determine what marketing activities require an adjustment to budgets or time spent on them. For instance, if you know that email marketing campaigns are providing you with twice the revenue as social media advertising, then you know to spend more time working on your email marketing and spend less on Facebook, Twitter, etc..

This is where UTM tracking can help you.

What are UTM Codes?

UTM codes are added parts of a URL which are little snippets showcasing information about the visitor. It can tell you lots of information about the visit, depending on the setup of the UTM code. A UTM code is not unique to the visitor, but rather the origin of the person. As a business owner, you can customize the UTM to generate unique codes that can be attributed to specific campaigns, sources and even locations on a page.

UTM codes can also be called UTM parameters or tracking tags. And essentially these terms are accurate.

What do UTM Codes Tell you That Google Analytics Can’t?

When using analytical software, like Google Analytics, you can often find out the referring domain. This could be Google, email, social media, guest post, etc.. However, that doesn’t provide you with a complete picture of what has happened.

You might know that Twitter has sent you 3,000 visitors in the last month, but do you know which updates have been more successful to your business? Determining which posts are most successful, you can start to create a better content plan that copies the successful content and drop the content that isn’t working.

It can also tell you where on a page that someone is clicking on. This can be good when you’re advertising a tool on a page in three locations (one visual ad in the right margin, once in the text and one call-to-action button at the bottom of the page) you might want to know which of these locations is performing better. That is where UTM codes can be very helpful.

With UTM codes, you could create three unique codes for each one that look like this:

https://example.com?utm_source=landing%20page&utm_content=displayad

https://example.com?utm_source=landing%20page&utm_content=intext

https://example.com?utm_source=landing%20page&utm_content=button

Notice that the difference in each of URLs is the end part which showcases where on the page the click originated.

What Can You Track With UTM Codes?

UTM codes are very versatile. They can track a lot of different aspects that can ensure you’re getting lots of specific information. When you’ve compiled everything together, you make informed business decisions that can help you grow.

The different things you can track include:

  1. The Campaign

Campaign based tracking is the basic aspect that you want to be using for analytics. At any one time you could have half a dozen campaigns and you need to sort traffic out to know which visitors are attracted from what campaign. You can label campaigns with unique names such as:

  • BYGOFree
  • 20%Discount
  • Freereport

By doing this, you can be sure that you know which campaign is bringing in the most traffic. Campaigns can also be split, for instance having Freereport1 and Freereport2.

From this you can find out what are key aspects of a customer’s purchasing decision. For instance, do they prefer a free report on their business or a 20% discount?

  1. Source

This is a major, and obvious choice. This is when you track the referring website to your site. You can therefore see which websites are bringing in the most traffic to your site and which aren’t contributing at all. This is very important if you’re guest posting a lot.

A good example of the code for this would be: utm_source=Facebook.

  1. Channel

This is the type of marketing that is used (social media, email, website, etc.). Tracking this traffic can tell you whether there has been a surge in traffic from certain mediums. The code for email marketing might be utm_medium=email.

This is important because it can help you determine which channels are proving more successful for your brand. If you get no hits from social media, for example, you should look to refocus your marketing.

  1. Original Content

This is specific to a post, article or page that the user has been on originally on before moving to your site. It is really useful if you’ve got the same link two or more times on the same page like we discussed before. It can also be useful if you’ve got several articles that link to the same page to be able to distinguish between the different pages/content, though you could also use source for this.

  1. Term

This is tracking the keyword that was used to rank your site. This is often used in PPC ads. This can tell you a lot of information that can implemented into SEO campaigns to help you rank higher on Google and other search engines.

An example of this code for the keyword accounting services would be:

utm_term=accounting+services

  1. A Combination

It’s important to note that you can use a combination of all of the above tags to get really accurate data of the traffic you’re getting. This can help you realize which campaigns are providing you with the best traffic and therefore worth more of your marketing budgets and which are just a cost to your business.

How to Create UTM Codes For Your Website

To create UTM codes for your website, you need to a code creator, the Gochyu UTM Builder is a free, easy to use builder that you can use. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to use it.

Step 1: Access

First thing to do is to access the UTM Builder.

Step 2: Address

Now you need to enter the URL of the page that you want the visitors to land on. For instance, if you want them to visit a page called landing page, you would have the URL as https://example.com/landing-page.

Step 3: The Campaign Source

Now add in where this particular link is going to be inserted, i.e. the referring website. If this is Facebook, your would write Facebook.

Step 4: Campaign Medium

Add in a campaign medium, if you have one. This could be email, social media, etc..

Step 5: Campaign Name

It is always best to enter in at least a campaign name. This could be the date of the Facebook post or the specific campaign (i.e. Free Trial, 20% discount, etc.) that you’re running on that day.

Step 6: Campaign Term

If you’ve got a keyword for the campaign, like the PPC keyword you’re using, then this is the place to use it.

Step 7: Campaign Content

If there are numerous places for this link at the source, then identify where on the page this link is to be placed. Examples of this include button, header, sidebar, etc..

Step 8: Copy And Paste

The code will be automatically generated for you at the bottom of the page. All you need to do is to copy the code and paste it in the relevant location. If you want to make a change, you don’t need to reset the tool, just change the data, the code will update immediately.

Final Word: What Is UTM Tracking?

UTM tracking is a vital part of your business’ success. By using UTM tracking you can identify more about your visitors and learn what marketing efforts are worth investing in. UTM tracking is free to use and you can use an UTM Builder to help you generate the codes for free as well.

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