Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywords people usecom, the place to find and organise the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetising websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years.

Speaker 1: 0:26

Hello, welcome back to SEO is not that hard. It's me here, ed Dawson, as usual, and today I'm going to be talking about Google Tag Manager, and the reason this has come up to me is because I was actually setting up a new site yesterday and you know, one of the things I always do when I set up a new site is add Google Tag Manager to it, and I realized that I've never done an actual podcast about Google Tag Manager. I probably mentioned it briefly in the episodes where I was going through the SEO A to Z and it might be in the top 101 tips, but I'm not absolutely sure I need to go back to those tips at some point soon and start adding new tips in, because I've got so many, more than the first 101, but anyway, yeah, today, google Tag Manager. So if you're not aware of what Google Tag Manager is, let me outline it for you. So you've probably noticed that there's lots of things great services that we've talked about before, like Google Analytics or other analytics services, like clicky. There are tracking pixels from facebook if you're using facebook advertising. There's google ads um tracking code.

Speaker 1: 1:35

There's all these sort of extra services that you can add to a site which would require you to add in a little bit of code. We're talking, sometimes just a single line of code here and it's just a cut and paste, but they want it on your site for the service to work, and almost every service that integrates with your website will want to do this. Now the way that you can do it is literally go and edit your website directly, edit your WordPress site or whatever you're used to build your build your site. You can edit it so that you make sure that this little bit of code goes on every page of the site. But this can get really tedious when you are constantly wanting to add in new ones and it means you've got to go back.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Sometimes it can be quite complex, say with shopify, which was actually the site I was setting up. I was helping a friend out with Shopify and I'll probably do another podcast about that in the future, but essentially I was setting up Shopify for them. I wanted to add Google Tag Manager on because essentially I'm going to want to put tracking on there. I'm going to want to put Captify on there Not Captify sorry Cl tracking on there. I'm going to want to put um captify on there not captify sorry clarity on there and a few other services. I want to sort of hook into this site for mainly for analytics purposes, but potentially for other things as well, and rather than being in a situation where every time I want to add a service, I've got to go and add it directly into shop, which means going into the Shopify theme and editing the theme, which you know just A is tedious.

Speaker 1: 3:09

It's a long, quite long-winded process to do compared to using a service like Google Tag Manager. And the scope for, you know, screwing it up, you know we've got to do is put it slightly in the wrong place or slightly, you know, paste it wrong and you could end up messing up the entire theme. So the solution is google tag manager. Now what google tag manager allows you to do is essentially do that placement of the tag onto your website, so into theme or however you do. You do it on that site. You. You have to place it once and then never, ever, have to edit the code of the actual site itself ever again for adding tags, because Google Tag Manager then gives you a web interface where you can add these tags, remove these tags, edit these tags in a nice web interface and it will manage it all completely for you and it will manage it all completely for you. So essentially how it works is you put that code in once and then every time that piece of code executes for every page load on your site, google Tag Manager will then go and fetch all the tags that you want putting onto that page and will insert them for you. So it means that you then don't have to treat it as a development process every time you want to add, remove or edit a tag.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Now, this can be especially useful if you are not the developer or have development level access to the site that you're working on. So, like lots of big companies where they've got so if you're working at enterprise level, you know to get code changed on websites can be really really tedious, bureaucratic process because of the amount of hoops you've got to jump through to get it done. Get it done. So if you've got google tag manager on there, it means you just have to get that tag put on once and then you can forget about ever having to bother. Your development team will jump to all those kind of hoops to add things and manage this on a site. So it can be really really excellent at enterprise level. But again, even if you're at a lower level and you just paid someone to build a site for you, then you can get them to put that google tag manager code in once and then you never got to worry about a developer again to be able to play with these tags. But even if you are a developer or have those kind of development skills, google tag manager actually makes things so much easier because it's not just the simple putting the tags on um that it helps with. It can actually also help with much more complex things, which we'll talk about now.

Speaker 1: 5:29

So within tag manager, you can actually set up things to call triggers, which means that actions will only take place if certain conditions are met. So I mean for most for things like analytics. You will say I want my analytics quickly, my analytics code, to fire on every page, but you can say exclude certain pages if you don't want certain pages tracked, or you can set up to only track certain pages if there's particular ones you're interested in. You can also trigger events. So, like in google analytics you know you can you can set events so you can say, right, if someone performs, say, a particular conversion action, so I want it to trigger. When someone signs up for an email, I want to trigger. When someone performs a search, I want to trigger when someone maybe goes to an affiliate jump page. So you can trigger and set these events to trigger on certain pages. So you can set that up based upon, um, you know the url patterns and that you have within there, so that it's actually incredibly more powerful than just being able to just simply put tags on for you and have them on every page. It can, actually, you can set those trigger points up and you can even work with variables in there as well.

Speaker 1: 6:38

So there's a lot you can do, then, in terms of improving the functionality and doing quite complex things when it comes to triggering these third-party pieces of code. So, yeah, as I say, if any of these use cases you're going, oh, that would be useful to me, then go and look at google tag manager and you know, as I say, I put it on every single site we I ever work with um because, even if it's just for analytics, it makes life easier and, you know, for adding in any other services, it means you've then just got a simple, simple process, much better than having to go through edit themes all the time. So I'll say, even if you're a developer and I've got the development skills to do that it's still frustrating to have to go and do it all the time. Doing it here is much simpler and, yeah, it's a great thing to do. So just go to Google and search for Google Tag Manager. You'll find it really useful tool. You know, I know that there's a lot of negativity towards google sometimes it tools, but this one is, I think, probably one of the most useful ones that they've ever built. So, yeah, I really love it and I encourage you to use it, if you're not already anyway.

Speaker 1: 7:43

That's it for today, so I will see you next time. Take care before I go. I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools that keywords people use, that that you can book a free, no obligation, one-on-one video call with me where I show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have. You can also ask me any SEO questions you have. You just need to go to keywordspeoplesusecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up Once again. That's keywords keywordspeopleusecom slash demo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode. Hope to chat with you soon.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps. Seo is Not that Hard is brought to you by keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusecom To get an instant hit of more SEO tips. Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick SEO tips in the show notes of today's episode. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at Channel 5 on Twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeakleusecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO. Is not that hard.