Best of SEO podcast introduction

Speaker 1 0:00

Hi Ed Dawson here , and , as I'm a bit busy at the moment and need a break , welcome to another one of my best of SEO is not that hard podcasts . These are the episodes from the back catalog that I think have the greatest hits and ones that are still relevant and provide great value for you . So , without further ado , let's get into the episode . Hello and welcome to . Seo is not that hard . I'm your host , ed Dawson , the founder of KeywordsPeopleUsecom , 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 .

Speaker 1 0:42

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 SUA to Z and it might be in the top 101 tips ,

Google Tag Manager overview

Speaker 1 1:17

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 , 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 .

Speaker 1 1:41

There are tracking pixels from facebook if you're using facebook advertising . There's google ads um tracking code . 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 . It's just a cut and paste , but they want it on your site for the service to work and you know 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 2:37

Sometimes it can be quite complex , say with Shopify , which was actually the site I was setting up . I was helping with I'm sort of 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 , clarity

Simplifying code implementation

Speaker 1 3:03

on there and a few other services . I want to sort of hook into this site , 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 Shopify , which means going into the Shopify theme and editing the theme , which you know just leave a is tedious . 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 , um , you know , paste it wrong , um , and you can end up messing up the entire theme . So the solution is Google Tag Manager .

Speaker 1 3:47

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 it on that site . You have to place it once and then you 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 . 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 . Now , this can be especially useful if you are not the developer

Advanced triggers and functionality

Speaker 1 4:50

or have development level access to the site that you're working on . So , like lots of big companies where they've got .

Speaker 1 4:56

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 5:46

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

Episode closing and demo offer

Speaker 1 6:19

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 . 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 .

Speaker 1 7:07

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 , 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 8:00

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 8:37

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 channel5 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 .