How well do G.A. utm Campaigns play together?
-
Hello!
Here's my situation. In the coming days I will have two sources of Google Analytics utm Campaigns running:
- Source 1 is paid online advertising.
- Source 2 will be banner ads on our own website that encourage people to request an appointment with the dentist whose profile page they're viewing. (With close to 100 doctors, that's a LOT of Campaigns URLs, but I fell it will be worth it to know where appointment requests are coming from.)
So, the question... Let's say a site visitor arrives to our site via one of our paid ad's utm Campaigns URL. What happens if that visitor navigates to one of our dentist's profile page then clicks the banner ad that also contains a utm URL. Which Campaign gets the credit for the goal conversion? The most recent (the banner)? The original source (the paid ad)? Both?
Thanks in advance for any insight!
Erik
-
Thank you, everyone, for your response. Looks like I need to dig into Event Tracking!
Erik
-
I agree with Federico on this, always try to prevent using the UTM tags on your own site. It's the start of making your Analytics account unbearable after a while. The best alternative for this is to mark your banners with Event Tracking, by doing this you're able to segment them and use all the advantages of UTM tags without all the negative sides like messing up the conversion attribution.
-
I wouldn't use a utm_campaign within banners in my own site. Even with paid advertising, sometimes you don't need to use those variables as GA is intelligent enough to recognize the source as paid/organic.
Let's say you advertise on Twitter, AdWords and Bing. GA automatically recognizes AdWords traffic, no need of utm_campaign there; on the other hand you do need to set those variables to differentiate from paid/organic from twitter and bing.
Once you have a Goal created in GA, you can check the Goal Flow and see from where are they coming. You can even set steps inside GA and track the pages that the users browse before converting.
Also, if you send ecommerce data to GA, you will be able to track the sources that produce better income, etc., by using the ecommerce (as you book doctor appointments, you can look at the appointment requested as a "sale") and then take advantage of the all the ecommerce data.
-
Hi Erik,
I think the best solution for this is to create landing pages (incl. forms) whereby all traffic is directed to complete the lead (conversion). With this you just need to setup a landing page where the client can choose the doctor and fill in their personal details. The conversion comes after the details have been submitted (so the goal for this should be setup on GA). By doing this you can see your source and path of conversion on GA.
Also you will need to structure this right. For example:
-
Traffic coming from paid should go directly to the landing page thats content is relevant to the source. Example: An ad about free withdrawals from a specific bank (this content / copy targets a specific banking audience). The landing page content describes how and why these saving are possible (in bullet form / short sentences).
-
The banners on your own site will be easy to track because the url embedded inside them link through to the landing page (Source and Path will be shown in GA)
Regards,
Rickus
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
UTM tracking on a mapped subdomain, is it OK? (DA bonus question)
Hi, This is a technical question. OK, two technical questions. Please bear with me and I'll do my best to explain... We have a WordPress blog (business account, hosted by WordPress). We use it to blog and send traffic to our separate e-commerce site. We use UTM tracking to see which blog posts perform best. Our e-commerce site has a high domain authority. Our blog, not so much. In an effort to increase the domain authority of the blog we have mapped a subdomain of the e-commerce site to the Wordpress blog (still hosted by WordPress). Q1. Will this actually raise the blog's DA? If the blog does get a DA boost, I guess it'll be because Google now sees it as part of a powerful domain. But if it is technically part of the powerful domain... Q2. Should we remove the UTM parameters from the blog? I've read that you should never use UTM on internal links because it messes with your Google Analytics data. But I'm unsure if links on a mapped subdomain count as 'internal links'. Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks in advance. J
Reporting & Analytics | | JabeKay0 -
How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?
Hi Moz Community, I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing. Two related questions: if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+? Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+? Thanks everybody!
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnGroves0 -
How to hook up a ppc campaign to a google + Page
Greetings,
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
Sometimes you just want to give Google a big slap for making straight forward requests damn impossible. So all i ma trying to ad is point a ppc ad at this Google + account <a>https://plus.google.com/118393512656496298734#118393512656496298734/posts</a> But i get a warning sign saying:
"The URL must be for a Google+ page, not a personal profile" I then spend half an hour tring to find a Google + page but get no where fast 😞 Warning message illustrated here:
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/google-page-plus_zps46ff995a.jpg So my question is please how to a get the Google + page for this account:
<a>https://plus.google.com/118393512656496298734#118393512656496298734/posts</a> Any insights welcome!
David0 -
Can you link several sites together in Google Webmaster Tools?
I have a client saying that there is a way to link 3 separate websites (A website for each department of a company) in Google Webmaster tools to tell Google it's basically one site but really its 3. Or to tell Google it's the same company and all the sites are one. I have never heard of this & I don't see the point in making 3 separate small sites & "linking" them as one in Webmaster tools. Is there in fact a way? Am I out to lunch on what they might be referring to? I am recommending they create one larger authority site with a page on each department & earn links for each department page & provide informative unique content for each page. Thoughts? Thanks for the help!
Reporting & Analytics | | DCochrane0 -
Campaign shows no traffic from Analytics
My campaaigns are connected to GA but traffic is zero for all campaigns
Reporting & Analytics | | berndheyer0 -
I have two campaigns that are only crawling one page, why is this?
I have a total of three campaigns running right now, and two of them are only crawling one page. I set the campaigns up the same, what is the problem?
Reporting & Analytics | | SiteVamp0 -
Campaigns: How to Decide What to Track?
Hi There! I'm new to SEOMoz, but not completely new to SEO. A bit of background: 9 year old content site, medium traffic (low 7 figures unique visitors yearly) with about 85% coming from SE traffic. (It was 75% but Panda seems to have bumped that up.) I've created this with zero keyword research. I just built a site that I would have liked to have found online. It's a weight loss/fitness website with tools, calculators and articles. I'm going to be working harder on getting traffic from other sources, but I signed up here because I want to make sure I'm taking full advantage of my site when it comes to SEO. Having said that, I'm at a loss as to what to do with a campaign. My site is huge, with thousands of pages and keywords. I started a campaign, threw in a few keywords and some competitors just to get started, but this seems so...directionless. How do I figure out what I want to analyze? Thanks! Suzanne
Reporting & Analytics | | Suzany0 -
Campaign tracking and duplicate content
Hi all, When you set up campaign tracking in Google Analytics you get something like this "?variable=value parameters" in the URL. If you place such a link on your site as an internal link, will it be considered as a different URL and will have its own link value? The question I have is, since Google knows it's a Google link and knows the original URL (by stripping the tags), does it pass link value to the original URL? If not, what can be done to pass link value? Thanks in advance. Henry
Reporting & Analytics | | hnydnn0