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 parameter problem
Hi guys, Google Search Console gives me an error on these pages: info:https://www.conversal.be/?utm_content=bufferbaaa4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer info:https://www.conversal.be/?utm_content=bufferece3f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer I see there's an UTM tracking in the URL from Google+. We do have an account there but I don't see how this might give an error. Is this hurting our ranking score? How can we solve this?
Reporting & Analytics | | conversal0 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
Why am i still seeing very recent organic kw traffic being reported in Analytics if G is now fully encrypted ?
Why am i still seeing very recent organic kw traffic being reported in Analytics if G is now fully encrypted ? Should it not all be 'Not Provided' now ? When this fully roles out if not already wont it be impossible to distinguish between brand and non brand kw ? Cheers Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
Is it possible to attached separate analytic codes for each campaign?
I am having difficulty in using different GA codes for each individual campaign- this must be possible. Can someone please advice. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ChrisDingley0 -
Custom Variables to track Vimeo plays on website with Google Analytics?
Hello Everyone, I'm trying to track how many times a Vimeo video is played on my site via GA. Does any of you have any knowledge of how can this be achieved? I've read the documentation and came up with this: After the iframe embed i insert this: Of course the GA is loaded in the header. Does not work, at least i cant see anything in analytics. I have set up the segment as per the attached image. Thanks in advance! Alex E6XnO.png
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
Email campaigns. Should I link to my blog or to my site?
I have a client for who we write and post a daily blog article. The articles are optimized and linked to particular targeted content on his top level site. Now we are going to start e-marketing to his 3000+ website users to announce inventory changes and specials. My question is (from a SE standpoint) are we better off linking the e-mail content to the blog and introducing people to the blog (but adding an additional step for getting to the new inventory. Or are we better off putting a link in the HTML E-mail letter that we send out to both the blog and separately to the inventory section? Just to clarify, we wonder if the search engines would provide some additional authority for the extra blog traffic and thereby build the overall score of the blog & site. We are looking at the e-mail campaigns as a potential opportunity to impact SE scores not just awareness of new inventory. Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | webindustry0 -
Do links tagged with Analytics UTM parameters has the same significance as once without any parameters?
If we add UTM parameters to inbound links, for tracking specific referral behavior, will those link have the same SEO significance as links without parameters?
Reporting & Analytics | | Usearch0 -
Tracking Email campaign
I generated the following URL to track visits from newsletter. http://www.example.com/ ?utm_source=newsletter1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newletter2109 Do i have to use this link in our email ? My question is it looks ugly. How do i shorten this ? Using bit.ly ? But isn't it true that URL shortening services such as bitly, as some can increase the likelihood of email being marked as spam
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20051