We have a client that wants to apply UTM URL tagging to track local organic traffic in Google Analytics. Is there any benefit in doing this?

[RosemaryB]

One of our clients requested that we apply UTM URL tagging to better track organic traffic in Google Analytics.   We found this to be an odd request because we are most familiar with UTM tracking for special campaigns (referral tracking, PPC, email tracking, etc).

Is there any benefit of applying UTM tags to urls to analyze local organic traffic in Google Analytics?  Are there any resources out there about this?

Thanks!

[Mobilio]

Just as Dmitrii says this is UTM is for tracking special campaigns.

But you can't track organic visits because bot crawl your website and find pages A, B, C, etc. And later in SERP you can see A, B ,C and rest pages as-is their physical location. Example http://www.example.com/a.html but you can't see tagged URL in SERP.

This make things impossible for implementing in their request.

If they really, really, really want to be URL tagged - you need to change their canonical of pages and internal linking between pages where all links to be tagged too. And this is pure recipe for SEO disaster. Also will be disaster for Analytics tracking because all traffic will be tagged.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

I assume you are talking about adding UTM tracking parameters to the links on local listings profiles like Yelp, G+ etc?

If so, as far as I know there is no way to control anchor text, so users will see full url with all parameters, which might be confusing.

But overall - it will be helpful to see how many people are actually finding your client in local search and, if it's large enough number, they might want to invest in promoted listings within those networks. Other than that - I can't think of any benefits.

Hope this helps.