A quick solution to a big problem, or Tag Manager in action
The problems associated with installing codes on a site can sometimes be a real nightmare for SEM professionals. And this is not only for large sites, where various traffic sources are measured and analyzed, and the sometimes very complicated paths users take before they realize a conversion or not, which in turn sometimes requires plugging in multiple analytics tools, but also for small sites.
While inserting Analytics or remarketing code into the HTML of a page is usually not problematic (although even here there are flowers like – remarketing code placed in the <head section>), it is with the conversion code, for example, that there is sometimes a big problem. Especially if it is to be associated not with a classic form, but one built on the basis of JavaScript/Ajax technology.
The problems with this are mainly due to the fact that there is no person on the agency or client side who is sufficiently familiar with JavaScript. Therefore, it often happens that the conversion code simply lands on a page with a form, so that every time a user clicks on an ad, it ends up registering a conversion in the AdWords system. Admittedly, five hundred clicks and five hundred conversions is every SEM specialist’s dream, but this way of achieving such a result is not the best strategy from the client’s point of view….
Tag manager a cure for all evil
Probably having such problems in mind, Google has prepared a tool with which you can easily define the activities to be measured on a customer’s site by defining the relevant tags. And this is regardless of what technology is responsible for their occurrence. It is, of course, about Tag Manager.
Using it does not pose great difficulties for the SEM specialist, on the contrary, it facilitates his work to a very large extent, basically freeing him (not 100%, but almost) from the need to involve outsiders (programmers, site administrators, etc.) in his work.
How to use?
You should start using Tag Manager by creating or activating (if you already use other Google products) an account at this address https://tagmanager.google.com.
The next step is to create an account, which will generate the one and only code that will need to be pasted into the customer’s site. It looks like the following, and adding it to the page code is a trivial matter, so you shouldn’t have any trouble with it.
It is worth mentioning here that this is the first and last time in Tag Manager’s operation when it is necessary to involve someone besides an SEM specialist.
With the account and code created on the site, you can proceed to define the tag to measure the value of interest. In our case, these are conversions from AdWords campaigns involving the submission of a query form made using JavaScript/Ajax technology.
Go to the Tags section, click New and select the metric of interest from the list.
Tag selection
Similarly, we proceed in the Rules section, where we also list select the action of interest to be converted.
We retrieve them from the code, which can be found in the Capabilities tab of >> Conversions in our Google AdWords account.
Once we’ve done that, all that’s left is to click the blue button with the word Submit, located in the upper right corner of the Tag Manager panel. At this point, our code is now active, and we can watch the first conversion data flowing into the Google AdWords account.
Pawel Bak
SEM Specialist
