What is Linktagging

Link Tagging makes it possible for you to add extra information to links to your site. This extra information is shown in Google Analytics giving a deeper understanding of your marketing campaigns.

This page has 3 paragraphs:

1. Let’s explain Linktagging with an example
2. Where can you find the stats of your tagged links?
3. Which tags can you use?

Let’s explain Linktagging with an example

Say you have a webshop and are planning a special campaign in the summer. For this campaign you want to send 2 different newsletters and you have a banner campaign on 2 other sites. Of course you will also want detailed reporting of this campaign in your Google Analytics stats.

To get your Google Analytics to report on this campaign you have to add your campaign information to your links with linktags.
In this example we use 3 tags.
Campaign Tag: The name of the campaign “Summercampaign’
Medium Tag: The way you offer the link to your public. In this example we use the values ‘banner’ and ‘newsletter’.
Source Tag: The different newsletters an banners. In this case we use the values: ‘newsletter_june’, ‘newsletter_juli’, ‘bannersupplier_1′ and ‘bannersupplier_2′.

If you want to use these tags with your links, you have to add the values at the end of the links to your website.
For example, for the newsletter you will send in June you would use the following link:
http://yourwebsite.com/landingspage.htm?utm_source=newsletter_june&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=summercampaign
For the banner placed bij supllier nr1 you use:
http://yourwebsite.com/landingspage.htm?utm_source=banner_supplier1&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=summercampaign

There are tools available to help you with this step.
The Linktagbuilder Tool on this Site
The Url Builder Tool provided by Google.

By tagging your links you give Google Analytics the information it needs to report detailed information about the visitors to your site via the tagged link. Google Analytics will give you an overview how many people have clicked on a link to your site from the different referring sources of your summercampaign. Also it will give you information about what those visitors did on your site. e.g. the average number page views the June newsletter generated. The goal conversion rate for visitors attracted by that newsletter etc.

Where can you find the stats of your tagged links?

If we want to see the statistics for the various media we can select for the options:
Traffic Sources -> All Traffic Sources in the navigation menu on the left in Google Analytics.
In the example below we chose the ‘medium’ view. The arrows point to the medium we defined: ‘banner’ and ‘newsletter’.

If you click a medium in the Google Analytics report you will see the information about the sources of that medium. So in our example if you clicked on the newsletter medium you should have gotten an overview of the performance of the various newsletters.

If you want to have a look at your stats on campaign level select Traffic Sources -> Campaigns in the navigation menu on the left in Google Analytics.

Which tags can you use?

Google Analytics has defined the following tags. Tags marked with an * are required.

* Campaign Source (utm_source).
Identifies the source of the visitor. For example a specific website or a specific newsletter.

* Campaign Medium (utm_medium).
Identifies wich medium referred the visitor. For example email or Banner ad.

* Campaign Name (utm_campaign).
Identifies the campaign. For example, summercampaign or productx-promotion.

Campaign Term (utm_term).
When you use Google Adwords you have the option of automatically tagging the links in your Ad.
Other Cost Per Click programs require links to be manually tagged in order to see detailed reports in Google Analytics. Most CPC programs offer variables to use with your linktags. For example Yahoo Searchmarketing uses {OVKEY} (utm_term={OVKEY}) to inform Google Analytics about the search term a visitor used before clicking on an Ad.

Campaign Content (utm_content).
Utm_content can be used with A/B testing or to distinguish between two different placed links. For example when you have 2 links in a newsletter directing to the same page on your website. One link is placed at the top of the newsletter and one at the bottom.
You can use the utm_content tag (e.g. utm_content=bottom) to see in your Google Analytics stats on which link in the newsletter a visitor clicked to reach your site.

Nooverride (nooverride).
Normally Google Analytics will credit a conversion to the latest non-direct source. For users who do not want this a nooverride parameter is available.
If you use the nooverride parameter and you already have a previous origin of the visitor this won’t be overwritten with the origins of the link tagged with the “nooverride=1″ value.
If you want to know more about this read this:
http://eduardo.cereto.net/google-analytics-source-override-precedence