Google Analytics Link Click Tracking (How to Set Up With Tag Manager)

hey what's up this is zach with root branch group and in this video we're going to look at how to set up link click tracking and we're going to use google analytics and google tag manager to set that up we're going to be looking at three different screens here i've got google tag manager in front of us here just created a new container code so we're going to be starting basically from ground zero to set this up have a google analytics property here for the root and branch site and then i have the root and branch website here which is where we're going to set up um set up the tracking so for this particular website let's say we want to track things like well on the home page how many people click over to [Music] you know read the about the best google analytics spam filter by default google analytics will track page views for us but it's not going to track the specific click um and things get especially complex if there are clicks that go off the domain so for example clicks over to the youtube channel because that goes off the domain that's not going to be tracked at all by google analytics out of the box and for that we need link click tracking and speaking of this if you're looking for more uh digital marketing training and resources google tag manager google analytics seo feel free to go on over there and subscribe and give this video a thumbs up if you like it so yeah so that's what we're going to try to set up link click tracking and here is a view of what it looks like after it has been set up so within the root and branch site for google analytics is the universal analytics property we can see these three dimensions here event category event action and event label and we're we are within the behavior reporting section and then events and i went into top events and if we look down here number five we see link click so this is what this actually will look like once it's been set up and if we click into the link click category we see these event actions and event labels so we can start to understand where were people when they clicked on specific links in this case that's the event label and event action had been set up as where are they actually going when they click that link and that's what we're going to set up now all right so the first thing we're going to do is create a new trigger so if we go into triggers this container is brand new so it has no triggers and we're going to click new trigger and we'll give it a name we can call it link click tracking or any other descriptive name would help for you and then a trigger type we're going to go down to click and we're going to put this on a just links click trigger and we can now decide do we want this trigger to fire on all link clicks or some link clicks and in this case we're going to have it fire on all link clicks we want all links to be tracked but we have some really good options here to set up some more detailed triggers in the future if we want um and that will be the another video but for now we're just going to say all link clicks and we're going to save that and now we've built our trigger and now what we're going to do is we're going to actually before we set up our tag we're going to set up a variable for our google analytics property so if we go down to variables into user defined variables we'll give this name google analytics ua so this is for universal analytics not ga4 and then we're going to configure the variable and if we scroll down to utilities we'll see google analytics settings and all we need to do to set this up is pump in our tracking id here so for that we're going to go to google analytics and then go to our admin section and take the tracking id and put it in here so i'm going to pause this for a minute and do that and i'm not going to display that on the screen okay so i went into google analytics found the tracking id and for now i'm just anonymizing this here but it's going to be ua dash and then nine digits and then a dash and another digit so once you've done that with your actual tracking id from the back end of your google analytics property and go ahead and save that okay so now we have our user defined variable setup that's great and now we need to configure some built-in variables well one specifically and to do that we stay within the variables menu here and under the built-in variables section so the ones that google tag manager basically already has at the ready for us all we need to do is click to configure them we're going to go ahead and do that and the one that we need is under clicks and it's going to be click url and click url is going to show the destination of any of those link clicks the process of configuring these built-in variables is very simple it's just clicking um and now that we're here we're just going to go ahead and configure all of them this is something that once they're configured you never need to do it again and a lot of our tags and triggers will involve things like click classes click id click url click text in the future so even if we don't need them all for this specific link click tracking exercise we can go ahead and configure them okay so now we have our variable set up we have our user defined variable here for our google analytics property down here we have the proper built-in variables configured click url is the one we're really going to need and we have our trigger for link click tracking so all link clicks will be tracked and now we want to go over to create a new tag for this and the ways that in google tag manager tags and triggers work together um one can't work without the other tags specifically can't work without a trigger a trigger is kind of like the thing that is um is happening and the tag is like the piece of code that fires some data to go over into google analytics when a specific event happens so with link click tracking the event is any link click that happens and we've set up our trigger to listen for that and the tag is going to be the thing that gets paired up with that trigger and the tag is going to be what sends the data into google analytics when the specific trigger occurs triggering event so let's build this tag we will call it link click tracking tag why not we will configure the tag and this is a universal analytics property type so we're going to go into google analytics universal analytics and the track type will be not a page view at all but an event and now we see these event tracking parameters we see category action label and that probably seems a little bit familiar and it should because those are the names so we'll see the name the names category action and label which should seem very familiar in our event tracking parameters and they should seem familiar because those are the same parameters that we saw when we were in our event tracking reports in google analytics under behavior events top events if we look at event category we have things like timer scroll element click video view percent in our case link click is the one we're looking for so with our category action and label we can set up we can call this whatever we want um the trick is to call it something that makes sense and is consistent with our overall tracking plan because whatever names we give here it's going to determine the specific value that flows into google analytics here so event category link click i like that as a category name we're just going to go with link click again if you prefer link clicks or link click like that or link click like that you can call it go nuts action and label are a little bit uh more interesting because they're not going to be fixed values like link click instead we want them to fire different data based on the specific link click that's taking place so if we want our action to be the destination of the click we would pick this built-in variable excuse me yes built-in variable that we just configured as the action if you would prefer to have your action field pull in say the page that the user was on when they made the click instead of click url you might have say page url page url is going to be the page the user is on when they make the click so if we had this specific setup here with category being link click action being page url and label being click url what we would see in google analytics for all of our link click events once the tag is finished and published all link clicks would show as the category name link click right here just like this and then we click into this and isolate just to that event category the action would be the page the user was on when they made that click and the label would be the destination of the link click and if you prefer to reverse that you can it's just important to know which which is which in this specific situation what i had said previously was click url was actually the action an event label was the page url and these are things now you can start to really see within your google analytics account what pages are getting the most activity in terms of driving link clicks and then which pages are actually getting clicked to the most and we're going to leave value blank here if for some reason you knew that every link click was worth 25 cents to you or 5 cents or a dollar i mean you could put that in there and that data would populate in google analytics in this case that doesn't really apply non-interaction hit you can make this true or false basically if it is a non-interaction hit then it would not influence your bounce rate if it we're just going to leave this as well we're going to call this true in other words if someone came to our site and their first click was just a click off the domain they went somewhere else they would still count as a bounce because we're saying hey this is a non-interaction hit and finally to finish setting up our tag here we need to select our google analytics variable so we've already done that we created our user defined variable and all we have to do then is click that and the last thing we just find our link click tracking trigger and then we go ahead and save this so let's do that and now we have our tag and our trigger and we can see within our tags here the name the type and then the five ring trigger that's associated with it we could go ahead now and and test this by using preview mode and then once we're done hit submit and then all of that data all that link click data will now be flowing into google analytics and that is how you set up link click tracking with google analytics thanks for watching

Channel: Root & Branch Digital Marketing

Views: 1,108

Keywords: google analytics link tracking, link click tracking, google tag manager link click trigger, google tag manager guide, google tag manager tips, google analytics link click, google analytics event tracking, google analytics events

Id: Y7pRsuz0NzA

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021