Using UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters allow you to better identify where your traffic is coming from on Google Analytics. Organizing your web traffic is important for analyzing the effectiveness of your campaigns. These parameters simply tack onto the end of your website URL. Once you have the Google Analytics tracking set up for your website, the Analytics software can interpret these URL tags to show traffic coming from not only campaigns, but also individual posts or links.
The Campaign URL builder helps you to assemble your UTM parameters; however, you can also do this yourself. The order of the parameters is not important in the URL. Only one of these parameters is required for UTM tracking, but there are five available parameters. The five UTM parameters are:
Campaign Source (required) – The source, platform, or referrer of traffic – i.e.: Facebook or newsletters – that sends people to your site.
Campaign Medium – The medium the link was used for, like cost-per-click (CPC), social, banner, or email for links posted within email newsletters.
Campaign Name – This defines the individual campaign such as spring sale or back to school that you are promoting.
Campaign Term – Use this to track specific keywords for a paid AdWords campaign.
Campaign Content – Use this to differentiate ads for A/B testing of different links, ads, or call-to-actions (CTAs) in your campaign.
For longer URLs, it’s better to shorten them to make them more user-friendly. The abbreviated URL also saves on character space for ads and posts. Google’s URL builder makes this an easy step with an option for shortening directly below the URL generator.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.