How to use Google Analytics to develop content projects?

How is Google Tag Manager different from Google Analytics?

Google Analytics basically aims to collect data about the visitors of a website or application. To do this you need to add a tag to your project’s source code and then watch for any data updates. Google Analytics has many standard reports that give you detailed information about visitors. Reports include everything from gender and age to device and region. Google Tag Manager is not a GA alternative. Via the tag sender, you can collect the codes of other external services and the user’s HTML in one place. Integration is done via CTRL+C and CTRL+V and does not require any programming skills.

GTM helps webmasters run tags in the visual builder. If you plan to solve basic tasks, you can use the built-in templates and code samples from the web. With this service you can add “Metrics”, “Analytics”, pixels of social networks and other integrations to your website.

Does a webmaster need all the tools?

Google Analytics has a complex interface and detailed reporting system. Migrating from native Yandex.Metrics to GA may not be easy. At first, the service may seem unfriendly and difficult, but still, it is vital especially if you are monetizing your website through Adsense. So the reports will show the revenue generated by a particular page as well as the overall statistics.

For content projects, it is better to use Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrics together to take advantage of the features of both systems. “Metrics” has a “Webvisor” component that records user visits. With it, you can learn how your website visitors interact with forms, links and buttons. Yandex.Metrics also has scroll and click maps. GA has no built-in analogues, but you can manually configure a similar function.

Google Analytics can:

• Monitor audience performance
• Evaluate the effectiveness of marketing channels
• Count conversions based on specified templates
• Analyze page load speed
• Check website availability
• Collect e-commerce data
• Show data updates in real time.

GA has more than 90 reports on different criteria. But not all content projects need it, so pay attention to these key stats:

• real time report
• Statistics on devices, demographics, technologies, and behavioral factors
• behavior map
• upload speed
• convert

Google Analytics setup via Tag Manager

We have already mentioned that it is possible to install one of the popular analytics systems or arbitrary code via GTM. The basic templates for “tag sender” include the Universal Analytics tag, which can help integrate Google Analytics.

Before installation, create a feature in GA and a workspace in GTM.

Then follow the steps:

1. Go to the “Variables” page in Tag Manager and add a new item to “Google Analytics Settings”.

2. Find the “Tracking ID” in Google Analytics.

3. Add it to the relevant field.

4. If you plan to use content advertising on the website or monitor e-commerce statistics, enable the functions in the “Additional settings” section.

5. Go to the “Tags” tab and add a new Universal Analytics tag.

6. In the “Tracking type” field, leave the review mode and select the variable you created in “Google Analytics Settings”. Add “All Pages” to the Triggers section and save the settings.

7. Publish changes by clicking “Submit”. We recommend that you fill in the “Version description” field so that you don’t have to memorize changes in the container.

After submitting the code to the website, open the “Real-time” report in your Google Analytics account. If your project already has visitors, the numbers will be updated. Otherwise, be sure to check the settings. The most common mistakes are specifying the wrong GA ID in the variable settings or publishing the changes to the container and saving it in place.

Audience analysis

A successful content or commercial project is the result of continuous improvement. You need to analyze the performance of your audience, test various ad formats, change the structure and see how visitors react to new features.

Conversion rates help track activity. These are targeted actions that the website owner considers very important. Conversion differs significantly for informative and commercial websites. For example, it’s important to track average checks, customer journeys, popular products, and other attributes for online stores.

There are two main aspects for content project owners: participation and income indicators. In terms of engagement, pay attention to visits and scrolling depth, visit duration, reading statistics, popular authors, conversions from visitors to subscribers, and other metrics.

Still, e-commerce indicators are more difficult to evaluate. “Metrics” and “Analytics” allow you to see website revenue in context networks. You need a special service like FinPL to gather all the information together.

With Google Tag Manager, you can significantly expand the opportunities of Google Analytics: You can calculate the number of clicks for social networks buttons and external links, as well as form analytics, etc. set. For more complex tasks you will need basic knowledge of HTML and Javascript, it will come in handy for any webmaster.

Conversion events setup

You can perform almost any analytical task using both GTM and GA. For example, track the number of clicks on the search form or count users who subscribe to updates via email. As an example, let’s create the “Page visits” goal. Many travel blogs have subscription forms that help their owners collect emails from those who are interested. They can be used to post marketing and blog post updates.

There are many ready-made solutions for counting subscribers for WordPress blogs: MailChimp, SendPulse, FeedBurner, etc. The easiest way to count email subscribers is to direct users to the dedicated “Thank You” webpage after completing the subscription form. While the user sees a grateful message, the blogger will gain another subscriber and will see them in the analytics system. To do this, create a web page with a subscription form and referrals that we plan to count. If you are using MailChimp, read its official instruction. Hide the “thank you” web page from search robots and users so that statistics can be collected accurately.

Then follow the steps:

1. Open the “Triggers” page in Google Tag Manager.
2. Create a new “Pageview” trigger.

3. Fill in all the fields as in the screenshot. Enter the value of the “Thanks” page in the activation rules.

4. Save the trigger and add it to the Google Analytics tag we created in the previous section.
5. Fill out the form for the test and visit the “Thanks” page.
6. Check the data display in Google Analytics.

Likewise, you can adjust the analytics of the search bar on the website, for example. This information will be useful when you check the relevance of the content. If the blog is dedicated to Thailand and users are often looking for information about insurance policies, you will find out about it. Statistics will be reflected in the special section of GA. Once you have completed the setup of search phrases analytics in GA, a “Website search” menu will appear.

To track conversion statistics, follow these steps:

1. Open Google Analytics.
2. Find the section in the “Real-time report” section.
3. Select “Conversions”.

In “Events”, you’ll see action statistics. For example, if you change the standard mechanism of error counting, you can find out how many active users on the website have passed the 15-second block.

After adding tags or triggers to Tag Manager, you can check the changes in preview mode. For this, you need to press the button with the same name on the main web page.

If the GTM code is loaded correctly, the website will be split into two parts. The first will contain the content and the second will contain a debug console with information about tags and launch sequences. The latter is only visible to you and users who have a link for review.

Useful reports

We mentioned earlier that Google Analytics has many basic templates and you should spend plenty of time reviewing them all. We’ll highlight the most important ones to help you better understand your audience and their needs.

Traffic sources

This group contains information about routing from different channels. You can see all the traffic for each channel and find out how many people come from social networks and marketing platforms. If you have an active company in Google Ads, you can make a link and see detailed statistics in Google Analytics.

Traffic sources are the heart of the project. The tab displays statistics for the selected period with visual graphs and diagrams. There is also an option to export materials in PDF, Excel and Google Docs.

Mass

If you want to know the gender, age or interests of a blog or content website’s target audience, make it your rule to analyze the data on the “Audience” page from time to time.

What you can learn:

• Gender
• Age
• Region
• Slice
• OS
• devices
• Participation indicators
• Active core size

In this section there is an interesting “User flow” module that shows a map of the movements on the pages. It shows which materials visitors close more often and how many clicks they complete on Adsense blocks.

convert

This tab contains information about target actions. To see “Ecommerce” statistics for a commercial project, you need to enable the corresponding option in Google Analytics and set up the integration.

For informative websites, this web page shows statistics for predetermined purposes: standard and user intents from Google Tag Manager.

Owners of informative websites and travel bloggers should review the functionality of Google Analytics and Tag Manager. You can do this step-by-step, but initially set up conversions to gather statistics over a long period of time. For example, if you’ve added a new subscription form to the website, set a trigger in GTM and add a goal in “Analytics” to compare the effectiveness of the various options.

Developing content projects without analytics is like driving in a new city without a navigation device. You can reach your goal, but it will take more time.