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08 Oct 2014
google analytics site conversion and tracking

Site & Conversion Tracking Protocol

How effective is your adwords campaign? What about your SEO? Can you differentiate between traffic and leads acquired  through each?  How would you like to know the exact ROI for your marketing dollars?

Knowing how to track from all of your sources can be very complex.  Between Analytics, AdWords Conversions, AdWords remarketing, Facebook conversions and remarketing, there are so many codes to set up!

In this tracking protocol, we will teach you EXACTLY how to track every aspect of your search marketing strategy.

Google Analytics: Site Tracking

Google Analytics site tracking is an exceedingly valuable tool even if you are not looking to set up an AdWords or Facebook advertising campaign. By getting your site tracking setup with Google Analytics, you can get real time data statistics of traffic to your website, as well as reports about your audience, demographics, how long people stayed on a web page etc.

Here’s how to get started.

After you sign-in into your Google Analytics Account, click on the Admin tab at the top of the page.


google analytics site conversion and tracking

If you are setting up a new Account then click on the drop-down menu under Account, and click Create New Account.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Here you’ll be guided through the steps to create a new Account through Analytics.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

After you have filled out the information about your website, you will click on Get Tracking ID and prompted with this code:

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

You’ll take this code and paste it into your website of every page you want to track on your website.

If you are taking the code from an account you already made, you’re going to go back to the Admin tab. Now make sure that your Account and Property are set to what you want to track.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

Now click on Tracking Info

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Then click on Tracking Code

google analytics site conversion and tracking
Copy the code.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Paste it into the code of the page you want to track, or email it to someone who can paste it into the code of the page you want to track.   You want to paste the code immediately before the closing </head> tag.

You want to keep your Accounts and Properties organized so you want to make sure you keep track of your tracking and DO NOT add tracking code from different accounts to others. Keeping your things separated is crucial to getting accurate data.

Google Analytics: Goals

Goals are an excellent method to keep track of specific performance. With Goals you can set up expectations for your websites and know exactly when you hit them, thus giving you unbiased feedback on whether you need to improve your pages or outreach.

Here’s how to get your Goals set up.

Log in to your Google Analytics and click on Admin

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Make sure that your Account, Property and View are set to where you want to create the Goal.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Click on Goals

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Click on New Goal

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Before we proceed, let’s talk about the different types of goals available.  There are various templates available that come pre-filled with different settings.  If none of those goals are what you need to track, you can click on “Custom” to set up your own goal.  There are 4 types of goals:

  • Destination: a page on your site, such as a thanks.html or a particular landing page.
  • Duration: to track how much time a visitors stays on your site.  This helps you track engagement with your content.
  • Pages/Screens per session: as above, you can track how many pages people visit on your site
  • Event Tracking: you can configure event tracking when there are actions that happen withIN a page – people don’t load another page.  These may be video plays, clicks on a specific link, form submissions, clicks on email links, outbound affiliate links, and much more.

Goal tracking is a powerful way to gain more granular knowledge into the BEHAVIORS that people use when visiting your site.  Now let’s learn how to set up goals.

Give Your Goal ID something specific. It’s smart to use something where you know what the goal is referring to. For example: Gryffin Media: Contact Page Thank You

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Check Destination.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Add the web page URL under Destination.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

You can add a monetary value to your goal, or create a funnel with different URLs to analyze entrance and exit points that impact your goal. Adding monetary value makes it simpler to show a client how successful your advertising efforts are.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Once you have added all the information, you can click on Verify this Goal to see how often your Goal would have reported a conversion based on data from the past 7 days.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Once you have verified your Goal. You can click on Create Goal to finish. Your Goals View will show the conversions for the Past 7 Days. You can turn off a goal by switching off Recording.

As of yet, Google has not offered the capability to delete goals that have been created. The only option is to turn off Recording.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

You can click on share to get a link to email to someone who wants to view your goal configuration. This will not send them performance statistics on your goal, you’ll have to email them the link to your Goal Conversion page, which we will describe how to access next.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

If you would like to see Real Time Conversion Data on your Goals, click on the Reporting tab.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Click on Real Time

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Click on Conversions

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Here you can see traffic data in real time for your Goals.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

This is also a good way to check whether or not your Goal is set up to the correct page. All you have to do is open up the page on your computer and see if Analytics reports your traffic. Once you see the active users go up by 1,  close the window and see if it goes down by one just to be sure it was you that Analytics was referring to and not another visitor.

There’s no reason not to utilize Analytics Goals for your advertising efforts, because it is free and its a very useful reporting tool. Analytics Goals feature can make your performance evident to you and your clients, give accurate info for A/B testing, and clue you in on seasonal and temporal changes in your audiences.

AdWords: Conversions

There is no metric that you, or your client, cares more about than conversions. So making sure that you set up your conversion tracking accurately in AdWords is imperative, otherwise you’d be making decisions based on inaccurate data.  Here we will go through all the steps so that you can rest assured that your AdWords conversions are reporting accurately.

Sign-in to your AdWords account and go to the Tools tab  and click on Conversions

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Here you’ll see all the Conversions you have and their statuses.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

You can also remove enabled conversions by clicking on the: next to your conversion and clicking removed.  It’s important to keep your conversion tracking up to date to remove clutter and confusion. So if you remove a landing page from your site, make sure that you get rid of the conversion tracker from your Conversions list as well.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

To add a new Conversion, click on google analytics site conversion and tracking

google analytics site conversion and tracking

google analytics site conversion and tracking

You want to make sure that your Conversion name is specific. Something that follows the template Client – Pagename.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Click on google analytics site conversion and tracking to continue.

Settings vary depending on the campaign. Generally I set the Conversion value to: (if you have this info, it’s great to add, otherwise leave as unspecified), Count: All conversions, Conversion window: 30 days, Conversion Category: Depends on what I’m tracking (Leads, Sales, Signups)

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

Click on google analytics site conversion and tracking to continue

Google will now give you the code to add to the page to track the conversions.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

If you are making changes to the page’s code. Then copy the code from the box and paste it in between the <body></body> tags of the page you’re tracking. Google will also let you email the code snippet directly to the person who can add the code.

Click on google analytics site conversion and tracking to Finish.

You’ll be redirected to the AdWords Conversions menu, and your Conversion will have a Tracking Status of Unverified until a Conversion is made.

google analytics site conversion and tracking
It’s a good idea to to make a test conversion yourself by going through the stages a customer would (e.g. searching keyword, clicking on ad, signing up etc.) to verify that the Conversion is working. *Note It takes approximately 24 hours for a Conversion to be recorded.

If it’s clear that the Conversion isn’t working, you’re going to want to confirm that you added the code on the right page. If it is, you can download Google Tag Assist which will help you debug the web page you pasted the code on.

AdWords: Remarketing

Remarketing is one of the most powerful tools in AdWords. The audience of people made up of people who visited your page, and for whatever reason, decided not to convert is one of the most lucrative audiences you can target.  If you do not take advantage of AdWords Remarketing, then you are impeding your ability to stand out from the competition.

Here’s how to get started.

Sign-in to your AdWords account and click on Shared Library.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

Here you’re going to click on underneath Audiences.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

This menu will show you all the Remarketing Audiences you have created.


google analytics site conversion and tracking

To set up your remarketing tag you are going to click on View Tag Details. If you haven’t set up your remarketing tag, then you should see this in the box: google analytics site conversion and tracking

After you click on View tag details, you will see this:

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Here you’re going to click on the Setup tab.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Where you will see this:

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Click on View AdWords remarketing tag and instructions

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Copy the code and paste it on ALL of the pages of your website (this will prevent you from having to do this process again). You want to paste the code right before the </body> tag on your website’s code.

Back in the View tag details menu, under Details you can look at the top 10 most visited pages your remarketing tag is on.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

If you ever need to add your remarketing tag onto another page you can follow the same steps of copying and pasting the code on the webpage. I also recommend Google Tag Assist to inspect the code on your webpage to make sure it’s placed correctly.

Facebook: Remarketing

Just like in AdWords, Remarketing is a great opportunity for advertisers to get a second chance at converting people who were interested enough in a company, product, or service to click on an ad, but not convert. This is how to start gathering users to create a custom audience for Facebook remarketing.

Go to your account in Ads Manager on Facebook and click on Audiences.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Here you will find all the information on your audiences and you can set up new ones.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

To start collecting a Remarketing Audience, click on google analytics site conversion and tracking

Then click on Custom Audience

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

Click on Custom Audience from your Website

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Here you will create the audience. Make sure that you choose a specific name and description for you audience.

If you have not yet added a tracking pixel to your web pages, then click on the google analytics site conversion and tracking in the bottom left hand corner. Then click on View Pixel Code: google analytics site conversion and tracking

Copy and paste the code given in between the <head> and </head> tags in your page’s code.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Clicking on google analytics site conversion and tracking will take you back to this window:

google analytics site conversion and tracking
You can check if your website has the pixel on it by using the Facebook Pixel Helper. Which inspect your page’s code and determine if there’s a pixel on your webpage and if there’s any errors with it.

Facebook Allows you to collect an audience from:

1. Anyone who visits your website

google analytics site conversion and tracking

2. People who visit specific pages on your site (this is why it’s a good idea to have the pixel on every page so you don’t have to add it later). Facebook lets you specify URL by either or . URL contains means it will look for specific keywords in the URLs that the pixel is on and collect users to those sites. URL equals mean you give Facebook the exact URL you want to track.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

3. People visiting specific pages, but not others.

google analytics site conversion and tracking
4 . People who haven’t visited in a certain amount of time.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

Facebook: Conversions

Just like in any advertising endeavour, the end game is conversions. That’s the most significant determining factor for success. This is how to set up conversion tracking for your Facebook Ads.

Go to your account in Facebook’s Ads Manager and click on Conversion Tracking.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

Here you’ll be able to see all of your conversion pixels and their data. It’s important to keep this list well maintained and updated. So when a landing page becomes outdated or you delete it, you should remove the conversion from this list as well.

google analytics site conversion and tracking

 

Click on Conversion Tracking to add a conversion tracker.

Conversion Tracking

Make sure you give your pixel a specific name and the most relevant category possible.

Conversion Tracking

 

Hit Conversion Tracking Once the information is ready to get the code snippet.


Conversion Tracking

Copy the code and paste it between <head> and </head> in the webpage where you want to track conversions.

Use Google Analytics URL Builder to Tag URL’s:

By creating variations of the same URL, you can give different ads different URLs so you can track how EACH ad performs. This is extremely useful for A/B testing or when you have multiple ads that link to the same landing page.

Are you seeing conversions to your website and want to know which ad is to responsible? Using the URL builder can help you do that and more.

Go here:

Conversion Tracking

Here you can add Campaign Source, Campaign Medium, Campaign Term, and Campaign Content, and Campaign Name. You want to use these variables to make your URL as specific as possible.

For example: A Facebook Newsfeed ad for the company GryffinMedia that links to Blog Post called Linda and Darla will have:

      1. Campaign Source: Facebook
      2. Campaign Medium: Newsfeed
      3. Campaign Name: GryffinMedia
      4. Campaign Term: Blog
      5. Campaign Content: Linda and Darla 1 (multiple ads might link to this blog post, this is the first one so I label it “1”)
      6. The URL will be the URL of the Linda and Darla Blog Post.

You can then use the URL given at the bottom in your ads so you can track performance at the ad level.


Conversion Tracking

By using the tools above, you and your clients can be sure that you’re getting the absolute most accurate data possible for you to judge how well your advertisements are doing, no matter what the platform is.

Keeping of track of your tracking will get more difficult the more campaigns, ads, pages, and pixels you make across all the different websites. You can use this tracking sheet to keep track of all the websites and pages you are currently tracking and their codes. It’s a very useful tool as your online advertising expands.

Conclusion

Accurate data is the foundation for any advertising campaign whether it is on AdWords or Facebook. All of the decisions you make are based on the information from how well your ads perform, so inaccurate data definetly is a member of the Most Disastrous Things That Could Happen to an Advertising Campaign Club. Luckily, by following this guide, you can be certain that all of your data tracking will only give you the most accurate data from your internet marketing.

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Search engine marketing expert with 15 years of experience in the industry, working with small mom and pop shops as well as large corporate websites. I have experience with all aspects of inbound marketing, including SEO, Link Building, Social Shares, Usability, Conversions, PPC, Email Marketing, and more.