What Is The Google Tag Manager? And Why Use It No.1 Free Tutorial

What Is The Google Tag Manager

Hello friends, I am Anand Patel, and I am here with a new topic what is the google tag manager and why we should use it if you are not familiar with it, so here you will get all the information about it.

You may have so many questions in your mind, like what is the google tag manager, how to use a google tag manager, how to install it, why we should use it

So this is a complete google tag manager tutorial, and you will get all your answers and many more, so be with us till the end to be the master in google tag manager (GTM)

What Is The Google Tag Manager

What Is The Google Tag Manager – This is a free tool that allows you to manage and deploy marketing tags(snippets of code or tracking pixels) on your website (or mobile app) without having to modify the code.

GTM or google tag manager becomes very handy when you have lots of tags to manage because all of the codes are stored in one place

The biggest benefit of the tag manager is that you, as the marketer, can manage the code on your own. “no more developers are needed.

What Is The Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is basically a tagging management solution by google, with the help of google tag manager, you can manage all type of tracking, and tags of your website

If I am having a website, then I may be having traffic from Facebook, and for that, I will run free marketing ads on Facebook, and I must have a pixel on my website, so first I connected analytics, and then the Facebook pixel

And if I am running google ads and also getting traffic from there, so now I will also implement google ads tracking code on my website

Suppose I am also getting traffic from Linkedin, and if I want to run re-marketing ads on Linkedin in the future, so for that, I will need all data of Linkedin, and for that, I will also place Linkedin tracking code, so, like this, there may be so many codes which I will place no my website for tracking

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Historically we give all those codes to our developer, and he places all codes on our website, or by self, we place all those codes on our website thru any plugin, or we go to our file manager or WordPress editor and paste all codes

Now there were three problems

  1. We rely on the developer, and he takes so much time to do this as he also has so many other works.
  2. If we paste all codes by self so we may make some mistakes in placement as we don’t have coding knowledge.
  3. If we didn’t make any mistake, then all codes go to our website, and all those codes hamper our website speed.
What Is The Google Tag Manager

So, Google provided a solution for this, which is called google tag manager, basically, you have to place google tag manager’s code on your website, once you have placed GTM code on your website,

Then we can do all those tagging thru google tag manager, and we don’t need to place all those different codes on our website again and again.

If your website is not on WordPress, or you have a website on any other platform, and you don’t know to code, then once you need to give GTM codes to your developer to place on your website,

Once he placed your GTM code, you can do all tagging work from google tag manager, and you don’t need to go to your developer again and again.

Here we have learned what is the google tag manager now we will create our GTM account.

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How To Create Google Tag Manager Account

First, go to google and type google tag manager and click on the first result and you will be on google tag manager’s home page click on create an account

In the next window you have to set-up your account, in the first step, you have to fill in your account name, and country

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In the next step, you have to set-up container, here container is called a website, so you have to enter your website name, then where you want to use,

So, there are four option web, IOS, Android, and AMP, here we are creating a GTM account for our website, so click on the web, and then click on create,

In the next window you have to accept google term & condition, so click on accept, and your account will be created

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How To Install Google Tag Manager

After creating your account you will get two codes to install google tag manager, the first code you have to install in your website’s head section, and the second in the body section

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There are three ways to do this

  1. Do this thru a plugin in WordPress
  2. Give codes to your developer to place on your website
  3. Place codes manually

Here we are going to place codes manually, so we will go to our website’s dashboard, then appearance, and then theme editor

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Then you have to find header.php click on it, then find the head tag, then go to google tag manager’s page and copy the first code and paste it in the header section

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Then find the opening of the body tag and copy the second code from google tag manager and paste it in the opening of the body section and then click on the update file

If you are using any other platform, and you don’t know about coding, then you can give codes to your developer, and if you know to code, then you can paste codes yourself.

Go to your control penal, then file manager and place code in all HTML pages.

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Now, come back to the google tag manager page, click on ok, then in the next window click on submit, and then in the next window click on publish

Your account will be created, and the tag manager will be installed, now go to your website, and check that the tag manager is properly installed or not.

There are two methods of checking the installation of google tag manager

  1. Google Tag Assistant
  2. Preview Mode

Google Tag Assistant

It is a tool from Google, or you can say it is a chrome extension, you can directly search it in google or go to google web store and search google tag assistant then add it to chrome

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Then come back to your website, and click on the google tag assistant icon and enable it, and it will show you that google tag manager is installed or not.

Preview Mode

Go to your tag manager’s home page, click on the workspace, and the right side, you find a preview option, click on it, and it will activate preview mode

Now, go back to your website and refresh it, and downside of the page you will see the google tag manager, which means your tag manager is installed successfully. Now go back to the tag managers page and exit preview mode.

Here, we have installed tag manager, and now we can create all tags from google tag manager like analytics, Facebook pixel, google ads, and so on. Now we don’t need to paste codes into our website, we can implement all codes from the tag manager.

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How To Use Google Tag Manager

We have learned what is the google tag manager and how to install it. Here we will learn how to use google tag manager.

To use GTM we need to know three things tags, triggers and variables which are called component of google tag manager.

Tags

These are the scripts, codes, pixels, and small code snippets which we call as tags

Go to our google tag manager’s dashboard, then on the workspace, where we can add a new Tag click on add new tag, then click on tag configuration, you can also give a particular name to every tag at the place of the untitled tag

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In tag configuration, you have to select a tag type, there are so many options available on GTM, if you don’t find any, then you can manually add by creating a custom HTML tag, here we are going to add an analytics tag, so click on analytics

In the next window, you have to select tag type like page view, event, transaction, here we want to track our page views, so
Click on page view, then you have to do analytics setting, here you have to enter your google analytics tracking ID, now we have to select triggering

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Triggers

Triggers are the trigger points or a condition which tells that when the particular tag will run or fire

We have selected analytics and embedded its code in GTM, but GTM wants the information, that what we want to track on analytics, and for that, we have selected page view,

But in the triggering, it wants to know more information that do we want to track any specific page or some selected page or all pages, so these all are called trigger points for the tag to fire,

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Here we want to track all pages of our website so we will select all pages, so whenever any page will be viewed on our website then this event will trigger

Variables

These are the additional information that GTM may need for the tag and trigger to work

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Like we want to track page views, but we can add, what should be counted or tracked in page views, like if someone clicked on any link or visited any another page or if any window is loading, then it should be tracked, and we can also create our custom event as we want.

Important Note

If you use google tag manager to embed and manage tags and pixels of different platforms like google analytics, then you have to remove its ID or code from your website, otherwise, it will show you double or duplicate results as two codes will be working for the same data

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Google Tag Manager VS Google Analytics

Google tag manager and google analytics looks the same, but both are different tools of google, and both are used for different work, here are some points that differentiate google tag manager and google analytics

  1. Google Tag Manager is basically a tagging management solution by google, with the help of google tag manager, you can manage all type of tracking, and tags of your website, Google Analytics is a powerful and trusted tool of google, that provide information about our website traffic, user behavior, audience overview, and website performance, and many more
  2. Google tag manager works as a mediator between the website and other platforms and helps users in placing codes, google analytics is a tracking platform, user have to place its code into there website to track their websites data
  3. GTM helps the user to manage their all tags in one place, google analytics helps to track their website traffic and page views
  4. Google tag manager is difficult to understand and the configuration process is also confusing GA is easy and simple to use we just need to place its tracking ID into our website.

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Drawbacks Of Google Tag Manager

Google tag manager is so much useful to manage tags of different platforms, but it also has some drawbacks that are explained bellow

Difficult Configuration

Configuration of google tag manager is difficult, as you have to do so many settings and you have to place codes in your website’s pages, which is not easy for beginners and who are not from the coding field

Not Useful For Everyone

GTM is useful for big websites because they have to analyze the traffic coming from different platforms to start remarketing on that, but small websites or bloggers don’t need to do that as they are not a marketing expert

Technical Knowledge

If you have technical knowledge only then you can do the configuration of codes of different platforms, as there are so many troubleshooting steps, and if you don’t have technical knowledge then you can be stuck anywhere

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Conclusion

Here we have learned all about GTM like what is the google tag manager, how to install it, and how to use it, and the difference between google tag manager vs google analytics, and much more

Everything in the world has its positive and negative aspects but if you have some technical knowledge or you do things with the help of a developer or do some research and learn about GTM, then after some practice you can manage google tag manager easily, and it will become so much helpful in managing different tags of different platforms

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