What is UTM Tracking & How Can You Use It to Improve Your Marketing?

Learning how to properly use UTM tracking in your company’s digital marketing strategy is critical to understanding your target market. 

In this post, I’ll give you an overview of UTM tracking and how it works, and show you how to use it effectively in your digital marketing strategy.  

What You’ll Learn:

• What UTM Tracking Is
• Why Use it in your Digital Marketing
• How to Set Up a UTM Code
• How to set goals in Google Analytics based on your tracking campaigns
• How to use tracking codes for off-site campaigns
• UTM codes and apps
• Best practices

If you can’t explain to your clients or your boss how your web marketing efforts are impacting traffic, you’ll have difficulty justifying your work. More importantly, the folks who are paying you might not see any evidence that they’re getting a positive return on their investment.

That could cost you an income stream. Luckily, that’s where UTM codes come in.

What Is UTM Tracking?

UTM tracking is a URL-encoded method of informing Google Analytics about the path that visitors followed to get to your website.

UTM stands for “Urchin Traffic Monitor.” The name comes from Urchin Tracker, a web analytics tool Google acquired back in 2005.

That tool eventually became Google Analytics. Thirteen years later, the same software framework is still being used to track web traffic.

Why Use UTM Tags?

If you’re sold on the idea of using UTM codes to find your best traffic patterns, then you’ll need to add UTM tags to your URLs. Otherwise, Google Analytics won’t give you an accurate report on your traffic sources.

Here’s how the entire process works:

• Click on a link to get to your web page
• That link will include one or more UTM tags
• Google Analytics will evaluate that link for those tags
• If GA finds UTM tags, it will update traffic source metrics accordingly

So, if you don’t use UTM tracking tags, Google has limited info to work with to determine how people arrived at your site. That will restrict your ability to make informed decisions about online marketing.

How to Set Up a UTM Tracking Code

The good news is, it’s easy to add a tracking code to a URL. It’s a simple request parameter.

Tracking codes are made up of two key elements:

1. UTM parameter – begins with utm_
2. Tracking variable – identifier to track preceded by the “=“ symbol

If you’re not familiar with URL request parameters, they’re name/value pairs you can add to any URL. They follow a question mark that separates them from the address of the page itself.

Breaking Down an Example

http://mysite.com/my-blog-post?name1=value1&name2=value2

That URL will take people to a blog post on mysite.com. As you can see, there are also some request parameters at the end.

Let’s break that URL down into manageable chunks.

First, “http://mysite.com/my-blog-post” is the most important part of the URL. It’s the address of the blog post.

After that part, there’s a question mark. That question mark separates the address of the page from the request parameters.

There are two request parameters included in the URL: name1 and name2. They’re separated by an ampersand (“&”). That’s how request parameters are always separated in a URL.

Each parameter is assigned a value. That part is easy to read because an equals sign is used to assign the value. So name1 equals value1 and name2 equals value2.

What would happen if you removed the request parameters from the URL? From the perspective of the person who clicks the link, absolutely nothing. That link would still take the person to the same page.

Request parameters are processed by software on the server-side.

There are five UTM tracking codes. You’ll need to identify them by their names in the URLs you use.

However, the values can be anything you want.

Again, let’s look at an example.

http://mysite.com/my-blog-post?utm_source=twitter

In this case, the request parameter is called “utm_source”. It’s the name of a tracking code that Google Analytics will recognize.

As you can see, the value of that parameter is “Twitter”. That means the source of the traffic is Twitter.

5 Different Tracking Codes

• utm_source–The source of the traffic. Usually, it’s the name of the app or website that sent the traffic to your site. For example: “google”, “twitter”, or “facebook”.
• utm_medium– The online channel that brought the visitor to your site. For example: “social” (for social media) and “search” (for search).
• utm_campaign– The campaign that brought the visitor to your site. If your marketing effort is part of a larger campaign to get more traffic, assign the name of that campaign to the utm_campaign parameter. You will typically see this with UTM digital marketing.
• utm_content–The link within a page that brought the visitor to your site. If you have multiple calls to action (CTAs) on one page, assign a different utm_content value to the URL associated with each CTA. That way, you’ll know which CTA brought you the most traffic.
• utm_term–The keyword that brought the visitor to your site. Usually, this tracking tag is reserved for PPC campaigns.

In addition, you can use utm_id, which is an advanced option that involves using an ID key instead of the previously mentioned tags. This would entail uploading CSV files that include the mapping list of specific key values. It’s important to eliminate any errors in this process, as mistakes could lead to the permanent corruption of data.

URL Examples with UTM Codes:

Twitter

Below is an example of a URL that uses a few of the UTM tracking codes mentioned above:

http://mysite.com/my-blog-post?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=brand

As you can see, the source of the traffic is Twitter (“twitter”), the medium is social media (“social”) and the campaign’s name is “brand” (for brand awareness).

You’ll include that link in your tweets so that when people click on it, Google Analytics can parse the UTM tags and update your metrics.

Obviously, you would not include that link in your Facebook posts. If you did, it would register Twitter as the source of the traffic instead of Facebook.

Facebook

If you wanted to include a link to the same page on Facebook, you’d update the URL to this:

http://mysite.com/my-blog-post?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=brand

As you can see, the utm_source parameteris set to test “facebook” instead of “twitter.” Now it’s a link you can put on Facebook to use for digital marketing tracking.

Build Your Own URL

The safest way to create a URL with tracking codes is to use the Google URL builder. That way, you won’t have to worry about typos in the parameter names.

In that tool, the only required parameter is the source (utm_source). However, if you want to track goals, you need to include the source, medium, and campaign.

Let’s look in more detail at tracking goals with UTM tags for UTM digital marketing.

Setting up Analytics Goals Based on Your UTM Tracking Campaigns

Google Analytics gives you the ability to track conversions on your website. One way you can do that is with goals.

Goals are URL targets or actions that people take on your site. An example of a goal is somebody making a purchase or visiting a specific page.

Although it’s great to know the overall number of people who visited your site and completed a goal, it’s even better to know where those people came from when they completed that goal.

Enter UTM tracking tags.

The UTM tags you plug into your URLs will tell Google Analytics where people came from.

Remember: you must include utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign to track goals with UTM tags.

You’ll also need to set up goals in Google Analytics. Fortunately, that’s easy to do.

Once you’ve created at least one goal and let it run for a while, head back into Google Analytics. Click on “Acquisition” on the left-hand sidebar. Then, select “Campaigns” from the menu that appears below. Finally, click “All Campaigns” in the context menu.

The table in the middle of the screen shows the traffic according to campaign. You’ll see important data such as the number of sessions, the percentage of new sessions, and the number of new users that campaign brought to your site. This is a complete rundown of your UTM strategy using full UTM analysis. 

More importantly, though, you’ll see how that campaign contributed to your goals. On the right-hand side of the table, you’ll see three columns:

• Goal Conversion Rate–the sum of all your goal conversion rates for that UTM marketing campaign
• Goal Completions—the total number of conversions
• Goal Value–the monetary value of the completions

Those columns, by default, will aggregate data from all your goals. It displays UTM full form in digital marketing. If you want to see stats for just one goal, you can do that too.

Look at the dropdown labeled “Conversions” that appears just above those last three columns. Click on it.

You’ll see a list of all the goals you created. Choose the one you want to view and the table will update to reflect your selection. You will see the UTM analysis of a singular goal.

How to Use UTM Tracking Codes for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Once you’ve set up your goals and let them run for a while, use the reports from Google Analytics to improve your conversion rate and UTM strategy.

Let’s look at an example.

Suppose you’re running two campaigns to get people to buy your hot new product. One campaign focuses on social media and the other is using PPC.

So here are the steps you take:

• You create a goal in Google Analytics to track the purchase of the hot new product
• Next. create a URL for your social media campaign that sets the utm_medium parameter to “social” and the utm_campaign parameter to “campaign1”.
• Then, create a second URL for your PPC campaign that sets the utm_medium parameter to “ppc” and the utm_campaign parameter to “campaign2”.
• Finally, you launch the social media and the PPC campaigns, using the correct URL for each one

After you’ve let both campaigns run for a while, you head back into GA and check your data. Surprisingly, you find that the social media campaign (“campaign1”) is getting twice the conversion rate as the PPC campaign!

So you do the sensible thing. You cut back on resources for the PPC campaign and scale up the social media campaign.

Of course, you have plenty of other information that you can work with as well. You can use Analytics reporting to show you which social media channels were giving you the best conversion rates. Armed with that info, you can optimize your UTM marketing campaign even further.

How to Use UTM Codes for Off-Site Campaigns

For whatever reason, some people think they can only use UTM tags when creating URLs on their own websites. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You can use UTM tags in any URL. Even one that isn’t on your site. UTM in digital marketing enables endless campaign opportunities. 

For example, if you’re posting a link to your website on Twitter, you can encode it with UTM tracking tags. If you’re guest-blogging, you can point a link to your site that also includes UTM tags.

However, it’s a great idea to shorten your URL so that it’s a little more user-friendly. Really long URLs tend to annoy people.

Fortunately, Google has a URL shortener that you can use. Just head over there and plug in your UTM-stuffed URL and Google will return a much shorter version.

Don’t worry. That shortened URL will have all the request parameters that you loaded into it. You’ll still be able to track traffic sources, even with a shortened hyperlink.

UTM Tracking and Apps

You aren’t just limited to adding tracking tags to URLs that you put on websites. You can add them to URLs included in mobile apps as well.

That can come in handy if you want to measure the amount of traffic you receive from apps. It’s especially helpful if you’re running ads on multiple apps and want to know which one is giving you the best return. This type of UTM full form in digital marketing helps to simplify the process of data analysis.  

All you have to do is update the utm_source parameter to the name of the app. Also, set the utm_medium parameter to something like “apps” or the name of the ad network that you’re using to run app ads.

Best Practices for Seamless UTM Tracking

When developing a tracking strategy, it’s important to keep the following practices in mind.

1. Choose a UTM tracking naming convention

Consistency is key when coming up with UTM tags and codes. You want your entire marketing team to be on the same page. You do not need some people tracking under “facebook” and others tracking under “facebook.com”.

 While this might not seem like a major distinction to the untrained eye, it can wreak havoc on your data analysis. Your marketing team will be swimming in skewed results. 

Set rules to avoid any potential confusion. For example:

• Use only lowercase letters in URLs
• Choose whether you will use underscores or dashes

2. Keep the UTM tracking names simple

All the elements of your UTM digital marketing campaign should be easy to understand. 

For example, if you use a numerical system to track the website’s data, it can be confusing. Choosing sensible names for your parameters makes it easier for your team members to quickly read and understand the information without having to memorize a book of nonsensical number codes.

3. Consider shortening the URLs

As mentioned before, lengthy URLs are not visually appealing to anyone. Even digital marketers can find these extended lines of codes to be tedious. But, it is a necessary evil. The more complex your tracking is, the longer the URL will become. 

Luckily, there is an easy way to shorten the URLs. You can make these URLs shareable by enlisting the help of goo.gl or bit.ly. 

4. Avoid Vagueness

To get the most from your UTM tags, make sure your tags are specific. If they’re too vague and include tags such as “social-media” as the source, this won’t help you in your tracking efforts. With social media sourcing, be sure to include the specific channel, such as LinkedIn or Facebook.

UTM Tracking FAQs

If you still want to learn more about UTM tracking and how it works, the following are some frequently asked questions about UTM tracking‌.

1.Should internal links feature UTM parameters?

Some may consider including UTM tags in internal links on a website, but this is something to avoid. If you use these parameters in internal links, they will prevent you from being able to effectively track the original source of traffic.

For instance, you might share one of your blog posts on Facebook, in which case a Facebook user might click on the link that takes them to the blog post. From there, the user may come across a link that takes them to a related service page on your website. If you include UTM tags in your internal link, such as “http://mysite.com/?utm_source=blog,” this will hinder tracking abilities. Instead of Google Analytics tracking traffic to your service page from Facebook, it will perceive the traffic as coming from the previous blog post.

2. Does UTM tracking impact SEO?

If you’re wondering whether tracking URLs with UTM parameters will affect your search engine optimization efforts, the fact is that no, it won’t. 

UTM parameters are solely used for tracking‌, which is something search engines understand. Search engines ignore UTM tags when indexing pages.

While UTM tags don’t play a role in search engine rankings, they may still appear in search engine results along with URLs. To avoid this, you can use the code “<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://mysite.com/designated-subpage” />”. This will tell Google it should only display this URL in search results.

3. Do UTM tags have a specific character limit?

UTM tags don’t have a set character limit in place for them, but it’s still in your best interest to ‌shorten links as much as possible.

One reason for this is that URLs with 2,000 characters or fewer will be more compatible with web servers and browsers. This means that you’re better off keeping URLs shorter than 2,000 characters if you want them to perform their best.

Additionally, it’s ‌best to keep your UTM tags short and to the point, which will help increase their clarity and make them easier to understand when tracking them in reports.

Wrapping Up UTM Tracking

Now that you understand UTM tracking, it’s time to get busy. Think about the backlink strategy and ad campaign that you’re planning on launching soon. Update your hyperlinks with valid UTM tags for optimized UTM digital marketing.

After a while, check Google Analytics to see which sources are giving you the most traffic. Also, find out which channels are giving you the best conversion rates.

Then, maximize your use of UTM in digital marketing by adjusting your strategy accordingly.