Tracking Setup Guide (GA4, GTM, GSC and Clarity)

Overview

The purpose of this guide is to teach you how to track conversions and other useful metrics on a client’s website using Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Microsoft Clarity, Ahrefs, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Topics covered include:

Purpose

The purpose of Conversion tracking is:

As organic marketing consultants, our purpose and goal is to provide additional traffic to our clients through organic channels (which can be easily tracked through Search Console alone). Our client’s goal and purpose however, will be to either sell more products, sell more services, or achieve a greater share of voice within the market. Using conversion tracking, we can prove to our clients that our goals align; we can show them that increased traffic and visibility is leading to more conversions and/or higher brand recognition. Proper conversion tracking and communication will lead to higher client satisfaction.

Recommended Permissions

Recommended Tools/Plugins

Intro

Google Analytics 4 is Google’s on-site analytics software. It uses a small Javascript tag which must be put on a client’s website. The tag tracks simple user behaviours on the site such as page views, scrolls and internal site searches (for any more complex behaviours, Tag Manager must be used as well).

These behaviours are then sent to the Google Analytics dashboard where users can view, manipulate and export the data.

Currently, we use GA4 data as part of our reporting through Agency Analytics.

Creating an Account

To create an Account:

→ Go to Google Analytics

→ Click on Admin (bottom left corner)

→ Click on Create (top left corner)

→ Choose to make an Account or Property

→ Name the property and set the currency and timezone depending on the business (usually Australia/Melbourne or Indonesia/Makassar)

→ Describe the business (to the best of your ability). This step does not have a large effect on the end result (it is mostly for Google’s benefit).

→ Click “Other business objectives” for “Choose your business objectives”. This affects the reports that are made available in GA4. If you choose any of the other options, some of the reports will be hidden (they can be unhidden later).

→ Choose “Web”

→ Enter the client’s domain and name the stream “Website”

→ You will now be provided with the tracking tag that goes on the client’s website. For most CMSs, the entire tag must be added to the site. Others like Shopify, Squarespace and Wix have more user-friendly interfaces, and you will only need the tag ID (highlighted in the image)

→ Below, I will detail how to add the tag in common CMSs. If this guide is not adequate, most commercially available CMSs will have their own GA4 guide.

→ Once the tag has been installed, click “Test installation”.

Wordpress GA4 Installation

→ Go to the client’s site

→ Log on to their Wordpress backend (usually at www.yourdomain.com.au/wp-admin)

→ Go to Plugins (in the sidebar)

→ Search for “WPCode”

→ If they have the plugin, click on Code Snippets to go to it, then click on Header & Footer (in the sidebar)

→ Copy and paste the entire GA4 tag you were given into the Header section (make sure you put it above or below any tags that are already there)

→ Click Save Changes and you’re done.

If the GA4 is not working, check to see if they have a CDN or caching plugin, then attempt to clear the cache.

Shopify GA4 Installation

WIP

Squarespace GA4 Installation

→ Log in to Squarespace

→ Find the client’s site and click “Website”

→ Click on Settings (cog in bottom left)

→ Click on Developer Tools and then External API Keys

→ Paste your GA4 tag ID (see previous section) into the Google Analytics field.

→ Click Save and you’re done!

Wix GA4 Installation

WIP

Webflow GA4 Installation

WIP

Data Retention

By default, GA4 only retains event data for 2 months. We would like more data than that, so we can increase the retention window:

→ Go to Google Analytics

→ Click on Admin (bottom left corner)

→ Click on Data collection and modification

→ Click on Data retention

→ Change the Data retention under Event Data to 14 Months.

Intro

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is Google’s software designed for managing scripts on sites. The purpose of the software is that you add GTM to the site once, and then whenever new scripts/software need to be added to the site, it can be done through Tag Manager instead of having to edit the site. Web Developers commonly use Tag Manager to add a suite of tracking and analytics software to the site such as:

We use Google Tag Manager mostly to add conversion tracking tags to our client’s sites. You can make your own custom Javascript code, but we usually use the in-built functionality the Google Tag Manager has to build custom tags.

Creating an Account

→ Go to Google Tag Manager

→ Click Create Account (top right)

→ Name the account after the business and choose the correct country.

→ Name the container after the website domain and choose “Web”

→ Agree to the terms and conditions

→ You will now be shown the tag which you need to install on your website. See the sections below for guides on how to install for specific CMSs.

→ Once the tag is installed, use the provided tool to test that it has been installed properly. If you are having issues, ensure that the CMS’s server cache has been cleared.

→ You’ve done it! Move on to other chapters to learn how to set up conversion events.

Wordpress GTM Installation

→ Go to the client’s site

→ Log on to their Wordpress backend (usually at www.yourdomain.com.au/wp-admin)

→ Go to Plugins (in the sidebar)

→ Search for “WPCode”

→ If they have the plugin, click on Code Snippets to go to it, then click on Header & Footer (in the sidebar)

→ Copy and paste the script from Tag Manager into the Header box in Wordpress

→ Copy and paste the script from Tag Manager into the Body box in Wordpress

→ Click Save Changes and you’re done.

If the GTM is not working, check to see if they have a CDN or caching plugin, then attempt to clear the cache.

Shopify GTM Installation

Squarespace GTM Installation

→ Log in to Squarespace

→ Find the client’s site and click “Website”

→ Open the search bar (magnifying glass in top left) and search for “Code Injection”

→ Copy and paste the script from Tag Manager into the Header box in Squarespace.

→ Copy and paste the script from Tag Manager into the Footer box in Squarespace.

→ Click “Save” and you’re all set up! Move on to the next chapter to learn how to set up conversions.

Wix GTM Installation

Webflow GTM Installation

Intro

Conversion event tracking is set-up in GTM by creating tags which send events to GA4. GTM tags are made up of two parts:

For example, the link_click event we are about to set up looks something like this:

Once this event has been sent to GA4, we could make extra events based on it. For example, we could make a phone_click event that is triggered every time a link_click event occurs where the click_url contains “tel:” (the prefix for phone links). I’ll explain how to do this in detail later.

Trigger Setup

→ Go to Triggers (in the sidebar)

→ Click New

→ Click on the box and choose Just Links

→ Call it “Link Click”

→ Click Save

Variable Setup

→ Go to Variables (in the sidebar)

→ Click Configure

→ Tick all of the “Clicks” variables and then exit the window

Tag Setup

→ Go to Tags (in the sidebar)

→ Click New and name the new tag “Link Click Event”

→ Click on Tag Configuration and choose Google Analytics then Google Analytics: GA4 Event

→ Paste your GA4 ID into the Measurement ID field

→ For most clients, it will now give you a warning: “No Google tag found in this container”. Click Create Tag.

→ Change nothing about the new window that pops up, just click Save

→ Back in the Link Click Event, use the Event Name field to call it “link_click”. This is how the event will show up in GA4.

→ Open the Event Parameters dropdown, and click “Add parameter”.

→ Name the parameter click_url and in the value field type {{Click URL}}

→ Add another parameter called click_anchor and in the value field type {{Click Text}}

→ Add another parameter called click_class and in the value field type {{Click Text}}

→ Scroll down and click on Triggering

→ Choose the Link Click trigger that you made earlier

→ Click Save

→ Preview the tag first if you are unsure (see next section), and then Submit

Your GA4 link_click event is all set up!

Intro

Google has built a very robust environment for testing GTM tags before you implement them called the Tag Assistant. As a degenerate, I will often implement the tags without previewing them here and then test them using the GA4 debugging tool later.

Despite my personal proclivities, the Tag Assistant is a very useful tool for debugging tricky tag installations and I strongly recommend knowing how to use it. In this example, I will test and debug the Link Click tag that we created in the previous section.

How to Preview Tags

→ In your GTM container, click Preview (in the top right)

→ In the new window, paste your site’s URL and click Connect

→ This will open a “fake” version of your site that shows what it would look like with your GTM tags on it (hopefully it looks exactly the same).

→ Using this fake preview version, do the behaviours that you are trying to test.

→ After messing around on the preview site for a bit, return to the other window. It should contain a history of all the pages that were loaded and all of the events that happened on the site while you were there.

In my case, you can see that I visited two pages, and triggered a Link Click event.

→ Click on the Event, and then click on the tag under Tags fired.

→ Click to Display Variables as Values (top right)

→ Read the eventSettingsTable and ensure that the parameters match the link you clicked on while on the site. In my case, I clicked on a link to the “/services/strength” with the anchor “Strength Training”.

If you are not seeing the Link Click event at all, or if the parameters are showing incorrect information, go back and double check to ensure your tag was set up with the correct trigger and parameters.

Once you are happy with the tag, return to GTM and click Submit.

Intro

If you’ve been following the guide thus far, you have successfully set up a GA4 event that tracks every time a user clicks a link on your site. Often however, we do not want to track every link on a site - we would like to have a conversion for when a user clicks on a specific link (like an email or a phone number).

In this section, I will show you how to use the link_click event that you’ve already created to set up conversions for when users click on phone numbers or email addresses.

Guide

To get started, go to your Google Analytics property.

→ Click on Settings

→ Go to Data display and then Events

→ Click Create event

→ Name the event phone_click

→ Check the setting to Mark as key event

→ Change the Default key event value to Don’t set a default key event value.

→ Change the Counting Method to Once per session

→ Scroll down and click View more options

→ In the new window, change the first condition to say “event_name” “equals” “link_click”

→ Change the second condition to say “click_url” “equals” “tel:99999999” (the phone number on your site).

→ Tick Copy parameters from source event

→ Click Save then Create and you’re done!

This event will trigger any time both conditions are met: there is a link_click event and the click_url of that event is the phone number you specified.

To set up an email click tracking event, the process is nearly identical (differences highlighted below):

→ Click on Settings

→ Go to Data display and then Events

→ Click Create event

→ Name the event email_click

→ Check the setting to Mark as key event

→ Change the Default key event value to Don’t set a default key event value.

→ Change the Counting Method to Once per session

→ Scroll down and click View more options

→ In the new window, change the first condition to say “event_name” “equals” “link_click”

→ Change the second condition to say “click_url” “equals” “mailto:example@gmail.com” (the email on your site).

→ Tick Copy parameters from source event

→ Click Save then Create and you’re done!

To test that conversion tracking is working properly on your site, you need the Google Analytics Debugger plugin for Chrome.

→ Turn the plugin on by clicking it in your toolbar and then go to your client’s site.

→ Perform the action that you are testing (in my case, I'm going to click on the email and phone number links).

→ Go to Google Analytics → Settings → Data display → DebugView

You should be able to see the correct events in the timeline.

Intro

The other conversion event that we usually track is contact form submissions.

There are multiple ways to do this:

In this section, I will detail how to set up contact form tracking using Google Tag Manager.

Finding the Target

To track a contact form, you first need to know what page element you are tracking. We are trying to find something that only occurs on the page when a contact form is successfully completed. Usually, this will be a thank you or success message.

→ Go to client’s site

→ Complete a contact form (making sure to be clear that it is not a real submission)

→ Find the thank you message

→ Open the Chrome Dev Tools (CMND + Shift + C) and find the HTML class of the thank you message. (in this example it’s “form-submission-text form-submission-text--align-”)

We’re now going to build a tag in GTM that tracks whether the user can see this message or not.

Trigger Setup

→ Open Google Tag Manager and go to the client’s container

→ Go to Triggers (in the sidebar) and click New

→ Select Element Visibility

→ Call the trigger something like “Thank You Visible”.

→ For Selection Method choose CSS Selector.

→ In the Element Selector box, type . (full stop) + the HTML class you found in the previous section.

→ Tick Observe DOM changes.

→ Click Save

Tag Setup

→ Go to Tags (in the sidebar) and click New

→ Call the tag Contact Form Submitted and click on Tag Configuration

→ Select Google Analytics then Google Analytics: GA4 Event

→ Click Tag Configuration

→ Put in the Measurement ID of your GA4 account

→ Add the event name form_submit

→ Click Triggering

→ Select the Thank You Visible trigger that you created earlier

→ Select Save → Select Submit and Publish (leave notes on the conversion you added if you want to go to heaven).

You’re done! Make sure to test the conversion tracking as described in the previous section.

Intro

Microsoft Clarity is a UX tool that tracks user behaviours on your website. It makes recordings of where a user’s mouse moved, what they clicked on, and how far they scrolled down the site. It is particularly good for identifying friction within the user experience that may be contributing to lost conversions.

Clarity can be set up by adding a tag to the website (in a very similar process to the GA4 setup described above). It can also be added with the easy-to-use Tag Manager integration described below.

Implementation

→ Go to the Microsoft Clarity site and log in

→ Click New project (top left)

→ Add your client’s Brand Name, URL and industry

→ Click Add new project

→ Click View all platforms under Install on a third-party platform.

→ Select Google Tag Manager

→ Select Connect now then choose the Google Account with your GTM accounts on it

→ Select your client’s GTM account and the container that is on their website

→ Click Create and publish

You’re done! You should be able to see any users on the site very shortly. We recommend getting at least a month of data before attempting a UX audit (sometimes more for low-traffic sites)

Intro

For our research pieces, it is incredibly useful to know what users are searching for, not just in the SERPs but on the website itself. Google Analytics already tracks internal site searches by default, but unless you set it up correctly it will not record the results (😠).

Implementation

→ Go to the the client’s Google Analytics Account and Log in with the correct profile.

→ Go to the Settings (in the bottom left)

→ Click Data display then Custom definitions

→ Click Create custom dimension

→ Type search_term into both the Dimension name and the Event Parameter

→ Click Save

→ You’re done!

Seeing the Results

To see the internal site search results, go to

→ Reports

→ View user engagement and retention then Events

→ Click on view_search_results (you may need to go to the next page of events)

→ There will be a Search Term module.

If you want to ensure that the tracking is working, use Events in the last 30 minutes, and change the Parameter Name to search_term.

Intro

For Wordpress clients, the CMS does not come with any kind of history or record by default. In order to protect ourselves and the client we install the Simple History plugin on all of our Wordpress sites.

Guide

→ Log in to the client’s wordpress

→ Click on Plugins

→ Click Add Plugin

→ Search for Simple History

→ Click Install Now

→ When it has finished installing, click Activate

Viewing History

To view the history of the Website, click on Simple History in the sidebar.

Intro

We usually add our sites to Ahrefs, so that (among other things) we have automated Ahrefs site audits.

Process

→ Before attempting to add a client to Ahrefs, ensure that their Google Search Console is set up.

→ Log in to Ahrefs

→ Click Create (in the top left)

→ Select Import from GSC (this is very important, because there is a hard limit to how many sites that can be added manually, and we’d like to keep those slots for competitor sites and sales research).

→ Choose our Google Search Console Account (calibrenine.webmaster@gmail.com)

→ Click the tickbox next to Website to untick all the sites.

→ Use CMND/Ctrl + F to search for the specific site that you want to add, and re-tick that site only.

→ Scroll to the bottom and click Import

Intro

Google Search Console is the most important analytics program for SEO. It tracks page and keyword rankings and performance within the Google Search results (SERPs).

Most of our clients already have a Google Search Console account when they come on board with us, but in rare cases (usually because the site is brand-new) we will need to set up an account for them.

Set Up

→ Go to Google Search Console

→ Login using our main analytics account (calibrenine.webmaster@gmail.com)

→ Open the property drop-down and select Add Property

Domain properties are better/more comprehensive than URL Prefix, but they require server-level access for verification. Usually, we only have CMS-level access so we use the URL Prefix property instead.

→ Enter the client’s domain and click Continue

→ Select HTML tag

→ Copy the tag provided, and paste it into the code of the client’s site (See GA4 setup guide)

→ Click Verify

For a new property, it may take a couple of days for data to become available.

Adding a Sitemap

Once the property is set up, it is important that we add a sitemap for SEO.

→ Select the correct domain in the Property dropdown

→ Go to Sitemaps in the sidebar.

→ Enter the URL of the domain’s sitemap, and click Submit

If you are unsure what a sitemap is or how to find it, please see the Tech Audit Documentation.

Intro

Bing Webmaster Tools is the Bing equivalent of Google Search Console. It tracks the performance of our client’s pages and keywords in the Bing SERPs. Historically, reporting on Bing and achieving Bing results has not been a large focus for us due to their relatively small market share (~4% at time of writing).

We always add the client anyway, because it is very easy to import the website from Google Search Console, and 4% market share can be significant at scale.

Set Up

→ Before attempting to add a client to Bing Webmaster Tools, ensure that their Google Search Console is set up.

→ Log on to Bing Webmaster Tools using our Search Console Account (calibrenine.webmaster@gmail.com)

→ Open the list of sites in the top-left and click Add a site.

→ Select Import your sites from GSC.

→ Click the tickbox next to Site to untick all the sites.

This modal window is the worst one that I have ever seen. To use it without losing your mind, follow these instructions carefully:

→ Use CTRL + F to search for the site that you want. The modal only loads part of the list at a time, so you will have to keep adding and removing a letter from the search as you scroll down the list (to search repeatedly)

→ Once you have found the right site, DO NOT CLICK ON THE MODAL. It will reset the scroll right back to the top.

→Instead, position your mouse over the bottom of the scroll bar, so that you “save” the position of the scroll.

→ Then, click and hold the mouse down. The modal will jump back to the top, and then scroll down to the correct position.

→ Now, you can finally tick the box next to the right site, and click Import.