What Is Link Tagging and How Can It Help My Marketing?

Take a look at your Google Analytics. If you are like most firms that do a mix of email and print marketing, there is likely a large slice of your traffic that comes directly to your site without a specific referral source. Does this mean that people are typing your URL into their web browser? Probably not. If you are taking advantage of email marketing, your direct traffic is likely coming from people who click links in your emails from a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird.

 

Don't worry; that huge chunk of traffic is easy to track. Using track-able links like Bit.ly is one way, but it won't integrate with Google Analytics. This is very important data that you need to be able to use in conjunction with other data about your sites visitors. Google has provided a tool that allows you to tag links to you so you will know exactly where each visitor comes from.

 

Head to Google's URL Builder and paste in a URL to a link you want to share in an email.

Enter a campaign source, medium, and other details so you will know exactly where this person came from when they click the link. If you do this for every link in every email you send, you will soon have a mountain of data regarding what interests people more, what content keeps them on the sites, and how much of your direct traffic comes from email marketing.

 

When we see this URL in Google Analytics, we know that they came from our weekly email newsletter and which date it was sent on. Here is an example of what your link will look like:

http://www.fosterwebmarketing.com/blog/how-to-get-more-twitter-followers-for-your-firm.cfm?utm_source=emailnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=7-29-11&utm_campaign=marketing

For more information about link tagging, please refer to Google's guide to link tagging. If you are interested in learning more about web marketing for attorneys, we encourage you to sign up for our weekly email, which is loaded with tips for getting more traffic and more cases.