How to improve SEO with Google Tag Manager?

As its name suggests, Google Tag Manager or GTM is a solution from the giant Google. Created in 2005, it describes itself as a management system for tags and tracking codes that you use on your website to measure the performance of your local or national SEO strategy. In fact, the beacons are snippets of codes whose primary function is to provide useful data on the visit statistics of your pages.

The GTM is made up of three compartments namely:

• the tags: they represent the snippets of code that contain the instructions to be executed;
• the trigger: it allows you to define the event that activates the beacons;
• integrated and personalized variables: useful for the trigger, they provide Google Tag Manager with the additional information that tags need to activate.

Without having to modify the code, this tool integrates very easily into your website dashboard. And for many regular users, it is easy to learn and configure. This is to simplify the collection of all kinds of traffic data and to give you a precise idea of ​​the interests of Internet users.

Often, confusion is created between Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, when we talk about their function. However, the two tools remain interdependent. This means that each plays a precise role in the activity of the other.

In principle, Google Analytics cannot be effective without the resources provided by Google Tag Manager. In reality, Google Analytics is an algorithm intended to provide reports of the activity of a site based on several parameters. Equally practical, it reports on the performance of a site. The difference is that it pulls all the data needed for this function from the JavaScript snippets configured using Google Tag Manager.

You can make do with the tracking options provided by Google Analytics. Only, it does not offer you as much flexibility as the other. Indeed, Google Tag Manager makes it possible to filter traffic sources more effectively. You can segment these sources and define a large number of visit data that Google Analytics should collect.

Google does not reserve the exclusivity of its site management tools. As is possible with Google Analytics, Tag Manager can be configured with alternative systems for monitoring and analyzing traffic on your site. The principle of operation remains the same, that is to say, that the effectiveness of the latter is based on that of the beacon manager.

Google Tag Manager offers several features to improve the natural referencing of your website.

GTM allows you to specify the type of traffic to analyze for a more objective and realistic view of the activity on your site. Sometimes you need to exclude statistics of certain visitors such as your company employees, regular visitors or spam emails. GTM provides you with the means to manage, update and customize your variables.

The beacon manager follows the actions of Internet users who access your pages and captures their activities. Thus, it gives you an accurate view of visitor engagement and conversion as it collects clicks, time spent on certain pages or media added to them. This allows you to orient your SEO strategy in the direction that suits your behaviour.

Schema Markup or structured data tags are codes that allow Google to collect as much information as the SERPs need to respond to specific user queries. By setting these tags using GTM, you provide more resources to search engines to improve your positioning in a niche or your local SEO.

Add metadata to your website

Google Tag Manager is useful if:

• your site is not managed under a CMS;
• you don’t have the skills of a developer.

Whether you find yourself in either case, it allows you, from its interface, to enter many other tags that appear in your content in order to make them available to Google. These are, for example, Title tags, noindex tags or meta descriptions.

Google finds it easier to index links that have a precise and clear structure. Otherwise, it no longer takes it into account, which can affect the ranking of your site. With the Tracking Code Manager, you can prevent misconfigured tags and URLs, as well as unforeseen events from running.

It presents, useful amenities to better appreciate the impact of your SEO strategy. You can take action at the appropriate time, in order to improve your ranking in the SERPs, let other users administer the interface with you using access permissions.

Adopting Google Tag Manager as your tracking code manager and performance measurement tool has many benefits for your website’s SEO and Google Adwords campaign. In addition to being free, it allows you to automate the management of a large number of tags. Likewise, all code is accessible through a single interface. You can therefore manage and monitor your progress from one place.

Also, the tool comes with fragments of predefined codes that can be used on different types of sites. It is therefore more convenient to perform a large number of configurations in a short period of time. Likewise, GTM can be configured in such a way as to create a complementarity with Google Analytics. Specifically, this correlation makes it possible to make the latter’s reports more relevant thanks to the tracking of the user identifier.

Your pages can also display faster thanks to data layers. Better known under the name of Datalayer, it is a space that stores the information necessary for the execution of the beacons. Its appearance has made it possible to improve the search for tags in sometimes faulty HTML codes. As a result, the site display speed increases and the user experience is enhanced.

The manager offers you optimal security on several levels. First, it ensures that your beacons are reliable and notifies you in the event of an error. You can then perform the debugging that this requires using a dedicated module. Second, you control access to other users through permissions. Third, the tool is doubly secure, first by a password of your choice, then by an authentication code.

In addition, you gain autonomy in the management of your natural referencing or Google Ads campaign. Indeed, Google Tag Manager presents an intuitive interface. You therefore no longer necessarily need an expert to configure your codes or to collect the traffic generated by your site. In addition, any modification on it creates history. When certain features do not work, you can therefore revert to an older version more peacefully.

Now that you have learned enough about how useful Google Tag Manager is for your SEO or Google Ads campaigns, you are probably wondering how to take advantage of it. So let’s take a look at the different steps to take.

Before launching your site tracking codes using GTM, you must first create an account. For this, you need to go to the official Tag Manager website. Once on the page, click on Account, then fill in the necessary information. Allow data sharing with Google and third parties.

You must then define a container name. The latter replaces, if necessary, the tags that you have configured. Specify the type of content according to the device on which you want to trigger the tracking. You validate your choices by clicking on create and accept the terms of use.

At the end of these preliminaries, you must now install the container. This phase consists of accessing your Workspace from Tag Manager. Then find your container account to set up Tag Manager on your website. Once this task is completed, import all the code fragments that GTM provides you on your site, by a simple copy and paste.

When you finalize the installation of Tag Manager on your website, you are now close to getting the most out of it. You can program your tracking options, either by creating new tags, deleting old ones, or modifying them. GTM also has a preview mode to monitor the SEO metrics it provides you.

During the trace code manager configurations, choose to debug. It is useful for controlling all the tags that are activated when Internet users arrive on your site. After adding all the desired parameters, you can start all your code snippets by clicking on “Send”. The operation is completed as soon as you name the version of your modifications, with a supporting description. This last point allows you to differentiate between your new versions and the old ones.