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Overview of Google Server Side Tag Management (sGTM) Published · Tags: Google Tag Manager, sGTM, Server Side Tagging, GA4, Stape.io, Amplitude, Mixpanel, ITP, Google Tag Gateway, Data Privacy I finally sat down and took a real look at Google Tag Manager server side tagging (sGTM). Before getting into how it works, it's worth being clear about what sGTM is not — because most of the confusion I ran into online started from a misunderstanding right here. What sGTM Is NOT It is not a way to get around consent laws. You must still comply with applicable data-collection regulations, and you must still respect the consent choices a visitor makes. Moving a tag to a server doesn't move it outside the law. It is not a replacement for client side GTM. Odds are you'll implement sGTM from inside your existing client side GTM setup. Only a portion of your tagging will end up supported by sGTM, and a lot of marketing-technology vendors still only ship a client side templa...

Published · Tags: GTM, Google Analytics, CRM, Salesforce, Client ID, UTM Parameters, Form Submission, Window Loaded Trigger Salesforce describes connecting lead data to Google Analytics in general terms in "Google Analytics Audience Activation," and Google adds more specifics in its support article "Configure the Google Analytics Salesforce Sales Cloud integration." Neither addresses UTM campaign parameters, and neither addresses what happens when the form isn't the site's landing page. Connecting a Salesforce lead back to the incoming web campaign — down to the specific digital placement — is pivotal to knowing whether your advertising spend is actually working. This applies equally to lead generation through any CRM, not just Salesforce. Part One: UTMs Already Solved The first piece of this puzzle is passing UTM campaign parameters from the site's landing page to a contact or lead form that might be several pages further down the visitor's...

Published · Tags: Home Network, MoCA, Coax, Networking, WiFi, VoIP, Cord Cutting Recently someone asked about my home network. It's built on a coax / MoCA "backbone" — and unlike the Ethernet-everywhere setups most networking guides assume, it's the coax already running through the walls that does the heavy lifting. The diagram below details this in principle, although there are many more peripherals on the network than shown. Why Coax / MoCA Coax has several advantages over running new Ethernet drops or relying on WiFi mesh alone: Advantage Why it matters It's fast MoCA 2.0 over coax supports speeds up to 1 Gbps. MoCA 2.5 is capable of 2.5 Gbps, and MoCA 3.0 reaches 10 Gbps. It supports long distances I have multiple buildings on my property connected by coax to a single network. It's easy to run the cabling The wiring doesn't require everything to terminate into a switch or hub. For example, all the coax from every room in a house can land...

Published · Tags: GTM, Google Analytics 4, UTM Parameters, sessionStorage, Link Decoration, Off-Site Links, JavaScript Julius Fedorovicius wrote the definitive technique for carrying incoming campaign URL query parameters onto links elsewhere on a page — read his original post, "Transfer UTM Parameters From One Page To Another with GTM," first. This recipe takes that same idea and shifts the timing: rather than decorating links the moment a visitor lands, it stores the incoming campaign values to session storage on arrival, then rewrites an off-site link's URL three or four pageviews later — whenever the visitor finally reaches the page containing that link. This builds on an earlier technique of mine, "Pass UTM URL Query Marketing Parameters to Contact / Lead Form." Step 1: Capture the Incoming UTMs to Session Storage The first tag loops through the landing page's URL looking for UTM codes and writes each one it finds to sessionStorage . If there ...

How It Begins A year ago, my dance instructor Wes Neese asked for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranking help. He was ranked #30 in his local market for his desired keywords. His website was getting no organic search traffic. He is now ranked #1. Here are the steps on that journey. 1. Mobile-Friendly Website & Page Titles Wes already had an attractive, mobile-friendly website. NOT being responsive or mobile-friendly is a strike against you in Google's eyes. However, he needed to tweak some of his page titles to better match the keywords for which he wanted to rank — a quick and easy fix. 2. Back Links from Authoritative Websites Building back links from authoritative, well-ranking websites was the next step. The other websites in the local market were competitors, so there was no chance of getting links from them. However, one well-ranking national dance instruction website did agree to link to Wes' site — a valuable SEO win. 3...

Google Tag Manager Google Tag Manager is a powerful tool that lets you quickly and easily tag 1 to 10,000+ pages with only the insertion of a tiny piece of code by developers into your CMS. The tagging is asynchronous, so it does not negatively impact user experience. Tagging can be done independent of CMS deployment timelines, and GTM possesses a wealth of tagging templates to facilitate implementation. How should I structure accounts and containers in GTM? How will you divide up the labor of maintaining your GTM containers? Will there be a single person who manages multiple GTM containers company-wide? If so, create an account in Google Tag Manager that corresponds to the company, and place one or more containers inside that account for the company's assets. Will you have multiple, different people at the corporate division level responsible for GTM containers and web properties for those divisions? If so, create GTM accounts at the division level with appropriate corresp...

What are UTM parameters? Literally, UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module . These are URL query parameters added to the end of the page path to provide detail about the source of traffic to a web site. They were originally created by a company called Urchin, which was later purchased by Google. Due to the proliferation of Google Analytics, these parameters are now an industry standard for tracking marketing campaigns. Why are well-formed URLs and UTM parameters important? On October 18, 2011, Google Search changed its protocol from HTTP to HTTPS. Google announced that, as search becomes an increasingly customized experience, it recognized the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results it delivers. Everyone quickly followed suit. As a result, if your link on a HTTPS (secure) site pointed to an HTTP (unsecure) destination, and your destination site was HTTPS (secure), you would lose data about the source of the traffic when the protocol switched. This is a pro...