Tracking your visitors’ behavior provides valuable insights and can significantly increase the return on your online efforts. While we used to rely on cookies to track visitor activity, they are becoming less effective. The solution? Server-side tagging. This new feature in Google Tag Manager (GTM) is bound to make waves in the digital marketing world.
In this blog post, we’ll explain what server-side tagging is. We’ll also rewind a bit to introduce you to GTM if you’re not already familiar with it, walk you through the benefits of server-side tagging, and show you how to configure it.
For successful digital marketing, it’s crucial to understand what your visitors are doing. Google Analytics is a valuable tool for this, but using it alone can lead to limitations. That’s where Google Tag Manager (GTM) comes in. By combining it with Google Analytics, you can track specific actions on your site, such as goal completions.
By adding tags to your site, you can track your visitors and gather a wealth of additional user information. For instance, you can see where visitors come from before landing on your site, whether they fill out forms, and how far they scroll down a page. GTM also integrates with Cookiebot, ensuring your site remains GDPR-compliant.
With all this information, you can better tailor your site to the needs and habits of your visitors and make sure your calls-to-action (CTAs) get noticed. Additionally, this tool allows you to apply remarketing, for example, through Google Ads or Facebook.
One of the great things about Google Tag Manager is that it doesn’t require advanced technical knowledge to install tags. There are plenty of templates available for popular tags, and you don’t need to mess with your site’s source code. This makes it much easier for marketing managers to add tags without needing a developer’s help.
Of course, you could manually implement tags. But why reinvent the wheel? Google Tag Manager is a free tool that lets you decide which data is important for your marketing goals and what information you want to collect. Here are the main benefits:
With Google Tag Manager, you can see all the tags used on a website in one clear overview. This saves you from searching or having to ask around, which is especially convenient if multiple team members from your department have access to Google Tag Manager. Just make sure to give your tags and triggers clear names so everyone understands their purpose.
You no longer need programming knowledge to make changes to your website’s code. Once a programmer has added the general GTM tags to your site, you can add or remove tags yourself. This gives you full control over what you track, without relying on others. This way, you can act quickly and steer your online growth even more effectively.
A single incorrect change to the source code can crash your entire site. Fortunately, that’s not possible with Google Tag Manager, as this tool makes just one change to your website. A programmer needs to place a so-called container tag on your site once, after which you can manage everything from Google Tag Manager. This approach prevents your site from slowing down and keeps the source code clean and manageable for your web designer.
Third-party cookies are no longer “cool.” Privacy regulations and browser filters have rendered these cookies largely ineffective, meaning remarketing based on such cookies is no longer efficient.
To address this, Google now offers server-side clients through its Tag Manager. With server-side tagging, tracking signals are no longer sent from the browser but are routed through the server to their destination. Besides providing more accurate statistics, this also improves performance and enhances user data security.
If you haven’t set up server-side tagging yet, 2022 is the perfect time to configure it. You can do this by creating a server container and selecting a GCP tagging server (cost: €30–50 per month). Then, link it to a subdomain of the domain you want to track.
Analyzing and reviewing user data is fantastic. But when your schedule is packed with other tasks and responsibilities, you might not have the luxury to dedicate much time to Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Fortunately, 2manydots can help.
We configure Google Tag Manager in such a way that it tracks the visitor behavior that matters to you, all through server-side tagging.
Of course, you can still add, edit, or remove tags yourself—or let us handle it for you. Either way, we’re an extension of your marketing team. Thanks to our periodic reports and analyses, you’ll see exactly what’s working and where improvements can be made.
