Tracking the Origins of Site Visitors
Although analytics programs like Google Analytics track the origin of your site visitors using their default settings, you’ ll likely find that these default settings are too broad to ascertain meaningful data. To get more granular( and thus more useful) data, you can append UTM parameters to the links you share around the web. UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, and it is a tracking marker appended to a Uniform Resource Locator( URL). The UTM system allows users to tag hyperlinks in order to trace where visitors originated.
For example, if you want to track the number of leads generated by a single link shared with your Facebook fans, you can do that using Google Analytics and a link with UTM parameters. Simply put, you place a UTM at the end of a hyperlink so that you can figure out how people get to your site and what they do after they get there.
For every hyperlink you want to track, whether on your blog or your social media channels, that directs traffic to a landing page you own, consider adding UTM parameters. By adding this tracking code to the hyperlinks you share, you can track the origins of that visit.
A UTM consists of various parameters. Here are the UTM parameters that matter most:
Campaign source( utm _ source) Campaign medium( utm _ medium) Campaign content( utm _ content) Campaign name( utm _ campaign)
We explain each of these parameters in the sections that follow.
Campaign source( utm _ source)
Generally, the source of a UTM describes where your visitors come from. The source tells you the specific place where the referring link was shared, such as
An email promotion A social network A referring website
Common sources include
Facebook Email newsletter Twitter