The basics of a UTM

What is a UTM and what does it do? This infographic is here to help you to implement UTM’s and understand why.

You can use UTM’s to track difference sources of traffic where sites link to your site.

For your Google My Business (GMB) listing, it’s highly recommended that you use a UTM of google_my_business or similar for your web site link. This will differentiate the organic traffic from your general organic traffic to where you can see GMB listing clicks under medium=organic and source=google.

Here is a great chrome extension you can use to build a UTM on a certain page.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/utmio-google-analytics-ur/eoaapiimcaimddnfhfnifgkinmpcbccp

Here is the Google UTM/Campaign URL Builderhttps://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/ this one requires an extra step of copying your url then navigating to this builder to create the UTM.

To measure the performance of your UTM’s use Google Analytics.

You can use UTM’s in email marketing also. If you want to track which elements of an email get clicked more use a UTM of utm_content= this way you can improve your click thru rate by measuring which call to actions work better. If one design or call to action performs better, you can make improvements.

To see the performance of your campaign navigate to Campaigns and add a secondary dimension of ad content. This way you can see the different clicks from the same campaign.

Use lowercase for all UTM’s of source & medium. This is the default setting for Google Analytics. If not, organic and Organic will be two different mediums. Google and google will be two different sources.

Start your first utm with a question mark and each addition utm is added with an ampersand. Here is an example for GMB web site link.

For your Google My Business (GMB) profile use the following UTM’s:

Website Link (All lowercase)

  • source=google
  • medium=organic
  • campaign=google_my_business

Menu Link

  • source=google
  • medium=organic
  • campaign=google_my_business_menu

Appointment Link

  • source=google
  • medium=organic
  • campaign=google_my_business_appt

GMB Post

  • source=google
  • medium=organic
  • campaign=google_my_business_post

Products

  • source=google
  • medium=organic
  • campaign=google_my_business_products

At the end of your campaign UTM, you can add an additional unique identifier for each post, product or service you add to your GMB listing.

?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google_my_business
Basics of a UTM
The Basics of a UTM

WHO IS THE SMARTEST SEO IN THE WORLD?

David Jackson disguised as the smartest seo in the world

If you Google him (David Jackson Manager, Web Site Strategy – SEO), you will find many other David Jackson’s pretending to be The Smartest SEO In The World. Some are in web design, some in SEO, must be the greatest name to have in digital marketing. Through his work in Search Engine Optimization over the past 24 years, with a specific focus on Google search results, David Jackson is awarding himself the title of “Smartest SEO In The World”. He should have been the in the top 5 organic results… out of 1,320,000 search results.

HOW THE SMARTEST SEO IN THE WORLD BEGAN?

Britney Muller
Britney Muller deems herself The Smartest SEO in the World.

Back in July 2019, a top seo scientist Britney Muller posted an article claiming SHE was the smartest SEO in the World. This created a stir in the SEO industry and a lot of buzz for Britney. Rightfully so and well deserving of course. Britney is an SEO Scientist at MOZ. “When I heard her speak at Driving Sales Conference in Las Vegas I was impressed at how she understands the algorithm updates and attacks not only on page seo but off page SEO” says David Jackson. Britney has also written a Beginner’s Guide to SEO

David attributes much of his soon to come fame as “The Smartest SEO In The World” not only to his passion of web design but the ability to help people achieve their dreams. Whether a person is building a business or buying a car, David’s efforts as a Smart SEO’er help people turn their dreams into reality. 

SO YOU WANT TO BE A SMARTER SEO?

In all his wisdom, David recommends following those who support the SEO Community. A great place to start is on Twitter. Here are just a few people I follow:

Google:

Bing:

DuckDuckGo:

Smartest SEO in the World

The best way to become a smart SEO is to pay attention to thought leaders in the industry and adapt what you learn for your own SEO strategy. But, be more like David Jackson.

HOW DID DAVID JACKSON GET THE TITLE OF THE SMARTEST SEO IN THE WORLD?

Here is a bullet list of areas to focus on so you can be one of the seo experts, just like David:

  • Don’t try to trick the Search Engines. Write for the human to read it and not search engines. Make it conversational and natural. Include the geo location for local seo. Format for content marketing like sub headings, bullet points.
  • PAGE URL: Be conscious where you save the page. Don’t just save every page in the root folder. Be sure to use specific/relevant folders
  • META TITLE: Don’t put the dealership name. Put important keyword phrases & include the City, ST. Keep it under 65 characters or 600 pixel width.
  • META DESCRIPTION: Make it describe your content and be conversational as it is the 2 lines of text in the SERPs. Include the City, ST info to increase the likelihood of getting clicks from local users. Keep it under 160 characters and 920 pixel width.
  • H1 HEADING: It’s the large headline at the top of the page. Make it conversational and summarize the page. Make sure City, ST and target keyword phrase is included.
  • IMAGES: Every image should have an ALT & TITLE  attribute. Include the City, ST also.
  • SITEMAPS: Choose XML & HTML sitemaps so Search Engines can crawl the pages naturally.
  • SCHEMA: The whole point is to communicate better with search engines like Google. When Google understands entities on a deeper level, it serves better results to searchers.
  • Check monthly for broken links when doing your site auditing. Internal and external links.
  • Link building: Use citations to get your site listed and reach out to your local community for link building opportunities Getting links from events you sponsor are free seo.
  • Perform Keyword Research and use People also ask, Google Suggestions and Searches related to

When you do SEO right, you get rewarded, and that is the best bragging rights you could ask for.

This video is David asking Google Assistant “What’s the residual value of my lease“. The result is a page on lhmauto.com that David has ranked on Google in the Answer Box position 0. This also means that it gets Google Assistant responses. This hard work was a combination of great content, technical SEO, FAQ schema mark up and more.

Other Smart SEO Resources

Meta checkers
https://totheweb.com/learning_center/tool-test-google-title-meta-description-lengths/ 

https://www.webyurt.com/tools/meta-title-counter 

Schema Generator

https://www.rankranger.com/schema-markup-generator

Optimize images then use squoosh.app to further optimize

Google 

https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/

https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

More complicated Schema Generator
https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/