In addition to traditional SEO you may also be running additional Internet Marketing campaigns such as:

• Banner Advertisting
• Email Campaigns
• PPC campaign

One problem many webmasters find is tracking the success of these campaigns. Recording any marketing campaigns success is a critical part of the optimisation process, you need to know which of your marketing campaigns is working well for you.

Luckily Google Analytics provides the ability to tag your URLs so that the traffic data is sent to your Google Analytics account. You should remember that if your Adwords and Google Analytics accounts are linked, your adwords data will automatically be tagged, meaning cost, campaign and click through data is automatically sent through to Google Analytics.

You will however still need to tag your other non search engine campaign, such as banner ads and promotional email. It is important to remember that you don’t need to tag any natural search clicks as Google Analytics automatically records these visits under natural search.

Within a tagged URL you can use the following variables:

• Campaign Source – The referrer such as Google, citysearch etc
• Campaign Medium – CPC, Banner etc
• Campaign Term – Keyword
• Campaign Content – Used to differentiate between different adverts
• Campaign Name – Used to indicate the campaign, for example xmas campaign

To help your tag your URLs Google has created a URL builder, this easy to use tool creates the tagged URL for you, you simply have to copy and paste the URL into your campaign links. The below link shows a tagged URL for a Google banner campaign, for a christmas campaign using the keyword xmas trees.

http://www.website.co.uk/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=banner&utm_term=xmas%2Btrees&utm_campaign=christmas%2Bcampaign

Once you have completed your tagging you will be able to review the success of your campaign through Google Analytics, it is important however to remember that data can take hours to reach your Google Analytics account.

In Google Analytics go to Traffic Sources –> All Traffic Sources

You will then be able to look for medium and source of your campaign, such as Google banner advertising campaigns. It is important that you analyze and review the traffic from your tagged URLs to discover what form of advertising is working for you, and achieve the highest return on investment possible.