Are you looking to install Google Tag Manager in WordPress?
If you want to connect various analytics and marketing services to your WordPress site and set up different Google Analytics tracking features, then Google Tag Manager is a great tool you can use. It allows you to add and update tracking codes and code snippets on your website easily.
Keep in mind that Google Tag Manager does have a high learning curve. You’ll have to spend a good amount of time learning how to use the tool in order to use it correctly once you get it installed on WordPress.
Want a MUCH easier way to set up advanced Google Analytics tracking? Besides showing you how to install GTM, we’ll also cover an easier alternative that makes it super simple to set up a bunch of different tracking features for your WordPress website.
Install GTM in WordPress: Video Walkthrough
Here’s a quick video that shows you how to install Google Tag Manager on WordPress and get started with the tool. If you’d rather read through the steps, just skip the video and continue below!
What Is Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager is a free tag management tool by Google that allows you to deploy and update different code snippets called ‘tags’ on your website.
Different tracking services like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and advertising tools like Google Ads require you to add a few lines of JavaScript or HTML code to your website to integrate their services.
With Google Tag Manager, you can easily add and manage all these code snippets from a single interface without having to edit your website’s code.
Besides adding these tracking snippets, Google Tag Manager also helps you add snippets of code that tell Google Analytics to track things on your website that it doesn’t track out of the box, like eCommerce, button clicks, form submissions, and more.
While that sounds fairly simple, the different tags and triggers you’ll have to add to set those things up can get really complicated, and the tutorials are rather long.
An Easier Way to Set Up Advanced Tracking
While Google Tag Manager is a powerful tool (and we’ll talk about how to set it up in a moment), there’s an easier alternative to setting up many of the tracking features you might use it for in WordPress.
With MonsterInsights, you can set up advanced tracking and get features like eCommerce tracking, link and button click tracking, form conversion tracking, scroll tracking, and much more out of the box. Simply turn them on with a few clicks, rather than go through a complicated Tag Manager setup.
We’ll cover both how to add Google Tag Manager to WordPress and show you how MonsterInsights automates tracking. You can click the links below to jump ahead to any section you’re interested in:
- Set Up Advanced Tracking Using MonsterInsights (in a Couple Clicks)
- Install Google Tag Manager in WordPress
Set Up Advanced GTM Tracking the Easy Way
MonsterInsights is the best alternative to using Google Tag Manager. It’s easier to use, and you don’t have to spend hours learning how to use Google Tag Manager.
Plus, there’s no need to go through the lengthy process of setting up individual tags on your WordPress website. Not only that, but using MonsterInsights removes any risk of making a mistake and messing up tracking.
MonsterInsights provides advanced features out of the box. It also allows you to set up Google Analytics on a WordPress site without editing code.
So what makes MonsterInsights a better alternative to Tag Manager? Let’s look at some of the reasons why you should use MonsterInsights instead.
1. Track Link and Button Clicks Out of The Box
Google Analytics doesn’t track link clicks or button clicks by default. You would have to manually set up tracking for each link and button using Google Tag Manager or adding a piece of code to your website.
But with MonsterInsights, you can track link clicks without any extra work. There’s no need to set up additional tracking tags or to edit code. Here are some of the things you can track:
- Set up affiliate link tracking to grow your revenue
- See which outbound links get the most clicks
- Track video plays and access a Media report with plays, average watch time, average percent watched, and completion rate
- Find out when people click on a mailto: or telephone link
- Track file downloads on your website
- Add call-to-action (CTA) button tracking to boost conversions
- See which products people buy a lot by tracking add-to-cart buttons
2. Set Up Form Conversion Tracking
Now, if you have one or more forms on your website, like a Contact Us form and an order form, you’ll want to see how they’re performing. Although GA4 tries to track your forms out of the box with their enhanced measurement feature, there are some serious flaws that make it unreliable.
So, usually you would have to create tags for each form using Google Tag Manager so that Google Analytics can track their performance accurately.
MonsterInsights, on the other hand, makes this process super simple. All you have to do is install its Form addon, and the plugin will automatically track all types of WordPress forms.
And the best part is, you can view your forms’ performance inside the WordPress dashboard. Just go to Insights » Reports » Forms to find out the number of impressions, conversions, and conversion rates of all your forms.
You can also identify the source of your form conversions and see which channels help capture the most leads.
3. Track eCommerce Performance in Just a Few Clicks
Another advantage of using MonsterInsights is that you can enable Ecommerce in just a few clicks to track how your online store is performing.
Using the eCommerce addon, it’s very easy to track revenue, conversion rate, popular products, conversion sources, coupons, and much more in Google Analytics.
It also helps in understanding the behavior of your customers. You can see which pages they visit, how many products they add to the cart and remove from the cart, and how many abandoned checkout.
Plus, you can use the User Journey addon to see what paths your users take through your site to get to their purchase:
4. Enable Scroll Tracking without Coding
MonsterInsights also helps you track the average scroll depth on your website. Scroll tracking shows how far people scroll down your webpages.
It’s an extremely useful metric to track if you want to boost conversions. For example, you can find out the average scroll depth of your site and place call-to-action (CTA) in the right place to get more clicks and sales.
Ready to skip setting up Google Tag Manager and track events the easier way? Get MonsterInsights now!
Set Up WordPress Google Tag Manager in 3 Steps
To add Google Tag Manager to WordPress, just follow these steps to get started.
Step 1: Create Your Google Tag Manager Account
First of all, you need to visit the Google Tag Manager website and then click the Sign-Up button.
Next, you need to sign in with your Google account. Once done, you can see the Google Tag Manager’s Create Account page. Click on the ‘Create Account’ button to get started.
On the next screen, you can add a new account. Enter your account name and choose a country in the Account Setup box. You can use your company name as your account name.
Next, you need to set up your container. A container is the collection of tags, triggers, and all configurations installed on a website.
You can enter your website name as your container name. Choose Web under the Target platform container option, and then click on the Create button.
Now, you’ll need to accept the Google Tag Manager Terms of Service Agreement to proceed. Check the box next to ‘I accept the Data Processing Terms as required by GDPR.’ at the bottom, and then click the ‘Yes’ button on the top right corner.
If you want to learn more about GDPR, go through our guide on GDPR and Google Analytics.
Upon accepting the terms of service, you’ll see a new popup window appear on the screen with code snippets to install Google Tag Manager on your website.
These two code snippets need to be added to the header (inside <head> tag) and in the <body> section on all of your webpages.
Step 2: Add Google Tag Manager Code to WordPress
Login to your WordPress dashboard and then install the WPCode plugin. Upon activation, go to Code Snippets » Header & Footer page.
Now, you can see a box for adding code to your header. Go back to your Google Tag Manager account and copy the code in the first box. Paste the code into the Header box.
Then, copy the other code from your Tag Manager account and insert that into the Body box.
After that, don’t forget to save your changes.
That’s it! You’ve successfully installed Google Tag Manager on your WordPress site. Now you can use your Google Tag Manager dashboard to install any tracking code to your WordPress website.
Step 3: Add and Publish Tags in Your Tag Manager
Once you’ve installed Google Tag Manager on your website, you’re ready to add code snippets (tags) provided by different tracking tools on your site.
Google Tag Manager supports over 50 tag types, including Google marketing products and other third-party services. Plus, you can also add custom HTML or JavaScript tags to your site using its interface.
To create and add a tag, click on the New Tag tile, and follow the steps to create your first tag.
For examples, you can check out our full guide on installing Google Analytics in WordPress with Google Tag Manager.
You can now add different tags in your Google Tag Manager container by following the same process and integrating your WordPress site with various marketing and tracking tools.
And that’s it!
We hope this article helped you to learn how to install Google Tag Manager in WordPress in the right way. You may also want to see our guide on how to configure your WordPress website with Google Search Console.
Still not using MonsterInsights? What are you waiting for?
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Thanks a lot!
WPcode adds the code close to the bottom of the section. Is there a way to add the code higher up with WPcode plugin. Or my only workaround to get the code higher is just adding it directly to the code?
Hi Joaquin – In WPCode, there’s a setting to set the priority for your snippet: https://wpcode.com/docs/how-to-create-your-first-snippet/#Basic_Info. If you need more help with this, go ahead and reach out to their support team!
How long is the free trial for monsterinsight lite and to purchase after free trial
Hi William – you can use MonsterInsights Lite for as long as you like.
Can I use GTM with MonsterInsights? I already have my GTM set up with my Google Ads tracking.
Hi Amy – Yes, it can still be possible to also use MonsterInsights alongside GTM as long as you avoid including any pageview triggers or custom events (such as downloads tracking) that MonsterInsights automatically tracks in any of the tags attached to your active container. Multiple pageview or event hits of the same thing can unintentionally skew your Analytics data.