Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Dave Elliott: I love me a bit of tag manager! The primary benefit is that you can dynamically add bits of code into your pages that then can be read by GA to help make more awesome goals and help you categorise your content.i can`t recommend this blog enough to find out about GTM https://www.simoahava.com/
Victor Antiu: If you do not understand the value of GTM, you are not a true marketer. I do not see how you can do work on bigger websites or ecom without tag manager. This is a very basic overview of why: https://www.analyticsmania.com/.../reasons-why-you.../In a nutshell the value is you can add codes for tracking tools, ab testing, ad tracking and so on without dev time and on correct/specific pages. If you know a bit of code you can also optimize things on your website with tag manager, like showing the cookie policy only to EUR users or showing content in pricing page differently depending on user cookie or utm. For SEO though, it is not an essential skill unless you do more technical work, like optimizing conversion on pages or doing code cleanup so the site loads faster. That has an impact on SEO, as many other things. So it depends on how you define SEO nowadays.
Makis Cris: Victor Antiu I asked because I got an interview for seo job and they found it strange that I did`t have experience on GTM.
Victor Antiu: I would also find it strange. Unless it was a junior position
Dave Elliott: I wouldn`t find it strange. I know a lot of SEOs who don`t use it or in some agencies the analytics/data teams do all the work on it rather than the SEO team.
Victor Antiu: Dave Elliott in an agency yeah that makes sense. If you have a big team with people for every side of marketing, SEOs would not need to do this for sure.
David Kutcher: GTM is a great tool to have when you need to do analytics and other advertising management through code but want to avoid having to go through a development team. :)
Michael Martinez: Using the tag manager doesn`t really benefit your search engine optimization. You can use it to track performance for individual referral links. Indirectly that would assist in optimizing social media and advertising campaigns. But it`s not a vital or necessary skill for SEO.
Michael Martinez: Search engine optimization is about improving the relationship between the Website and the search engine. Tagging links does nothing toward achieving that goal. People who insist that GTM helps with SEO are looking at a much broader spectrum of marketing activity. The search engine doesn`t care about the tags. If anything, you`re creating truly duplicate content that would DILUTE your analytics data (thus mandating the use of canonical declarations).
Dan Sylvester: Usually it`s the marketer who manages the tag manager and Google analytics profiles in most companies. I consider it a very vital tool that every marketer should have an aquitance with.
Ash Nallawalla: Knowing it is nice, but not essential for SEO.
Perry Bernard: I find GTM to be critical for SEO. It allows for application of so many measurement features that you should be aware of with SEO efforts, it also allows for injection of meta data, page titles, JSON object injection or dynamic creation, schema, swap-outs of content and much more. If you`re not using GTM for SEO you are certainly missing something.
Michael Stricker: Perry nailed it. GTM ability to inject JSON LD can set you up for Schema, which Google may say is not a rank factor, but considering it’s effect on visibility for alternative SERP presentations, and rich snippet’s ability to increase CTR, you’re sure to influence searchers... and isn’t that what SEO is, first and foremost? Not to mention what happens on infinite scroll pages... without nice management, SEO would be nearly impossible!
Perry Bernard: Michael Stricker totally. I`ve also used to to build Meta Description and Title elements using JS function and Lookup Tables on a sites where CMS access isn`t possible or when there`s no CMS at all. With sites built in WP, using GTM to build SEO components is better than using Yoast. And on sites with ecom or catalogue structures that lack schema, it`s great for building JSON objects with product data on the fly to replace the need for extra coding or rebuild.
Mohamed Elrafei: Perry Bernard could you plz share with us some links or articles to using GTM to build SEO components like using JS functions?
Perry Bernard: Sure, try this for starters: https://www.lunametrics.com/.../seo-titles-and-descriptions/
Perry Bernard: Mohamed Elrafei however you won`t find this rendering in source HTML, it does render in DOM page load and Google will collect it from there OK.
Emy Ahmad: I think it`s essential for senior positions
Is google tag manager an essential skill for seo? I can`t understand the value of it.
