How to track link clicks with Google Analytics (UTM Parameters)

These are tags you add to a link (URL) so you can see where traffic is coming from in your Google Analytics dashboard. You could use this for seeing how many website views you’re getting from your email signature, for example. It’s easy (and free) with Google’s URL Builder tool.

1. Navigate to Google’s URL Builder
2. Open the page you're linking to, and copy the full URL with prefix (https://www.yourwebsite.com).
3. Paste in that Website URL.
4. Type in the campaign source, This is the origin or platform, such as newsletter or linkedin.
5. Type in the campaign medium. This is the category or type of source, such as email or qr-code.
6. Type in the specific campaign name. This is the current promotion, such as event or sale.
7. You can ignore the optional Term and Content fields. Those are generally for paid ads.
8. Scroll down to the Share box and click Copy URL. It will look something like this: https://example.com?utm_source=news4&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-summer (Optional: click Convert URL to a Short Link if you have a Bit.ly account and you'll end up with bit.ly/link that tracks clicks).
9. Paste the copied URL in your email newsletter, LinkedIn post, or wherever you're using it.

Important Note: when adding a link in most services, you have the option to use custom anchor text. This means you can type "mywebsite.com", select that text, add link, and paste in the long trackable link, then save. It looks like your base URL, short and clean, but it still uses the UTM parameters.

A few best practices:

• Use lowercase. Case matters (linkedin and LinkedIn will create two different tracking categories).
• Use dashes.
• Use the same source/medium consistently (facebook and facebook-post will create two different tracking categories).

See Google's help article for more information.