Have you ever wondered exactly where your website visitors come from?

It’s a common challenge for small businesses. You send out a brilliant newsletter, you post a link on Facebook, and you run a small advert online. When you look at your website analytics, you see a bump in traffic, but it’s hard to tell if it was the email, the Facebook post, or the advert that did the trick. You know your marketing is working, but you can’t quite pinpoint the most effective parts.

That’s where UTM tags come in. They are a simple, free, and incredibly powerful tool that gives you crystal-clear insight into which of your marketing efforts are actually bringing visitors to your website. Forget the guesswork; it’s time to start making smarter decisions based on real data.

What Exactly Are UTM Tags?

A UTM tag is just a small piece of text that is added to the end of a regular website link (URL). It doesn’t change where the link goes, but it acts like a little beacon, telling your analytics tool, like Google Analytics, where the visitor came from.

Think of it like putting a unique label on a parcel before you send it out. When the parcel arrives at its destination (your website), your analytics tool reads the label and records all the details you included.

The ‘UTM’ part stands for ‘Urchin Tracking Module’. The important thing isn’t the name, but what the tag is made of. What are UTM tags? Every UTM tag is made up of five main parts, also called ‘parameters’, that you fill in yourself.

The Five Parts of a UTM Tag

To create UTM tags, you need to provide information for at least the first three parameters:

  1. Source (utm_source): This tells you where the traffic is coming from.
    • Examples: facebook, instagram, newsletter, google.
  2. Medium (utm_medium): This tells you the type of traffic. Is it from social media, an email, or a paid advert?
    • Examples: social, email, cpc (for paid adverts), print.
  3. Campaign (utm_campaign): This is the name you give the specific marketing effort. This is often a sale, a specific product launch, or a major blog post.
    • Examples: SummerSale2025, NewServiceLaunch, Blog-UTM-Tags.
  4. Content (utm_content): This is an optional but very helpful tag. It’s used to distinguish between two different links that go to the same place, perhaps if you have two buttons in one email.
    • Examples: banner-image, text-link, blue-button.
  5. Term (utm_term): This is mainly used for paid search campaigns (like Google Ads) to record the keyword that triggered the ad. It’s less common for social media and email links.
    • Examples: business-coach-iow, local-gardener.

Here’s what a finished link with UTM tags looks like:

A regular link: https://sukimarketing.co.uk/services/

A link with UTM tags: https://sukimarketing.co.uk/services/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summer-offer&utm_content=blue-button

When someone clicks on that longer link, your analytics platform automatically records the source as ‘facebook’, the medium as ‘social’, the campaign as ‘summer-offer’, and the content as ‘blue-button’. Simple.

Why Are UTM Tags So Helpful?

The biggest benefit is that you can accurately measure the success of every single piece of marketing you do. You stop relying on vague numbers and start making data-driven decisions.

Accurate Measuring of Marketing Success

When you don’t use UTM tags, your analytics tool does its best to guess where traffic is coming from. For example, all traffic from Facebook might just be labelled ‘Facebook’ or ‘Social’.

However, with UTM tags, you can now see:

  • How many visitors came from the Facebook post about your new product (Campaign: NewProductLaunch).
  • How many visitors came from the LinkedIn post about your new blog (Campaign: BlogPromotion).
  • How many visitors came from the advert on Google promoting your services (Medium: cpc).

This level of detail lets you know exactly what is worth your time and money.

Smarter Budget Spending

Are you spending a lot of time on Instagram but getting most of your leads from your email newsletter? UTM tags will show you this clearly. If your Facebook UTM tags reveal that the time you spend creating Facebook UTM tags is giving you a high return, you can focus more energy there. This allows you to shift your budget and time towards the activities that genuinely drive results, making your marketing much more efficient.

how to use utm tags

Better Content Planning

Perhaps you have a great article on how to create a marketing plan. When you share it, you can use unique UTM tags for each channel:

  • Share 1 (Email): utm_medium=email
  • Share 2 (LinkedIn): utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin
  • Share 3 (Industry Forum): utm_medium=referral&utm_source=forum-name

By doing this, you can quickly see which channel is most effective at getting people to click and read your content, which helps you plan where to promote future articles.

Getting Started: How to Create a UTM Tag

The good news is you don’t need to be a coder to create UTM tags. There are several free tools available to help you build them easily. The most popular one is the Campaign URL Builder provided by Google.

A Simple Step-by-Step for Creating Tags

  1. Start with your destination URL: Copy the link of the page you want people to visit.
  2. Open the UTM Builder: Paste your link into the tool.
  3. Fill in the three required fields: Source, Medium, and Campaign.
    • Example: If you are posting an advert on Facebook, your source would be Facebook, your medium would be cpc, and your campaign could be Q4-Discount.
  4. Fill in optional fields: If you have multiple links in your advert or email, use the ‘Content’ field to distinguish between them (e.g., content=header-image and content=footer-link).
  5. Copy the new, generated URL: The tool will automatically combine your original link and your new tags. This is the link you should use in your social post, advert, or email.
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Consistency is Key

For the best results, you need to be consistent with how you name things.

  • Use all lowercase: facebook is better than Facebook or FACEBOOK. Google Analytics treats these as three separate sources.
  • Use hyphens or underscores: Never use spaces in your tags (e.g., summer-sale not summer sale).
  • Keep it simple: Agree on a handful of standard mediums and stick to them (e.g., always use social for all social media posts, or cpc for all paid adverts).

Common Places to Use UTM Tags

You can use UTM tags anywhere you share a link, but they are particularly useful for:

  • Email Marketing: Every link in your newsletter should be tagged so you know which specific email is driving sales or bookings.
  • Social Media Posts: Crucial for tracking paid and organic (regular) posts. Use unique tags for Facebook UTM tags, LinkedIn, Instagram, and any other platform.
  • QR Codes: Tagged links behind QR codes tell you exactly which poster or location is generating scans.
  • Online Banners/Adverts: Essential for tracking the performance of different banner sizes or placements on other websites.
  • PDFs/E-books: If you include a link to your website inside a downloadable document, tag it to see how many people are clicking through.

How to View UTM Tags in Google Analytics

Once you start using your new tagged links, all that valuable information will start appearing in your Google Analytics (GA4) reports. This is how to view UTM tags in Google Analytics:

  1. Log in to Google Analytics.
  2. Navigate to ‘Reports’ on the left-hand menu.
  3. Go to ‘Acquisition’ and then ‘Traffic acquisition’.
  4. You will now see a table showing data grouped by the ‘Session default channel group’ (e.g., Organic Search, Direct, Paid Social).
  5. Look for the column that shows ‘Session source / medium’. This is where your UTM tag data appears! You will see entries like facebook / social or newsletter / email.

You can also change the main dimension of the table to view the data by ‘Session campaign’ to see all your specific campaign names in one place (e.g., SummerSale2025). This clear data will highlight your best-performing channels and campaigns at a glance.

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Final Thoughts: Making Sense of Your Marketing

UTM tags are a simple, free, and effective way to move past the guesswork in your marketing. By clearly labelling where your traffic is coming from, you gain the clarity needed to spend your time and money where it matters most.

At Suki Marketing, we believe in transparent, jargon-free SEO. We help our clients not only set up the best strategies but also make real sense of the data that comes back, including how to set up and track UTM tags for better results.

Start using them today and see the difference in your reports. If you need help structuring your campaigns or understanding your analytics, just get in touch.

UTM Tags Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do UTM tags affect my website’s SEO?

No, not at all. Search engines like Google are smart enough to ignore the UTM parameters at the end of the link. They are purely for your own tracking purposes and have no effect on how your page is ranked or found organically.

2. Where should I not use UTM tags?

You should never use UTM tags for internal links (links that go from one page on your website to another page on your same website). Using them internally will mess up your analytics data by restarting the user’s session and losing the original source of traffic. Only use them for links that are posted outside of your website, such as on social media, in emails, or on other websites.

3. Do I have to use all five parameters?

No, you only need to use the first three: utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign. The utm_content and utm_term parameters are optional, but using utm_content is highly recommended when you need to track two different links that go to the same page (like two buttons in an email).

4. Can I use UTM tags in social media apps like Instagram?

Yes, absolutely! They are essential for tracking the success of your social media posts. The only thing to remember is that on some platforms, like the Instagram bio link, the long URL can look a little untidy. If that’s a concern, you can use a free link-shortening tool (like Bitly) to hide the UTM tag while still ensuring the tracking works perfectly.