In this previous article I explained how to migrate from Google Analytics to Google Tag manager and, among the various suggested implementations, one that I think is really important is the tracking of outgoing clicks .
An outbound link is a link that takes the user out of the site to a page hosted on another website.
By analyzing the pages with the highest% output first, and then the specific outbound links, we can implement strategies to:
- Increase page views
- Increase the time spent on the site
- Reduce the bounce rate , i.e. the bounce rate
Set up tracking of outbound links
To set up the tracking of outbound links, refer to this paragraph of the guide linked above. The process is guided to help you create the correct tag and trigger to track clicks on site links through the 3 levels used to define an event in Google Analytics: Event Category, Event Action, and Event Label.
Event analysis in Google Analytics
Once the tracking of external links has been set in Google Tag Manager, we can find the data in Google Analytics in the section dedicated to events (Behavior> Events> Main events). The event category will have the name you set in GTM, in my example I assigned the name “Outbound” to the event category.
Main Events section in Google Analytics
Identify the main output pages
Clicking on the “Outbound” event category will open a list of pages where the user has clicked several times an outbound link (the exit pages). In the following image you can see the ranking of the pages sorted by clicked outbound links. The Web Reputation Tools page appears to be the main exit page, it is an article that presents web reputation tools and obviously users click the links to see the tools when exiting the site.
Event Action: the pages with the most outgoing clicks
Find the most clicked outbound links
By subsequently clicking on the action of the event, the list of event labels opens , that is the list of the most clicked outgoing links within the analyzed page.
In the example below we see that the most clicked link on the Web Reputation Tools page is the link to addictomatic.com.
Event Label: the most clicked outbound links
What can we do with this list? How can we use it to improve the time spent on the site?
Finding the resources to internalize
Now that we know what external content our readers are interested in, why don’t we internalize it on our site? Instead of letting users go out, why not develop new content to replace external ones ?
In this way we save the traffic that would have gone out, we increase the page views, the time spent and we also reduce the bounce rate. Simple right? If this article has served you, help me to spread it by sharing it on social networks, thank you