Google Tag Manager is a tool which enables the top-down configuration of Google tags on each of your sites. Within sites and apps, you can add snippets of code that allow the manager to add further Google related configuration to your site, like Ads and Analytics. This means most people can manage the integration without developer changes to site code.
Setting Up GTM on a Site
Most CMS platforms have plugins or modules which assist with the placing of a GTM tag on your site! It is worth checking for a canonical method for adding head script tags to your stack before development.
For example for Drupal there is the Google Tag plugin, and in WordPress’s case, you can simply add the tag to the Site Kit Plugin. In WordPress’s case, the plugin can create a Tag for you
Otherwise, the steps are as simple as:
Create a GTM Account
Paste the supplied Code or ID into your application
Configure Tags & Triggers for Google Analytics or other properties
That’s it! The rest of GTM is tags & triggers that register events with given services.
When you log in to Google Tag Manager, you are presented with two tabs, Workspaces and Google Tags. Google Tags are groups or individual tags related to services. If you’ve generated a connection through a plugin, it should show up in Google Tags. Otherwise, if you want to create a tag setup from the ground up, create an account.
Account
Once created, a new account will allow the creation of subtags and their triggers, which in turn capture events for their relevant services.
Tag
Tags are simply event identifiers. When a tag is triggered (by a trigger), the resultant data is sent to the relevant service.
Trigger
Triggers are what cause a tag’s recording, whether that be a page load or some user interaction.