Add a user to Google Tag Manager

Go to tagmanager.google.com and sign in.

Check you are on the right Google Account. This is the point that wastes the most time. If you have a personal address and a work address, look at the circle at the top right of the screen and choose the one that manages your website.

What you should be seeing now.

• A table with the name of your website and an identifier starting with GTM. You are in the right place, move on to the next step.
• A screen offering to create an account. Tag Manager is not in place on your website yet. Write to us, because this is an installation we take care of.
• An empty list when you know an account exists. You are probably not on the right Google address, so switch account at the top right.

Then click the line matching your website to go into it.

On a computer it is far simpler. This screen shows 2 columns side by side, and on a phone they end up one under the other. If all you have is your phone, open your browser menu and ask for the desktop version before you continue.

Before you click, 30 seconds of explanation that will save you 10 minutes.

The account is your company. It carries your trading name and can hold several websites.

The container is one specific website. That is the technical name for the box holding the measurements of a given website. It carries an identifier in the form of GTM followed by a few characters.

Why it matters. Tag Manager will ask you twice to choose a permission level, once for the account, once for the container. It is not a display glitch, they really are 2 different settings. The first says who can see the house, the second says who can work in the room.

At the top of the page, click Admin.

You can now see 2 columns. The left-hand one concerns the account, the right-hand one concerns the container.

In the left-hand column, click User Management.

The list of people with access appears. It contains your own address at the very least.

Take the chance to read it through. If an old agency or a former supplier is still there, this is a good moment to remove them. A forgotten access stays live for years.

Click the blue button with the plus sign at the top right, then Add users.

• In the email field, enter our address contact@metabacklinks.com.
• For account access, leave it on User. That level simply lets us see the account, without touching its configuration.
• Just below, open the container access and choose Publish. That is the level that lets us put a measurement in place and take it live.

Why Publish and not less. The 4 container levels are Read, Edit, Approve and Publish. With Edit alone, we can prepare a measurement but not switch it on, and we would have to ask you for a click on every change. Publish saves you all that back and forth.

If Google rejects the address as invalid, it is almost always a space stuck to the front or the back of it. Type it out by hand rather than pasting it.

Click Invite at the top right.

Our address appears in the list straight away, marked as a pending invitation. We accept it on our side, usually the same day, and the note disappears on its own.

A word on wording. Google renames its screens regularly. If a button says Invite on your screen and Send on your neighbour's, it is the same action. Trust the meaning rather than the exact word, because the sections stay in the same place.

There is nothing else to do, and nothing to send us.

Your account stays yours. You are the only person who can decide who comes in and who goes out.

To remove an access one day, you come back to this same page, you click our line and you choose to delete it. It is immediate, with no notice period, and you do not have to tell us.

What it sets off on our side. Your agents connect up the tracking of your forms, your phone calls and your clicks through to WhatsApp. You will finally know which page brings you customers, and not just visits.

One access often goes with another. If your statistics go through Google, the method is the same and takes 3 minutes, see give access to Google Analytics 4.