In today’s competitive world, staying abreast with the overall performance of your website is the right approach for gaining an edge over your competitors. Irrespective of whether you’re running a WordPress powered blog or a website, merely knowing the count of visitors won’t help you in ensuring the site/blog’s growth. You need to operate a well-defined stats programs that would aid in tracking and analyzing the traffic received for your WordPress site/blog. Google Analytics is one such free stats programs that has actually worked as a ‘magic wand’ for WordPress users across the globe. If you too are bothered about monitoring different aspects of your WP site/blog then learning about setting up Google Analytics will definitely prove beneficial. Keep on reading this post to find more on the numerous benefits that can be availed with Google Analytics integration for your WordPress site/blog. In this blog, you’ll also find a handy tutorial on setting up Google Analytics for your WordPress blog/site.
Firstly, let me make you familiar with some solid reasons backing the integration of Google Analytics with your WordPress powered blog or website:-
- If you want to keep a good track of page visits by post or page type then setting up Google analytics for your website/blog works as the best option.
- If you are bothered about the downloads and outbound clicks for your site then also equipping your site/blog with Google Analytics tracking code is the perfect solution. Moreover, if you choose to use the ‘Google Analytics for WordPress’ plugin then all the links available in your site/blog’s content would get triggered automatically, followed by getting tracked as separate events.
- If you wish to see which all blog categories are performing the best and which all are performing the worst, a timely setup and installation of Google Analytics is a must. Plus, you can also go to the Event Tracking Category section and click on the downloads option to view all the files that have been downloaded by website/blog visitors.
- Thanks to the Advanced settings available in Google Analytics, you can enjoy a bunch of facilities viz: the custom variables aid you in adding the GA tracking code on a per session or per page/post basis. In adition to this, you can track authors who receive maximum page views, blog categories which receive maximum hits etc. You can also avail the flexibility of tracking all the logged in users and viewing blog posts by year.
Now that the benefits of Google Analytics for WordPress are clear to you, its time to dig deep into adding the same to your WP website/blog
Well, to start off, you need to create a free Google Analytics account by going to ttp://www.google.com/analytics and login using your credentials. If you’re using Google Analytics for the first time, then upon logging into your account; you’ll be asked to provide your personal details along with the details of the website for which you intend to set up Google analytics. On the contrary, if you already have a Google analytics account then after logging in, you need to click on the Admin tab-> select a value for the Account type and further click on the ‘Add New Property’ link. The screen-shot for this is shown below:
On the next page, after entering your website details, click on the “Get Tracking ID” button to receive the tracking ID for your website/blog. The screen-shot for this is shown below:
With that you’re done with creating a tracking ID for your website. Now, its time to integrate this Google Analytics Tracking ID into your WordPress blog. For this, you may choose from any of the following three techniques:
#1. Use your WordPress theme
As per this method, simply go to your theme settings-> search for an option to add footer script and simply paste the GA tracking code there.
#2. Set up Google Tag Manager
You can choose to set up Google Tag Manager which will allow you to integrate the GA tracking code in your site/blog apart from helping you in managing all the tags from a single location.
#3. Use the plugin called ‘Google Analytics for WordPress by Yoast’
Google Analytics for WordPress by Yoast is a remarkable plugin which comes with an easy installation process and allows you to enable or disable tracking for your WordPress site. Once you’re done with configuring the plugin, you can either click on the ‘Click here to authenticate with Google’ button or choose to manually enter the generated GA code, followed by clicking on ‘Save settings’ button.
Wrapping it up
With that its a wrap on this post which briefed you on the process of setting up Google analytics for your WordPress site/blog along with the benefits of doing so. I’m sure the details covered here would have eliminated all your doubts/myths regarding the integration of Google analytics with your WP website. So, put your feet on the accelerator and make the most of features available with the cool and trendy Google Analytics tool.
[author image=”https://kerryseo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/JACKCALDER.jpg” ]Jack Calder is a well renowned and expert developer responsible for the development of various applications related to mobile app & web design. Jack has been attached with Markupcloud Ltd from the very beginning of this company which is involved in the process of PSD to WordPress conversion in certain framwork.[/author]
