Understanding and keeping track of your website’s analytics is critical to the success of your website. It allows you to be able to target specific audiences, work out how your content is being interacted with and how much traffic your website gets.
Not only this, but the better the analytic tool you use is, the more information you may be able to extract. This includes the most popular times that people visit your website, the most popular pages and content and some other very important insights.
Google Analytics is arguably the best analytic tool you can use for your website, and as the majority of websites are created using WordPress, it’s useful to know how to set up Google Analytics onto your website through WordPress.
So, we’ve written this guide to show you how to do this and provided some other helpful tips. Read on to learn much more about it!
Enabling Google Analytics On WordPress
We’re now going to go through each step individually to make things much easier for you to follow.
Signing Up With Google Analytics
You’ll first need to sign up for Google Analytics via their website. If you already have an account, then you will need to sign in – if not, create a new account.
In Google Analytics, click “Admin” and then “Create Account” which will start a new profile for your specific site that you want the tool to be used on.
You will need to type in your account name and then decide on your data sharing settings – these will automatically all be filled in, but it will be up to you for what you’d like to be included or not.
Once you’ve done this, click “Next” at the bottom and you’ll be faced with the property set-up page. Here, you will need to fill out the property name (which is your website’s title) and then select your chosen time-zone and currency.
Next, you will have to fill out the details of your business and select “Create”. Then, you will need to accept the terms of service and then select your property for data streams.
Select “Web” and then type in your website’s domain, along with the stream name. Follow this up by selecting “Create Stream”.
Measurement ID
Once you’ve completed the previous steps, you will be given web stream details which will contain your measurement ID. Next to it, you will see a button that says “copy”.
Select “copy” which will allow you to paste the measurement ID from your clipboard. You will now need to access WordPress.
Access WordPress
Go to WordPress and head to tools. Select marketing and then traffic.
You will see an empty box for your Google Analytics Measurement ID – paste your previously copied measurement ID into this box and click save settings.
The amount of data you receive is incredibly high and this data that you are able to get can be very beneficial to your business. Let’s just look at some of the best pieces of data that Google Analytics can provide you.
Visitors’ geographical information
The way in which your visitors have got to your website (this is particularly important and may play a role in how you look at your marketing plan)
What web browsers your visitors are using
The keywords that were part of the visitor’s search and how they got there. (This is extremely important when it comes to your SEO strategy).
Of course, this is all very good news and certainly a good reason to use Google Analytics – but there’s plenty more reasons why you should choose Google Analytics over other analytics tools.
Free To Use
Yes, despite the fantastic benefits Google Analytics provides you – it is actually totally free to use! You’ll get so much data and you won’t have to worry about the financial aspects of it.
This will mean more money for your business that you can put into other areas such as marketing, SEO and other highly critical points.
Google Does It For You
If you wanted to have specific reports, you’d normally have to collate this information and generate reports yourself. Luckily, Google Analytics does all the hard work for you.
You can customize the reports that you receive and as a result, you can target your plans for your website and use the data strategically.
Not only does this make things so much easier, but it frees you up for other things you may wish to do for your business!
Google Analytics Works Well With Other Tools
Multiple tools and platforms can work streamlined with Google Analytics, which makes things ideal if you want to use specific platforms or devices.
You can even link your Google Analytics account with Google Adwords which allows them to work together as one entity – which gives you even bigger information and more opportunities for data collection.
Internal Site Search
There’s a great feature with Google Analytics that allows you to see what your visitors are looking at specifically on your website.
It will show you what pages are being viewed and what they are engaging with – this is particularly helpful for businesses selling products directly from their website.
If you have a product that is getting a lot of attention, you may be able to take advantage of this and alter prices or create an incentive strategy for sales.
The Bottom Line
Google Analytics is very important and highly beneficial for your website – so it’s good to know how to set it up on WordPress. We hope this guide has helped!
Hi, my name is Justin Shaw, I started my career with a Masters in Computer Science but found writing to be my forte'.
I'm now the Principal Tech writer for GshiftLabs.com as well as a few other well known publications. I help make the complex world of Tech-Jargon easy to understand.
