Google Analytics is a free Web analytics service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes. This tool is free and available for use on any website with a single Google account.

Google analytics track all the activities on your website; it enables you to know who your audiences are and how they interact with your website. Google analytics is an essential part of every website because it gives in-depth insights into your site as well as helping in Search Engine Optimization and marketing purposes. In this article, I explained in details with screenshots many ways you can install Google Analytics on your WordPress website step by step.

Why should you use Google Analytics on your website?

The goal of every website owner is to drive traffic and get more subscribers to the site, especially bloggers. Every blog owner desire traffic on the blog more than anything else. Therefore, if you need to grow your website you surely need to install Google Analytics because it will enable you have details information about the visitors to your site, such information includes the following:

How many people have been on your site?

Google Analytics gives you insights into the geographical location of your visitors, such as country, city, and their language. The type of device they are using while viewing your website, the type of web browsers, operating system and their service provider.

What do they do while on your site?

With this tool you can track what your audiences are doing on your website, how long do they stay on your website and which page do they visits most.

Where are your audiences coming from?

Google Analytics enables you to know where your audiences are coming from; maybe they are from search engines or from referral sources such as Facebook and other social media or perhaps from other external websites. 

What are your audiences Interest?

It also allows you to know what interest your audiences most. As a matter of fact, you can actually know many things about your websites and audiences through Google Analytics, which can lead to tremendous conversation, sales and helps narrow your target audiences and their needs.  

Now, let’s dive into how to set up your Google Analytics.

Step 1: To set up Google Analytics on your website you will first need to have a Gmail account, if you don’t have Gmail account you need to create one for yourself. Good thing about Google is that with your Gmail account, you have access to every Google products and services.

Step 2: You will need to create Google Analytic account by signup to Google Analytics Sign up page. Once you log on to Google Analytics page these menus will appear, you will need to click on sign up menu and sign up with your Gmail account.

Step 3: Once you click on the sign up, another screen will be display requesting you to supply the following information.

• Account Name
• Website Name
• Website URL
• Industry Category
• Reporting Time Zone

Once you have provide all the information required, click the get code button at the bottom corner, then a terms and conditions page  will pop up and click agree on all and submit.

Step 4: Now Google have assigned a tracking code to you, you will need to locate the code from the page displayed. This tracking code will be used to track and report the analytics for your website. Now there are different methods to embed this code to your WordPress website. You may need to keep the Analytics code page open as you will need the code shortly. 

HOW TO EMBED GOOGLE ANALYTICS CODE TO YOUR WORDPRESS WEBSITE?

Like I earlier said, there are many ways to insert Google Analytic code to your WordPress website. I will itemize them one after the other, though one is complex and  than the others.

METHOD 1: USING MONSTERINSIGHTS

MonsterInsights is a free WordPress plugin that makes Google Analytics easy for WordPress users without a single line of code. To add Google Analytics to your WordPress website using MonsterInsights, you will need to log in into your WordPress dashboard and click on plugins then click on Add New button, search for MonsterInsights from the search bar at top right hand side. It has over 2 million users. Install the Monster Insights plugins and activate it. Upon activation the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘Insights’ to your WordPress dashboard. All you need to do is to click Insights » Settings to configure the plugin settings. Just follow the instruction on displayed step by step to properly embed your Google Analytic code. You can as well upgrade to Pro version of the plugin for deep insights about the activities of the users on your website.  

METHOD 2: USING HEADERS AND FOOTERS PLUGIN

Insert headers and footers is a very simple plugin that lets WordPress users insert code directly into a header or footer of their website without fear of any error to the core files of their theme. With this plugin you can embed Google Analytics to your WordPress site. Though, with this method you won’t be able to track your website traffic from WordPress dashboard like the first method. You have to be logging to your Google Analytic home page each time you need to track how your website is performing.

You will need to install and activate headers and footers plugin from WordPress plugins. Upon activation, go to the settings from the WordPress Dashboard, click the plugin menu then copy the entire Google Analytics code you received and paste it to the header section and click save.

METHOD 3: USING HEADER.PHP FILE FROM WORDPRESS THEME.

Please be reminded that this method is for professional in WordPress and those conversant with coding. Though, this method is not that reliable if you are not using a child theme because you have to be repeating the process each time you update your WordPress theme. So, to avoid losing your Analytics code each time you update your WordPress theme, you need to install a child theme before using this method.

To use this method

• Install a child theme and activate the child theme.
• Click the Appearance from your WordPress dashboard and select theme editor at the bottom of the dropdown list.
• Once you are in the editor page, locate the php file, click it and carefully copy the Google Analytics code and insert it within the <header> Paste your Google Analytics code within this place </header> tag.

As shown in the image below, then, stroll down and click save file.  

To view your Website performance on Google Analytics

Log in to the homepage of Google Analytics website with your Gmail account to explore the unlimited data collected from your website courtesy of Google. Click report tab under customization. There are many tabs to choose from, you can check the following stats about your site.

Real time: this tab will show you the users on your website at the moment and what page they are viewing.

Audience: This will show the geographical location of your audiences, language and country/city, browsers, devices, interest and lot more.

Acquisition: This tab enables you to know the exact place your audiences are coming from.

WRAPPING IT UP

Your data collection is limitless with Google Analytics, if you really want to know and monitor your site traffic how little it may be, you need to power your website with Goggle Analytics. You can take advantage of all the data presented to you by Google to narrow down how you relate with your target audience.

I will like to know how this article has helped you in installing Google Analytics on your WordPress website by leaving a comment below.