Introduction
Are you a website owner looking to track your website’s performance and gain valuable insights into your visitors’ behavior? Look no further than Google Analytics. By installing Google Analytics on your WordPress website, you can easily monitor metrics such as page views, traffic sources, user engagement, and much more. In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of installing Google Analytics in WordPress using the best plugin available, without any coding required.
Why Install Google Analytics in WordPress?
Before we dive into the installation process, let’s understand why it is crucial to have Google Analytics integrated into your WordPress website. Google Analytics provides a wealth of data that can help you make informed decisions about your website’s content, marketing strategies, and user experience. Some of the key benefits of using Google Analytics in WordPress include:
- Real-time Website Analytics: With Google Analytics, you can access real-time data about your website’s performance, including the number of visitors currently on your site, their geographic locations, and the pages they are viewing.
- Audience and Behavior Reports: Gain insights into your audience demographics, interests, and behaviors. Understand what drives your visitors to your website and how they navigate through your content.
- Ecommerce Reports: If you run an online store, Google Analytics can provide valuable information about your product sales, conversion rates, and customer behavior. Track your revenue, identify your top-performing products, and optimize your marketing efforts.
- Content and SEO Reports: Measure the success of your content marketing efforts by analyzing metrics such as page views, bounce rates, and time spent on page. Identify your most popular content and optimize it for better search engine rankings.
Now, let’s move on to the step-by-step process of installing Google Analytics in WordPress.
Step 1: Sign In to Google Analytics
Before you can set up Google Analytics on your WordPress website, you’ll need to have a Google Analytics account. If you don’t have one yet, follow these steps to create one:
1. Visit the Google Analytics website (https://analytics.google.com) and sign in with your Google account credentials. If you don’t have a Google account, you can easily create one by clicking on the “Create account” link.
2. Once you’re signed in, click on the “Start measuring” button to create a new account & property for your website.
Step 2: Create a Google Analytics Account and then create a Property
A property in Google Analytics represents your website or app. Follow these steps to create a new property for your WordPress website:
1. On the Google Analytics dashboard, click on the “Admin” tab located at the bottom left corner of the page.
2. In the Create dropdown, click “Account” to set up your new Analytics account.
3. Next, enter your Account name – this can be the name of your website so you can easily identify it when you have multiple accounts. After you enter the name, click the “Next” button at the bottom of the page.
4. Now it’s time to create your Property. Enter a name for your Property and select the Reporting time zone and Currency that best fit your location.
5. In Step 3 you will be requested to describe your business. Select an Industry and a Business size. Click “Next” at the bottom of the page.
6. Choose your business objectives and click “Create”. In the next screen, you will be prompted to accept the Google Analytics Terms of Service Agreement.
7. Start collecting your data. You will be asked to select your platform. Click on the “Web” button
Step 3: Set up the data stream
When you click on the Web option, a screen pops out to allow you to set up your web stream. Fill out all the relevant information to create the stream: your website URL, give your stream a name, and leave “Enhanced measurement” enabled if you want to measure more interactions in addition to standard page view measurement. Click “Create stream” to move to the next step.
Step 4: Install the Google Analytics 4 tracking on your website
Your Google Analytics stream is now created, but data collection isn’t yet active on your website. You will have to connect your Google Analytics to the WordPress website.
After finishing Step 3, another screen pops out and presents two options: “Install with a Website Builder or CMS” or “Install manually”. If you go with the first option, you will have three options that apply to WordPress:
- MonsterInsights plugin
- Site Kit plugin
- WooCommerce plugin (go for this option if you also have WooCommerce installed on your website, otherwise go with one of the first two options)
Follow the on-screen instructions to install, activate and connect the Google Analytics plugin you want to use.
After installing the plugin and connecting to your Google Analytics account, you can check if everything is working as expected by running a quick test. The website URL should be pre-filled so all you have to do is click the “Test” button on the right side. A green checkmark will be displayed next to your website URL of the GA code is detected on the website.
If you have any caching plugins installed on the website, please make sure you clear any caches before testing to see if the GA code is successfully added to the website.
(optional) Step 5: Manually install your tracking code
If you don’t want to use a WordPress plugin to install your Analytics code, in the “Installation instructions” step, click on the “Install manually” tab.
This tab will display your Google tag code. Copy and paste it in the code of every page of your website, immediately after the <head> element. Please make sure you don’t add more than one Google tag to each page.
Manually adding the Google tag on the website can be fairly easy if you have a bit of coding skills. You will need to use a SFTP client and navigate to the functions.php file you have in your active theme. Edit the PHP file and add the following code snippet at the end of the file.
function insert_google_tag() {
?>
<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-xxxxxxxxxx"></script>
<script>
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-xxxxxxxxxx');
</script>
<?php
}
add_action('wp_head', 'insert_google_tag');Replace ‘G-xxxxxxxxxx’ with your actual Google Tag ID. This function hooks into the wp_head action, which means it will output the Google Tag code within the section of your WordPress site. Save the functions.php file and upload it via SFTP and you’re done. Use the “Test your website” feature in Google Analytics to make sure the Google tag is detected and installed correctly.
Conclusion
Integrating Google Analytics into your WordPress website is essential for understanding your audience, optimizing your content, and improving your website’s performance. By following the step-by-step instructions outlined in this guide, you can easily install Google Analytics using the powerful MonsterInsights plugin. Start tracking your website’s metrics, make data-driven decisions, and watch your online presence grow with confidence. Get started with Google Analytics in WordPress today!