Google Analytics lets you track the traffic to your website. You can get information about the demographics, location, and engagement of your site visitors as well as the performance of your content by just looking at the figures on your Analytics.
Why is traffic so important? Because you will not earn money out of your site if people don’t visit and check out your affiliate links, Google ads or pay for what ever you are offering/selling on your site.
I use Google Analytics to check on the rate at which my site visitors leave without “interacting” with other pages–Bounce Rate–as well as the demographics of my traffic.
You can even find out if your target clients (based on their location) are actually visiting your site or if visitors from other places are more interested with your site. Measurement of these variables (and a whole lot more I haven’t explored yet) is important to get to one of your goals and that is to get recognized by Google as an “authority site”.
Here’s how you get a Google Analytics tracking code installed on your site. You need a GMail account, if you haven’t made one already:
1. Create an account with Analytics, preferably using the GMail you used for your website.
You will be asked to select the GMail that you want to use for your Analytics account, then click the sign up button to fill up the corresponding information needed for your account.
2. On the Google Analytics Sign Up Page, enter the account name, your website’s name, and the URL. Take extra care when writing your URL to ensure that your site will be tracked correctly.
Other information such as your location and time zone will also be asked. Also, even if it’s boring, read the terms and conditions of Google Analytics. Submit and wait until you get redirected to the page where your tracker will be provided.
3. This is how that page will look like:
The script indicated by the yellow arrow is your unique website tracker, right-click, copy, and paste this on your website’s HTML editor. There are three ways to do this, but I’ll only discuss two options. You can do any of the following:
A. Paste Tracker Before First Paragraph/Word of EACH POST Using Text View Window
Once this text view is opened, your post editor will look like this:
To paste your tracker, ‘open code’ before your first word/paragraph by clicking “Code” (haha, silly) and once done, paste Google Analytics tracker, and close code by clicking “Code” again. It will look like this: <code>GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKER</code>First word or paragraph
Congratulations, there’s a basic HTML code right there. The downside to this is that you have to repeat this process over and over until you got all the pages or posts you want to track covered. Tiresome, but it works hehe.
B. Paste on HTML Editor (recommended)
This is an arguably better alternative. To track your site, open your theme’s HTML Editor by going to your WordPress site’s Admin> Appearance> Editor as shown below (YELLOW Arrow)
WordPress Text View window
This will open your site’s HTML editor and on the right side panel, you will find “Header.php”. Click this link and you will be able to edit your header properties and add the Google Analytics code ANYWHERE within the template’s head like such: <head>GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKER</head>. For reference see image below:
Header Editor Tracker
C. By use of plug-in (recommended)
Most people will find this the easiest and it involves adding plugins that lets you add properties on your header or footer. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried this route even if it sounds easy. Always add your Google Analytics tracker/code on your header box.
So there you have it. There could be other ways to paste your Analytics tracker on your site, do what ever you think is easiest for you. Personally, I like the first option best because frankly, it’s very similar to how I learned it back from when Blogger was still very cool hehe.
Also, please wait for at least 24 hours before you see figures and data on your Google Analytics dashboard. Don’t be too lazy to read, read, read Google help and tutorials from other site owners and bloggers as well. Best of luck!
If you happen to see this post by chance, thank you for reading up to the last bit. You need a hosted blog or a website to earn money out of affiliate links and Google advertisements, since free WordPress blogs do not get approved for displaying Google ads.
Make it a great day!
