How to Set Up Google Analytics for a Website

Quick Navigation

• What Is Google Analytics?
• Why Set up Google Analytics Account?
• Why Are Analytics Important?
• How To Sign up for Google Analytics Account
• Where Is My Google Analytics Tracking ID?
• How To Set up Google Analytics Account on Your Website
• How Do You Set up Google Analytics Dashboard?

Are you a marketing or business professional who wants to learn how to set up Google Analytics for a website? This robust reporting tool can give you a great deal of information about how customers consume your digital footprint. Take advantage of this introduction into the vast territory of Google Analytics and improve your content marketing.

What Is Google Analytics?

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Google Analytics is a set of free tools that analyzes data on your business’s website or mobile app. Google designed this one-stop-shop to help executives like you understand what visitors are doing on your site.

With Google Analytics, you’ll monitor your content marketing strategies, better understand your users, make smarter decisions, and track sales performance. By accessing Google’s unique insights, you can see which channels drive most of your visitors, make the most of your data, and deliver results that increase your website’s traffic.

Why Set up a Google Analytics Account?

From tweaking your advertising campaigns to improving your overall content, Google Analytics can help. It’s one of the most popular digital analytics softwares available today. This free web-based service allows you to analyze details about your visitors and what they’re doing on your website. It provides an in-depth understanding of your online presence to help you shape your business’s successful strategies.

Make a Google Analytics account work for you by:

• Knowing how your visitors behave on your website.
• Understanding who visits your site by their age, gender, and physical location.
• Finding out how they landed on your site with traffic source information.
• Discovering the most popular content on your site.
• Learning what action someone takes with your ad or listing.

Why Are Analytics Important?

Website analytics are essential if you want to grow your online presence. Armed with this vital information in hand, you can better formulate advertising approaches and grow your business faster. Here are six common areas that Google Analytics can improve:

1. Get to Know Your Visitors

When you know who’s landing on your site, you can take steps to enhance their experience and their perception of your company. Set up a Google Analytics account with info like age, gender, geographic location, and your follower’s interests.

2. Identify Your Best Content

Google Analytics shows you which individual pages get the most visits, average duration, and your site’s bounce rate. This tool enables you to focus on optimizing your content for better engagement.

3. Boost Your Site’s SEO

Watch your website rise to the top of search engine results with the help of Google Analytics. It provides accurate reports on important factors like total clicks, impressions, average click-through rate, and average position. You can use this data to boost your ranking and increase traffic.

4. Track Top Referrals

Build strategies to gain more referrals, thanks to Google Analytics. Its tools allow you to track which websites refer the most traffic back to your site. This information enables you to focus on strengthening mutually beneficial relationships with the ultimate goal of gaining even more referrals.

5. Leverage Outbound Links

Website analytics from Google gives you insight into which website you refer your visitors. These outbound links allow you the opportunity to reach out to other businesses or influencers with partnership offers.

6. Record E-commerce Sales

Sales statistics are vital whether you’re selling products, software, or services. Utilize the metrics from Google Analytics. You’ll view amounts for total revenue, conversion rates, top products, and top referral sources in a single, easy-to-understand report.

How To Sign up for Google Analytics Account

Getting started with Google Analytics is a simple process. All you need to do is follow these two steps:

1. Set up a Google Account

If you use Gmail or Google Drive, that’s excellent news. You already have a Google account. Log into your account, and then move on to step number two. If you don’t have an account, it’s easy to set one up by clicking this link: https://accounts.google.com/signin.

2. Create Google Analytics Account

Once you’re logged into your Google account, follow the three-step process to set up an analytics account. It should take you roughly a minute to set up the platform. Click the signup button and begin by providing information about yourself, your business, and how you plan to use Google Analytics. Clicking the “create” button will get your Google Analytics account up and running.

Consider taking advantage of these pro tips:

• Use your domain as your Google Analytics account name.
• Select what you want to measure: a website, an app, or both.
• The term “Property Setup” refers to your domain, industry, and timezone.
• Enter the details of the site you want to track, up to 50 different websites or applications.

Where Is My Google Analytics Tracking ID?

Once you’ve created your Google Analytics account, Google will provide you with a tracking code. This code enables this innovative tool to collect data from your site’s visitors. The next to-do item is to add this code to your site by following these instructions:

1. Go to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account.
2. Under the Property section, select Tracking Info.
3. Click Tracking Code.
4. A new window will open. It contains your Google Analytics Tracking ID.
5. Copy your ID.
6. Go back to your website.
7. Use one of the next section’s methods to install Google Analytics on your website.

How To Set up Google Analytics Account on Your Website

Now that you have your Google Analytics tracking ID number, there are three popular ways to install the platform on your website. These methods are:

1. Use a WordPress Plugin

If you’ve built your website using WordPress, congratulations. It’s easy to install Analytics utilizing a plugin, such as Yoast or All-in-One SEO Pack. Otherwise, you can search the WordPress plugins page for “Google Analytics” for a range of options. Now, paste your Google Analytics tracking ID into the plugin, and voila! You’re done.

2. Add Google Analytics Code

Even if you aren’t an experienced coder, you can quickly install the Google Analytics tracking snippet on your website. Here’s how:

1. In Google Analytics, go to Admin, then Tracking Info, then Tracking Code.
2. Copy the Global Site tag snippet.
3. In WordPress, go to Appearance, then Theme Editor.
4. Select Theme Header.
5. Paste the Google Analytics snippet after the opening tag.
6. Save changes.
7. Add your code to every page of your website, or add it to either the header or footer to track your entire site as one entity.

3. Take Advantage of Google Tag Manager

If you have Google Tag Manager installed on your website, it’s easy to connect both tools. Follow these seven steps to set up Google Analytics:

1. Open Google Tag Manager, then go to Tags, then New.
2. Give it a name, such as Google Analytics.
3. In the Tag Configuration section, select Google Analytics: Universal Analytics.
4. Create a new variable that enables the tag to send data to your Analytics account.
5. Select New Variable from the Select Settings Variable dropdown menu.
6. Select All Pages under the Triggering option.
7. Finally, save your new tag.

How Do You Set up Google Analytics Dashboard?

Now that you set up your Google Analytics account, give the platform 24 hours to collect data and generate your first reports. To view these figures, you’ll need to access the Google Analytics dashboard. This section is where you’ll find the tools you need to navigate the platform.

These dashboards provide hundreds of unique metrics and dimensions that you can use to dig into every aspect of your website’s statistics. With all that information at your disposal, it can be a bit overwhelming, so start with these six main control panels:

1. Overview Dashboard

The Google Analytics dashboard’s home page is known as the “Overview” dashboard. The right side of the window displays the first glimpse into your site’s data. Down the left side of the dashboard are links to specific reports.

This control panel features graphs, tables, and other snapshots of your data on “cards.” Changing each card’s options alters what they display, such as type of data and time period. Clicking on the link will produce a full report. From here, you can also access one of five additional dashboards, each with a range of precise information, including real-time, audience, acquisition, behavior, and conversion.

2. Real-Time Dashboard

The Real-Time dashboard resembles the main overview page. Find it by clicking on the first option of the left-hand menu. This section of Google Analytics provides a live reporting of all visitors currently on your website, allowing you to monitor activity as it happens.

These data visualizations update within seconds as your site or app captures new hits. This page enables you to monitor traffic to new or updated content and whether a time-sensitive ad is truly driving traffic to your site. Take advantage of all four real-time widgets to best visualize your performance data, including counter, timeline, geomap, and table.

3. Audience Dashboard

The Audience dashboard is the ideal page to visit if you want to learn more about your patrons. By getting to know your site’s visitors, such as their preferred device and where they’re located, you can tailor your marketing strategies to your individual users.

Learn how long they stay on your website, how many pages they visit, plus your visitor’s age and gender. You can even garner information such as how many people visit your site more than once and if your audience is performing by delivering consistent users who engage and convert.

4. Acquisition Dashboard

Have you ever wondered how your visitors found your website? With the Acquisitions dashboard, you’ll discover this valuable insight and more. You’ll learn about the users your site gets from different channels so that you can dissect this data in a variety of ways.

Look for the link titled “All Traffic.” This section contains in-depth reports that provide a complete picture of your monthly audience gains beyond the overview’s snapshot. One of the most significant benefits of keeping an eye on this data is to find out how your viewers reach your site via organic search. The “Search Console” reveals which search query they used to arrive at your site or app.

5. Behavior Dashboard

Get actionable information about how users interact with your site with the Behavior dashboard. It delivers comprehensive data that is useful for assessing the performance of different pages on your site, specifically the “Site Content” analysis.

This particular dashboard also reveals a wide array of metrics, including page views, average time on page, and bounce rate. These metrics are incredibly beneficial to determine your most popular content. It’s easy to tell what pages are getting the most views and those that are holding your visitor’s attention the longest. These figures give your terrific insights into what content to focus your efforts on and if you need to improve or delete poor-performing sections.

6. Conversion Dashboard

The final primary analytics screen is the Conversion dashboard. This area of the Google Analytics platform displays how often visitors perform actions on your site. The analytics software looks at your content’s efficiency compared to your site’s goals, such as sales or newsletter signups. Marketing engagement metrics, such as click-through rates, can help you verify that your intended audience is getting your message.

Now you’re ready to start tracking your website’s data with Google Analytics. You know what the platform is all about, how to get it set up, as well as a few different ways you can use it to help improve your site’s performance. Now that you’re up to speed, these Google Analytics insights are right at your fingertips. What’s stopping you from joining the millions of businesses that track their stats with Google Analytics?

jross

CopyPress writer

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