How to add Google Analytics to WordPress?
Google Analytics is an entirely free service. It’s the web’s most popular analytics tool for evaluating all of your site’s traffic. A plugin is the most straightforward approach to set up Google Analytics on WordPress. If you have little (or no) analytics knowledge, this is the best option for you.
Let’s take a glance at what Google Analytics is, why it’s essential, and how it works before we get started installing it on your WordPress site.
Go ahead and jump right into the step-by-step guide to set up Google Analytics for your website.
What do you mean by Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is the complete website tracking tool available, allowing you to know where your visitors come from, what they accomplish on your site, what content is most popular, and so on. It provides easy-to-understand information that helps you better analyze the impact of your marketing efforts.
Google Analytics gives you all you need to know about your visitors, whether you’re a publisher, a small business owner, or an eCommerce merchant. Aside from basic visitor interaction statistics, you’ll find the following Google Analytics tracking capabilities helpful:
- Tracking of advertisements
- e-Commerce tracking has been improved.
- Keeping track of events
- Tracking of online forms
What is the purpose of Google Analytics?
First and foremost, Google Analytics is a service that assists you in determining what drives traffic to your website and better understanding your clients. It includes features that allow you to go deeper into the data and assess the overall performance of your Website Design Ideas, enabling you to serve your users better.
You wouldn’t know statistics like the nations that drive the most traffic, the device they’re using, the pages they’re viewing, the time they spend on your website if you didn’t utilize a program like Google Analytics. You wouldn’t be able to tell whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off.
Though there are many other tracking programs available, you may not want to use any of them because Google Analytics is by far the most accurate. Furthermore, it is entirely free.
There are several methods for integrating Google Analytics into your WordPress site, all of which are detailed below with step-by-step instructions.
How Does Google analytics works?
To track the data of your visitors, you’ll need to add a tracking code to your website that you may get from your Analytics account. Every page of your website must have a tracking code. This can be executed by pasting the code into the WordPress header area.
When a visitor comes to your site, the tracking code in their browser tags them, and their session on your site begins. It’s simple to set up Google Analytics on your WordPress blog. All you have to do is install and set up a Google Analytics plugin on your website. You can also manually add the tracking code to your website, but this will restrict your use of advanced Google Analytics tracking capabilities.
Google Analytics may be integrated into WordPress in a variety of ways.
- Monster Insights can assist you in arranging up Google Analytics on your website (Recommended)
- Add the raw tracking code to your site’s header using a plugin.
- In header.php, manually count the tracking code.
- In functions.php, manually calculate the tracking code.
Best WordPress Google Analytics plugins
· Monster Insights’ Google Analytics: This is the most popular with over three million active installs. This software keeps track of site visitors, downloads, external links from your website, search results, and 404 error page hits.
· Exact Metrics’ Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress: This plugin, formerly known as GADWP, provides detailed reports and data on your WordPress analytics dashboard. Overall, the functionality of this plugin is relatively comparable to that of the Google Analytics platform.
· Analytify: This plugin does not require you to copy any code manually. Instead, it has a one-click verification process that immediately installs Google Analytics monitoring code to your website.
· Web-Google Dorado’s Analytics WD: This plugin has a beautiful user interface and can rapidly integrate Google Analytics to your WordPress site, with critical analytics reporting capabilities displayed in your dashboard.
· WP Statistics is a lightweight and easy-to-use plugin: You can check email statistics, watch traffic for various search engines, and identify your users’ location. All of this can be accomplished right from your WordPress dashboard, and exporting to your preferred file format is just as simple.
These are irregular of the most incredible WordPress Google Analytics plugins. They are free to download and install, while some are ‘freemium,’ meaning they offer paid premium versions with more reporting and data collection features.
Different methods to add Google Analytics to your website
Our Web Design Jacksonville experts have simplified this procedure for you to get instantly started.
A. Monster Insights is the first method.
The Monster Insights WordPress plugin is the most effective way to integrate Google Analytics into your website. From your WordPress dashboard, you can view your website data in easy-to-understand reports with Monster Insights. And there’s no need to know any code to get started.
Monster Insights is the simplest (and best) way to integrate Google Analytics into WordPress blogs. It’s a paid WordPress plugin that’s by far the easiest way to track your data.
From your WordPress admin panel, you can monitor your site’s performance, user activity, how many sales you’re making, and more with this Google Analytics plugin.
You won’t require hiring a developer or having any “tech skills” to start. For this reason, this product is ideal for small enterprises, bloggers, and solopreneurs.
You’ll get real-time data so you can keep current, and you’ll be able to track which marketing strategies are having the most (and least) impact. This includes AdSense and other PPC platforms’ pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns (including social media).
You’ll also be able to track your important SEO KPIs to guarantee that you’re improving your rankings. This is especially true now that you can integrate Google Search Console to get even more information on your site’s performance.
Alternatively, you can use Google Tag Manager to keep track of how many contact form submissions you have, what pages they occur on, and various events. Your data-gathering options with Monster Insights are practically limitless. With WooCommerce integration, you can concentrate on what matters most for your company’s growth: increasing sales from your online store.
It is why Monster Insights has over 3,000,000 users agreeing that it’s the best WordPress plugin for Google Analytics. Monster Insights also works with Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 seamlessly (GA4). With the Dual Tracking function, you can connect to either version you’re using or both simultaneously.
To use the Monster Insights plugin to integrate Google Analytics to WordPress:
- Navigate to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress menu.
- When the Monster Insights plugin appears, search for it and select Install Now, then Activate.
- To connect your blog to Google Analytics, go to Insights » Settings. Connect monster insights with other monster insights.
- Connect Monster Insights by clicking the Connect Monster Insights button.
- Select your Google account on the next screen. Connect your Monster Insights account to your Google account.
- Then, by clicking the Allow option, give Monster Insights permission to manage your account.
- Finally, click Complete Connection after selecting the suitable website profile for your blog.
- To connect to monster insights, go to the website of your choice.
After activation, the plugin will add a new menu item named Insights to your WordPress menu. You may view your reports and insights by clicking on them. Go to the main Settings page to enable dual tracking. Then, under Google Authentication, look for the Dual Tracking Profile box. You can now provide either your Universal Analytics Tracking ID or your GA4 Measurement ID, whichever you didn’t confirm during the initial setup.
With dual tracking, you may import all of your previous data from Universal Analytics while using GA4’s new features.
B. Plugin to Insert Headers and Footers is the second method.
Using the Insert Headers and Footers plugin, add the code to the header of your site to add Google Analytics.
- Go to Settings- Insert Headers and Footers and paste the Google Analytics tracking code into the plugin’s settings after installing and activating the plugin.
- Insert tracking code for Google Analytics in headers and footers.
You won’t execute advanced tracking configurations with this method, so keep that in mind. You won’t be able to see Google Analytics data in your WordPress Google Analytics dashboard, either.
C. In the header.php file, manually adding the Google Analytics code is the third method.
Using the theme editor to add the global tracking element to the WordPress theme is a more complicated technique to add Google Analytics to WordPress.
To do so, open the header.php file for your theme and paste the code directly before the closing /head tag.
If you include the code snippet in your central theme, it will be replaced every time your article is updated. When making changes to your WordPress site, we strongly advise using a child theme.
If you’re not an experienced developer, attempting to change the parent theme exposes you to further technical challenges. You also risk losing valuable data from your, if you break these theme files.
Conclusion:
Understanding your website users is essential for increasing traffic, subscriptions, and revenue. You can gather all of your website data by installing Google Analytics on your WordPress site, which gives practical insights to help you expand your business. You’ll be able to eliminate guesswork and begin making informed decisions based on the information you’ve obtained and this is what every good Website Design Company does.
