An Effortless way of settting up Google Analytics in WordPress

I go through stages where I’m totally obsessed with my Google Stats; checking them after every blog post, Facebook share and Twitter tag and then other stages where they just don’t phase me and I simply focus on giving my readers relevant content to help them have the best website possible. The later, as you probably know, is more enjoyable and the better way of running a blog but does that mean obsessing or following your Google Analytics is a bad thing?

No not at all!

In actual fact by having a better understanding of exactly what your visitors are doing on your site, where they are coming from and how long they are hanging around can only benefit your blog and business.

Today I’m going to be showing you an effortless way of adding Google Analytics to your self-hosted WordPress site so that you can have all those details at your finger tips every time you login.

CREATE A GOOGLE ANALYTICS ACCOUNT

The first step is to sign up for a Google Analytics account and add your website’s name and URL to the newly created account. If you already have a Gmail account then you can go ahead and use these details for your new account. Once signed up and logged in you’ll be given the opportunity to fill in a few details to create a new account for your website, as below…

INSTALL THE GOOGLE ANALYTICS DASHBOARD PLUGIN

Once you’ve set up your Google Analytics account you’ll want to head on over to your self-hosted WordPress site and login to the back end. Next locate ‘Plugins’ then click on ‘Add New’ on the left hand side. In the search box on the right hand side type in ‘Google Analytics Dashboard‘ – install and activate the Google Analytics Dashboard for WP Plugin, as shown in the image below.

AUTHORISE THE PLUGIN

After you’ve installed and activated your plugin you’ll notice it coming up in two places – on the dashboard (the page that first comes up when you login) and on the left hand side under ‘Google Anayltics’. So you can either click on ‘Authorize Plugin’ on the dashboard as below or locate ‘Google Anayltics’ then ‘General Settings’ on the left hand side.

On the Google Analytics Settings page click on ‘Authorize Plugin’ . Do not tick the box that says ‘use your own API Project credentials’. 

On the next page click on ‘Get Access Code’ – this will take you to another page that will ask you to accept that the plugin will be able to read your GA stats from the account you created in step one. Click ‘Accept‘, copy the long code that comes up on the next page, paste it into the Access code section and click ‘Save Access Code’. 

ET VOILA

You can make amendments to the theme colour to tie in with your branding or personal preference. Click ‘Save Changes’ and then head on over to your Dashboard to see your analytics in action. Note if you’ve just signed up to Google Analytics it can take a few days for Google to gather the information.

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And so this starts the beginning of your Google Analytics journey. There is so, so, so much more to learn about the wonderful Google Analytics but I think for today this is a great place to start.

Hit me up in the comments below if you’d like more blog posts on Google Analytics.