Google Analytic (Step by Step Guide)

 A Step-by-Step Guide to Installing Google Analytics

Knowing how to set up Google Analytics will give you access to a wealth of information about the visitors to your website.

 

Understanding begins with knowing how to set up Google Analytics:

• Who are your website's visitors

• What content do they want to see from your company

• How they interact with your website

What's the best part? Google Analytics is completely free to use. 

And, once set up, Google Analytics allows you to track and measure your company's traffic goals, as well as demonstrate the ROI of your web and social media presence. 

However, configuring Google Analytics can be difficult (to put it mildly). Fortunately, we have a step-by-step guide for any level of digital marketer to easily and painlessly set up Google Analytics.

Before we get into the specifics, let's look at what makes Google Analytics so great.

Why do you require Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a robust and powerful tool that provides essential data about your website and visitors. With Google Analytics powering more than 56% of all websites, it's also one of the most popular tools for digital marketers — and for good reason. The tool gives you access to a wealth of information about your site's visitors.

Here are a few examples of data from Google Analytics:

• The total amount of traffic that your website receives
• The websites from which your traffic originated Individual page traffic Number of leads converted
• The websites from which your leads originated
• Visitors' demographic information (e.g. where they live)
• Whether your traffic is mobile or desktop

It makes no difference whether you're a freelancer with a small blog or a large corporation with a massive website. The data in Google Analytics can be useful to anyone.

Now that you understand how fantastic it is, let's get into how to set up Google Analytics for your own website.

How to Install Google Analytics in 5 Easy Steps

It can be difficult to set up Google Analytics. However, once set up, you stand to gain a wealth of valuable information very quickly. This is pure 80/20 — by putting in a little effort now, you can reap disproportionate rewards later.

To get started with Google Analytics, simply follow these steps:

Step 1: Set up Google Tag Manager

Step 2: Create a Google Analytics account

Step 3: Set up analytics tag with Google Tag Manager

Step 4: Set up goals

Step 5: Link to Google Search Console

Let’s discuss these steps!

Step 1: Set up Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is Google's free tag management system.

It works like this: Google Tag Manager collects all of the data on your website and sends it to other platforms like Facebook Analytics and Google Analytics.

It also allows you to easily update and add tags to your Google Analytics code without having to manually write code on the back end, which saves you time and headaches in the long run.

Assume you want to know how many people clicked on a downloadable PDF link. To do this without Google Tag Manager, you'd have to go in and manually change all of the download links. If you have Google Tag Manager, however, you can simply add a new tag to your Tag Manager to track downloads.

To begin, you must create an account on the Google Tag Manager dashboard.

Enter a user name and click continue.

You'll then create a container, which is essentially a bucket containing all of your website's "macros, rules, and tags," according to Google.

Give your container a descriptive name and choose the type of content with which it will be associated (Web, iOS, Android, or AMP).

After that, click create, review the Terms of Service, and agree to those terms. The container's installation code snippet will then be provided to you.

This is the code you'll be pasting into the back end of your website to manage your tags. To accomplish this, copy and paste the two lines of code onto each page of your website. According to the instructions, you must place the first one in the header and the second after the body's opening.

If you're using WordPress, simply paste the two pieces of code into your WordPress theme.

After that, you can proceed to step 2.

Step 2: Set up Google Analytics

You'll want to create a Google Analytics account, similar to Google Tag Manager, by signing up on the GA page.

Enter your account and website name, as well as the URL of the website. Make sure to select the industry category for your website as well as the time zone for the reporting.

After that, accept the Terms and Conditions to obtain your tracking ID.

Source: Google

The tracking ID is a series of numbers that instructs Google Analytics to send you analytics data. It's a number that appears to be UA-000000-1. The first set of numbers (000000) represents your personal account number, while the second set of numbers (1) represents the property number associated with your account.

Because this is unique to your website and personal data, do not publicly share the tracking ID.

Once you have the tracking ID, proceed to the next step.

Step 3: Set up analytics tag with Google Tag manager

You'll now learn how to configure Google Analytics tracking tags for your website.

Navigate to your Google Tag Manager dashboard and select the Add a new tag option.

You will be directed to a page where you can design your new website tag.

You'll notice that you can customize two areas of your tag on it:

• Configuration. Where the tag's data will be stored.
• Triggering. What kind of data do you want to collect

Select the type of tag you want to create by clicking the Tag Configuration button.

To create a Google Analytics tag, select the "Universal Analytics" option.

When you click that, you'll be able to select the type of data you want to monitor. After that, go to "Google Analytics Setting" and select "New Variable..." from the dropdown menu.

You'll then be directed to a new window where you can enter your Google Analytics tracking ID. This will send data from your website directly to Google Analytics, where you can view it later.

After that, go to the "Triggering" section and select the data you want to send to Google Analytics. 

As with the "Configuration" button, click the Triggering button to be taken to the "Choose a trigger" page. From here, select All pages to send data from all of your web pages.

When everything is said and done, your new tag setup should look like this:

Simply click Save and you're done! You now have a new Google Tag tracking and sending data about your website to your Google Analytics page!

But we're not done yet. You must still establish your objectives, which brings us to...

Step 4: Set up Google Analytics goals

Google Analytics does not know the key performance indicators for your website or business. That is why you must inform Google about your website's success. To do so, you must first create goals in your Google Analytics dashboard.

Begin by selecting the Admin button in the bottom left corner.

When you do, you'll be taken to another window where you can find the "Goals" button.

When you click that button, you'll be taken to the "Goals" dashboard, where you can create a new goal.

From here, you can browse various goal templates to see if one matches your intended goal. You'll also need to decide what kind of goal you want. They are as follows:

• Destination. Ex: if you wanted your user to go to a specific web page.
• Duration. Ex: if you wanted users to spend a certain amount of time on your site.
• Pages/Screens per session. Ex: if you wanted users to visit a certain number of pages.
• Event. Ex: if your goal was to get users to watch a video or click on a link.

You can then get even more specific with your goals, such as determining how long users must spend on your site to consider it a success. When you're finished, save the goal and Google Analytics will begin tracking it for you!

Remember that you can track a wide range of data with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. It's easy to get lost in all the metrics available. Our advice is to start small with the metrics that are most important to you.

Step 5: Link to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a powerful tool that can provide marketers and webmasters with valuable search metrics and data. You can use it to do things like:

• Examine the crawl rate of your website.
• View the results of Google's analysis of your website.
• Discover which internal and external pages are linked to your website.
• Examine the keyword queries for which you rank in search engine results.

To configure it, click the gear icon in the lower-left corner of the main dashboard.

Then, in the middle column, click on Property Settings.

Scroll to the bottom and select Adjust search console.

You can begin the process of adding your website to Google Search Console from this page.

When you click the Add button, you will be redirected to this page. Click the Add a site to Search Console button at the bottom.

You can add a new website to Google Search Console from this page. Enter the name of your website and click Add.

To add the HTML code to your site, follow the instructions. When you're finished, click "Save," and you should be taken back to Google Analytics!

Your data may not appear immediately, so be sure to return later to view your Google Search Console data.

So, what to do after you’ve set up Google Analytics, please click here to continue!

 

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