How to set up Google Analytics?

By setting up Google Analytics, the tool will allow you to see how many people visit your website and where your visitors come from, whether from Google or perhaps Facebook etc. Additionally, setting up Google Analytics will enable you to see the pages that are getting the most views. With this information, you can continue to optimize the pages gaining the most views and improve the pages that aren’t. 

Now that we know what the tool will do for us let’s create a Google Analytics account.

Create Google Analytics account

If you don’t already have a Google Analytics account, you can create one by visiting google.com/about/analytics. Once there, click on start for free and type down your google account. You can use the same google account that you use to access other Google tools such as Gmail and YouTube.

Once you’ve logged in, click once again on set up for free and then add your account name and let the recommended options that are already chosen for you ticked as they are good to keep.

Google analytics 4

Google has updated their Google Analytics to the new version, Google Analytics 4. With the new Google Analytics update, not all websites support the Google Analytics 4 version and its new tagging method. So to solve this issue and to be able to track your website’s performance, follow our steps as we continue from where we left off, which was the recommended option. 

You can now enter the name of your website (the property name). Select your time zone and currency to keep it accurate. To track websites that don’t support the new version, we need a universal analytics property. Select show advanced options to create a universal analytics property. Toggle on the option, write down your website URL once again and then click on create a universal property only. 

Once you’ve done that, click on the next page to fill in some information regarding your business. Finally, click on create an account. Once you’ve agreed to the terms of making the account, you’ve officially set up a Google Analytics account. 

When you choose to create a universal analytics property, the Google Analytics tracking code will automatically appear on the page. 

If you don’t have a Google account, follow the same steps but instead of typing down your address, just click on create account, and you can create a Google account for free.  

Google Analytics’s tracking code

You need to install the tracking code that Google Analytics gives you to track your performance. The tracking code will appear automatically after you’ve set up Google Analytics and created the universal property.

Install tracking code on Website Builder

If you’re using the Website Builder from one.com, go to the control panel. Select edit template and then click on components. Once you’ve clicked on components, choose the code component. 

Write a title name for the code in case you might need to access the code component further down the line. Paste the Google Analytics tracking code you’ve copied into the code box. Voila! Save and publish your website to be in action.

How are people coming to your website?

If you would like to grow your traffic, this is one of the most important metrics to track. By knowing how your audience finds your site allows you to make strategic decisions. If search gives you a good amount of traffic each month, you may want to pour more resource into a good SEO campaign or if your social media outreach program isn’t giving you the traffic you thought you would get, it might be worth taking another path.

Install the tracking code on your WordPress website

If you own a WordPress website, you can follow our steps on creating an account; the only difference is that you don’t need to toggle on the universal analytics option. Instead:

• Click next and select your business information as before.
• Click create. 

You’ll notice now that the Google Analytics tracking code is not shown on the screen automatically. So, we need to create a data stream for Google Analytics 4.

• Select web as we are focusing on tracking a website
• Write down your URL and then give the data stream a name for later reference.

We recommend keeping the enhanced measurements toggled on; you can always change and add later on. 

• Click on create a stream – now you will see a measurement ID at the top.
• Go to your WordPress.com settings.
• Click on tools
• Select marketing
• Select traffic.
• Scroll down to the Google Analytics section
• Paste in the measurement ID
• Save your settings.  

Now you’re tracking your WordPress website. 

Install the tracking code on your website

If you’ve coded your website, this is the way to do it. 

Follow the same steps as we did for WordPress; however, you don’t have to copy the measurement ID. Instead, enhance the global site tag and copy the Google Analytics tracking code. 

You must install the tracking code on every page of your website. You can copy the tracking code and paste it either to your website’s header or footer file. 

If you copy the Google Analytics tracking code to the header, make sure that code is contained before the closing </head>. The same applies if you track the code to the footer; make sure it’s contained before closing </html>.

You can ensure that you’ve copied the tracking code to all your pages by enabling the GA checker tool. The GA checker scans your entire website to see if the code has been copied on all pages. If you’ve copied them all, there will be a checkmark next to Google Analytics on all the pages.

Test your Google Analytics

An easy way to find out if Google Analytics is working after setting up the tool is to open an incognito window and visit your website. Once on the website, refresh your already open Google Analytics page with the tracking code information. You’ll see that it states that there is one active user on your website. This indicates that your Google Analytics is working as it’s accurately counting your incognito visit. 

Give it 24 hours and you’ll see some real results. Click on the home page, and you’ll see how many people have visited your website during these 24 hours; and other aspects like which countries your users are from and which pages are the most popular. 

Actionable insights from Google Analytics

Let’s go through some actionable insight from Google Analytics that can help improve your marketing performance. 

• Visitors

Knowing how many visitors you have on average every month is vital. This information will, for example, help you if you’d like to approach someone for an interview or request a guest post. This way, the person you’re asking can calculate the payoff instead of guessing. 

You can track this statistic by clicking on audience overview. You can set the time period you want to look at to see the statistics for that period. You’ll be able to see the number of unique visitors to your website, the number of times a specific someone visited your website, the number of pages visitors browsed when entering your website, as well as the bounce rate; the number of people leaving your website quickly after visiting. 

• How are people finding your website?

If you know where a visitor found your website, you can use that information to grow traffic and make strategic decisions. For example, if most people are coming from Google search engine, then perhaps you should allocate time and resources on a good SEO campaign to further improve the amount of traffic you receive every month from search. 

In the same way, you can also allocate time and resources on the other platforms, for example, your social media outreach program that’s not working and try to improve that. 

You can track this statistic by clicking on acquisition/all traffic/channels.

• Content

As we all know, content is king. By knowing what type of content generates more popularity, you can continue producing the same kind of popular content for your users. For example, if you’ve written step-by-step guides that are gaining attention, you should continue creating the same type of content and give more value to your readers. 

You can track this statistic by going to behaviour/site content/all pages in the navigation bar. You’ll be able to see a list of the most popular content. 

• Mobile

Responsive design for mobile devices is vital. It’s essential that browsing your website on a mobile phone does not lack any features you’d otherwise get if you browsed on a desktop. To decide whether you should ensure that all features work on mobile devices, such as directly calling a phone number or sending an address to your maps app, look at your statistics to see how many people visit you from their mobile devices. 

You can track this statistic by going to audience/mobile/overview in the navigation bar. 

Happy tracking!