How To Setup Google Analytics

How To Setup Google Analytics

With an estimated 30-50 million websites using Google Analytics, there is no question that it is one of the most important and useful tools you can use for your website.

If you don’t have Google Analytics on your website, stop what you’re doing and install it!

Google Analytics is an easy-to-use tool that you can use for several different reasons. Using it, you can identify where your customers are coming from, create custom reports, dig deeper into who your website visitors are, use automated data collection, and much more.

And, it’s free.

In this blog post, we are going to show you exactly how to install and setup Google Analytics on your website. However, before we install it, let’s quickly look at some of the benefits of using it.

Easy to use, even for beginners

You don’t need to be a computer wizard to use Google Analytics. Since it was introduced more than 10 years ago, the structure has remained relatively the same, and is incredibly simple for beginners to learn.

Learn about your customers

Every business wants to know about their customers and that’s exactly what Google Analytics will do for you. You’ll be able to view your visitors’ behaviours, preferences, where they’re coming from and how they’re finding you.

See what is and isn’t working

Once you setup Google Analytics, you can view data such as your site’s bounce rate and the average time people are spending on your page. You can also set goals and track how well they’re doing, how many you’ve completed, their conversion rate, and more.

Google Analytics can make your life much easier when it comes to understanding your business’ website and its customers. It can help drive in customers that matter most: local customers.

(RELATED: The Top 10 Tips For Using Local SEO To Get Customers)

That said, it’s time to install Google Analytics.

Step 1: Signing into Google and Analytics

Go to analytics.google.com and sign into your Google account. Once completed, you should see the following on your screen:

This means that you do not have Analytics setup with your Google account. To do so, simply click the “Sign up” button on the right to start using Google Analytics.

Step 2: Creating an Analytics account

Next, fill out the information required to setup Google Analytics. You’ll be asked to enter information such as your website URL, the name of your website, industry category and time zone that your business is located in.

Once finished, it is recommended that all checkboxes are checked off under the “Data Sharing Settings” section. This is recommended by Google, however your desire to share your Analytics data is up to you.

Then, select the blue “Get Tracking ID” button at the bottom of the page.

Step 3: Getting your Analytics code

Next, copy the tracking code provided to you. If you do not see this immediately after selecting the blue “Get Tracking ID” button in Step 2, you can get to it by going to your Analytics Dashboard -> Admin -> Tracking Info (under the Property ID).

Step 4: Installing Google Analytics on your website

Lastly, we must install the Analytics code on your website. To do this, login to the backend of your website and find your homepage’s HTML section. On most pages this will be the index page.

Then, find the tag. Your Google Analytics code should be inserted right before this tag. Paste the code you copied. If done correctly, it should look like this:

You can confirm that it’s installed on your website by going to your homepage, right-click and select “View page source”. You should see your Analytics code just before the tag.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to setup Google Analytics on your site, you can start tracking important data relating to your business. With Analytics on your side, you’ll be able to make necessary changes to your website and watch your business grow!

If you want to have us review your website and give you a free 30-minute consultation where we show you how to generate more local customers from your website, click here.