How to Use Google Analytics to Monitor Your WordPress Site

 You may track your website traffic and data with Google Analytics, a free tool with many features.Google Analytics will show you the number of visitors to your site, the number of conversions, and how visitors engage with your content. For your website to be optimized, this information is essential.

Google Analytics codes come in two different varieties.

The Google Universal Analytics (UA) code may be familiar to you. This is being retired, and Google Analytics 4 will take its place (GA4).

Compared to Google UA, GA4 is far more configurable and may be used with websites or mobile apps.

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Setting Up Google Analytics On Your Website

Setting up your free Google Analytics account is the first thing you should do.

A Gmail account sign-in screen will appear. You will be logged in after you have done that.

Select the "Start Measuring" button.

You must enter a name for your account on the following screen. You may want to use something general, like the name of your company, since you can track multiple websites with a single account.

image source: Google Analytics

Setting up properties is what you should do next. Included in this should be the name of your website, the location's currency, and the time zone. Setting up properties is what you should do next. Included in this should be the name of your website, the location's currency, and the time zone.

A few questions on your company and your intended use of Google Analytics will be asked on the next screen.

You will be brought to the administrator dashboard if you click on the terms of the agreement and choose email communications.

The data stream should then be set up.

Choose "web stream" when installing Google Analytics to a WordPress website.

You'll then enter the URL for your website and the site’s name.

The stream name, stream URL, stream id, and measurement id are displayed once you click the Create Stream button.

You will add to your website using the measurement id.

Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress Website

Any WordPress site can add Google Analytics in three different ways.

The best choice for you will depend on how comfortable you are making alterations to the code of your website.

In the first option, you can add Google Analytics to your website without knowing any code by using a WordPress plugin.

The second option makes use of a WordPress plugin that requires a small amount of copy-and-paste code.

The third choice necessitates modifying the website's theme files' source code.

1. Making Use Of The Google Analytics Plug-In

Using a plugin is the simplest approach to add your Google Analytics tag code to WordPress.

The most widely used plugin for adding your Google Analytics code to your website is MonsterInsights' Google Analytics for WordPress.

Unless you require sophisticated tracking and reporting features, the free version should function just fine. After that, you should upgrade to the pro version.

Step 1:Installing and enabling the MonsterInsights plugin is the first step.

Step 2: Open the Wizard, enter the details of your website, and press the Connect MonsterInsights button. This will guide you through a few pages of pre-selected settings for your setup.

Step 3: The following step will ask you to sign into your Gmail account and grant access to your Google account.

Step 4: After clicking Allow, the Google Analytics account to which it will connect will be displayed.

Step 5:In order to connect to your Google Analytics account, select Complete Connection . When it's done, it will offer you the option to upgrade to Pro, but you can choose the link at the bottom to complete the installation without doing so.

Now that everything is set up, Insights should appear in your WordPress dashboard. In the WordPress dashboard, Reports, Settings, and any other tools you've chosen are now visible.

2. Making Use Of The Header/Footer Script Plug-In

A header/footer plugin is the second approach to insert your Google Analytics tag.

This technique is especially useful if you want to monitor various metrics for various pages because it can be used to both individual pages and the full website.

Custom code snippets and WPCode Insert Headers and Footers - With over 1 million users, WordPress Code Manager is the most used plugin for adding header and footer code.

Step 1:Installing the Headers and Footers plugin in WordPress is the first step.

Step 2: Select the Install Manually button under Tagging Instructions in your Google Analytics account.

Step 3:Copy the Google Tag code in step three.

Step 4: In the left-hand navigation menu of your WordPress dashboard, you will find the Code Snippets plugin.

Step 5: In the Header area, paste your code after choosing Header & Footer from the drop-down menu.

Hit Save Changes in step six.

image source: Wordpress

Optional Step: Select the page or post you want to add code to, then scroll to the bottom. In the header area of the page, insert the required Google Analytics code. To save your changes, click Update.

3. Directly add a snippet of the Google Analytics code to the header.php file

This is an additional option for adding your Google Analytics code if you feel comfortable working directly in your theme code. Remember that you are making direct changes to the theme files, so if you update or change your theme, you will lose your Google Analytics code and will need to add it again.

Step 1: Select Appearance > Theme File Editor from the WordPress dashboard.

Step 2:Choose the parent theme and header.php in step two.

Step 3: Cut and paste the code just before the /head> element that closes the page.

Step 4: To save your modifications, click Update File.

How to Check Your Google Analytics Tags

Using the Tag Assistant (Legacy) by Google Chrome Extension, you may verify that your Google Analytics tag is correctly installed and functioning once you've added it to your website.

Install the Chome browser extension, go to the WordPress site on which you installed Google Analytics, and it will inform you of the tags that are present and whether there are any errors.

Install Google Analytics on Your WordPress Site

After installing your Google Analytics tag, you can access the dashboard on the Google Analytics website.

As an alternative, you can access the reports and statistics from within your WordPress dashboard if you chose to install Google Analytics on your WordPress site via the MonsterInsight plugin technique.

Using Google Analytics, you can learn a lot about how people find and use your website, how well pages convert, how many people are visiting your site, and much more.

With one of these three approaches, adding the Google Analytics tag to a WordPress site is simple:

Google Analytics plugin.

Header/Footer plugin.

Add directly to theme header.php file.

With the help of Google Analytics data, you may learn a lot about the visitors to your website and make adjustments.

It's vital to note that Google Analytics cannot collect data retroactively, therefore you should do so as soon as possible to ensure that no data is lost.