When you learn start a blog step-by-step, you also need to learn how to set up Google Analytics tracking. If you do not know what your website is doing and how it is performing, you are not going to be able to improve it. In this article, we are going to teach you about the importance of analytics as well as how to set up tracking properly.
Why Analytics Are Important for Your Site
Having access to free analytics like Google Analytics are far too often taken for granted. The fact that GA is free could well be the reason that it is taken for granted. Once you understand why it so important, you are likely to go back through combing for any analytic data you may have gathered in the past. Once you see how powerful data gathering and analysis can be, this will soon be one of your favorite hobbies.
One of the pieces of data GA gives you is data about all of the channels that your traffic is coming from. You can learn if you are getting traffic from Google, Bing, Twitter or any other source. When you understand where your traffic is coming from, you know where you need to put more of your marketing budget.
You can also track your conversion rate in GA and see exactly what needs to happen for you to hit your sales goals. When you know what your conversion rates are, you can figure out how to best optimize your site to get a better conversion. If you know what your numbers are, you can work on them to improve them.
Customer engagement is an important part of seeing if your website is performing the way that you want it to. You can check your “bounce rate†on your analytics. If you have a high bounce rate, you know that your website is not speaking to the people that are finding it. There are plenty of ways that you can work on your site to decrease your bounce rate, but if you don’t have tracking enabled, you won’t know you have a high bounce rate.
You can also tell what type of devices are viewing your site. If you notice that 90% of your users are viewing your website from a certain device, you might decide that you want to do some extra optimization for that type of device. While you should always have a mobile responsive website, there are things that you can do to make the experience even better if you know the exact screen that is viewing your website.
Additionally, you can set up goals and compare your goals and the data to see if you are on track. Understanding whether or not you are on track gives you a lot of power and will keep you motivated even when you might be having an off day.
The bottom line on why you should use GA is because it provides you information vital to your marketing strategy as well as your ability to convert visitors and provide a top-notch user experience. On top of all of that, it is a free tool that you can use to achieve your goals.
Setting Up Google Analytics Tracking
Before you get started, you need to create or sign into your Google Analytics account. Make sure you enter the email address and password that you created the account with. Next you will need to set up a property in your analytics account. When we talk about a property, that means a website or app that you are tracking. It is your collection point in analytics for data you are gathering. You then need to set up a reporting view in your property. This allows you to customize the way that you see data so you only see what is important to you.
If you are using a WordPress website, you only need to go to plugins and search for Google Analytics. Click install and then activate. Find the plugin settings and enter your Google Analytics ID for the project. You can get this from the property that you set up in GA.
It is simple to set up tracking on your site, but the benefits are massive. If you do not understand how to use the data, you can always hire someone to use the information to optimize elements of your site or hone in on your marketing strategy. There are plenty of things you can do even if you aren’t sure what the data means.
Conclusion
Now you know how to set up Google Analytics on your WordPress site. If you have another type of site, there may some coding that you need to on your site and further verification that is needed. Setting up GA is not difficult, but as you have seen from the information above, it can provide you a great deal of benefits that will allow you to be more productive, make more profit and service you potential customers better.
You may have your own needs when it comes to Google Analytics and the good news is that it is very customizable. You can integrate it with different platforms, set up custom views so that you can filter the information that you want and filter out the information that you don’t want. This powerful tool will help you take your website to the next level if you use the information that you gather.
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