Quick Tip Friday: Install Google Analytics
Already have Google Analytics installed? Pat yourself on the back and skip down to our advanced tip to find out even more about your visitors.
Statistics are a bloggers best friend. They can be used to get insight about the visitors that are currently coming to your site and they can also be used to help make decisions on next steps if you are looking to increase traffic.
If you are beginning to engage with brands that want to work with bloggers, you’ve likely been asked for statistics about your site traffic. Unique Visitors per month (UVM)? Or maybe page views? Many will ask for those statistics that are reports from Google Analytics (GA).
If you don’t have Google Analytics, the first great piece of news is that it’s free! It’s an online tool offered by Google, and it measures your traffic based on a little snippet of code that you put on your site.
It’s not just beneficial for working with brands though, you can find out a lot of information about your audience in Google Analytics which provides perfect research for planning content that will keep your readers engaged.
Now, let’s get to work.
Step 1: Visit the Google Analytics web page.
Follow directions for creating an account. You’ll need to link to a Google account (it will walk you through creating one if you don’t have one.)
Once your account has been created, you’ll add your site information.
Google gives you a tracking ID that begins with a UA. They will also provide you with some code. At this point, you can do one of two things.
Option 1: The code needs to be on every page of you site including any new page that is created moving forward. Some themes make this easy by offering up an custom field for you to input your tracking ID (the UA number). Check out your theme if you are using wordpress. Or your options if you are using blogger or another platform. If it’s offered, use that. You can also sometimes include this code in a header or footer code.
Option 2: You can also use a plugin to achieve this on WordPress. Something like Google Analytics by Yoast. Plugins can slow down your site and need to be kept updated, so if you can insert the code in your theme, that’s the way to go first.
You’ll be on your way to knowing more about your blog in no time! Have any tips for great ways to use stats to improve your blog? Leave them in the comments!
Advanced Tip: Already have Google Analytics installed and running? Check out this post about how to use it to dig deeper into the behaviors of your visitors.
Check out previous tips to help improve your blog!