Why Google Analytics is the One Plugin You Shouldn’t Live Without

Google Analytics is a plugin for your website. It gives you essential information about your visitors.

Google Analytics is a plugin for your website. It gives you essential information about your visitors. It tells you things like which social media sites your visitors are coming from. Which allows you see what social media strategies are working for you. It also keeps data on which pages your visitors are coming to and how long they’re staying. Once you know what kind of posts your followers respond to . You can make better decisions about what to write about in the future. These are just a few things that Google Analytics can do for you. Let’s delve in a little deeper to give you the full picture.

You can get a free Google Analytics account here:https://www.google.com/analytics .
If you have a Gmail account you can set Google Analytics up through that account. If you don’t have an account through Google you can create one on the Google Analytics web page. Once you have an account you can sign into and set up your analytics page on your site. Google will give you a tracking code to paste onto your pages. You will be guided through a short form. You will be asked to tell google your site name and URL, time zone, and what industry you’re in. Google will also ask you who you want to share your data with. Google would like you to share your data with their: Products and Services, Benchmarking, Tech Support and Account specialists. Check yes to all. Get your code.

our tracking code needs to be installed on every page of your website. If you are not tech savvy about HTML and web coding there is a free plugin for wordpress. MonsterInsights has both a free and a paid version. The free version will work just fine for what you need here.
Install your plugin. Give them permission to access your Google analytics data and they will do all the work for you. If you have a Weebly account there is no plugin but you can easily install your code by going to: Settings >Search Engine Optimization(SEO)>footer code and paste in your analytics code in the footer. If you feel .pasting in code please ask Weebly support for help. I am not responsible for errors you create on your site. If you have a WIX account there is a section that WIx created for you to post in your Google Analytics Code. You can find it here: Site Manager>New Tool> Google Analytics> Google Analytics Code. Just paste it in. Easy breezy. On Tumblr click the edit theme button and enter your Google Analytics ID in your settings. It will take a couple of hours before you have analytics data. So be patient.

When you log in to your analytics page you will be taken to the Audience Overview for your website.Google calls visitor interactions “sessions” it will give you information on the average duration your visitors stayed.The bounce rate/ how many people clicked on your site and left right away. Don’t be concerned if your bounce rate number seems abnormally high. The average bounce rate for websites is between 50 and 70 percent. You will see how many users spent time on your site and how many pages they looked at. There is a popup box that appears as you mouse over each statistic that gives you more details.You can click on each area to see a more detailed report. This is just the Audience overview page. You will have over fifty report pages that you can view. You can find your other pages under the report tab and the top of the page.

The reason for installing analytics on your site is to help understand your sites visitors. How they came to be on your site and what they are doing once they get there. You can use the information on which pages are visited and your bounce rate on those pages to improve future content. Is page A most visited because you have a great Pinterest pin directing traffic to it? Does page B have a high bounce rate because it is cluttered with advertisements and popups? Is it because a link leading to it is misleading or unclear? Knowing where your visitors are coming from is essential in determining the effectiveness of your social networks. You have to ask yourself why traffic is or isn’t coming from these sites. You can also easily tell if the video you put up on Facebook was as effective as the article that you posted. Keep a journal of what content you put on each network on what days. Also keep track of how much time you spend on each site and of your interactions. How much organic traffic you get from Google and what pages those visitors went to will tell you which keywords are working for you. You will be amazed at all of the information you now have available to you. The small tweaks you make as a result will boost to your website and gain you more followers.

There are many ways to customize reports, add shortcuts to data and many other features that Google Analytics offers. I hope you found this guide useful for getting you started with the basics.