Google Analytics is a free-to-use tool that provides you with valuable information about your website and visitors. As an online marketer, it is a must-have tool to gain insights into how the audience interacts with your website.
Thus, if you haven’t installed or setup it yet, you are missing out on the wealth of information about your website. In this article, we’ll tell you how to set up Google Analytics for your website quickly to get the most accurate insights. First, let’s have a look at what makes it so great!
Why Do You Need Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is the most robust tool out there for digital marketers. No matter whether you are a freelance blogger or a big ecommerce company, you can leverage the information from Google Analytics.
Below is the information you get from Google Analytics-
- Measures the amount of traffic your website gets.
- Finds the channels that drive the most traffic to your website.
- Measures the traffic on the individual pages of the website.
- Sees whether most of your traffic comes from desktop or mobile.
- Gathers demographic information of the visitors.
- Gives an idea of your audience’s interests.
Besides, it tracks your top-selling products, who buys them or clicks that happen on your website. The best thing is, it is a free-to-use tool that lets you know if you are achieving your marketing goals. Or where you need to improve.
Now that you know how great Google Analytics is, let’s discuss how to setup this tool for your website.
How To Setup Google Analytics For Your Website?
In order to make the best use of Google Analytics, you need to set it up correctly. So, let’s see what goes into setting up Google Analytics for your website.
First, Set Up The Google Tag Manager
The first step is to set up the Google Tag Manager. It is a free tag management tool offered by Google. It grasps all the data on your website and sends it to different platforms, such as Facebook Analytics, Google Analytics, etc.
With Google Tag Manager, you can add or update tags to Google Analytics code without writing the code manually, saving you a lot of time. So, let’s go into the first step, i.e., setting up Google Tag Manager-
- Create an account on Google Tag Manager, and click Continue.
- Set up a container. Give it a descriptive name and choose the content type, i.e., Android, Web, iOS, or AMP.
- Then, click ‘Create.’
- Review the terms of service and agree.
- After that, you will see a screen with Google Tag Manager code.
You need to place two snippets of this code into your website’s header and footer to manage your tags. WordPress users can easily paste these codes into the WordPress theme. And here you need to understand one thing there is very vital to configure in your ppc marketing.
However, if you are using some other content management system than WordPress or Shopify, you need a developer to place this code in your website pages.
Once you are done with this step, you are all set to take the next step to set up Google Analytics.
Set Up Google Analytics With Google Tag Manager
Sign in to Google Analytics.
After signing up, you can enter your account and website information, such as website name, industry category, URL, etc. Don’t forget to choose the time zone you want to report in.
Getting Google Analytics Tracking ID
Once you do it all, you will be sent to a page where you get the website tracking ID of your Google Analytics account. A tracking ID is a string of numbers that tells Google to share data with you.
As this ID is unique to your website, don’t share it with anyone publicly.
Go To Google Tag Manager To Set Up Analytics Tag
Go to the Google Tag Manager dashboard. Select the ‘New Tag’ button. Thereafter, you will be taken to a page where you need to customize the two components- Configuration and Triggering.
Configuration
Tag configuration is where all the data collected by the tag will move.
To begin, click the Tag Configuration button. A new page will show up. Choose Universal Analytics. Once you do this, you can select the data type you want to track. Then, select ‘New Variable’ under ‘Google Analytics Settings.’
It will take you to a new window where you will enter your tracking ID. And you are done with configuring the tag.
Triggering
Triggering is the type of data you want to collect. Go to the ‘Triggering’ section. Click the ‘Triggering’ button and choose the ‘All Page’ option. It will send data from all your webpages to Google Analytics.
Save this tag and click ‘Submit’ on the Google Tag Manager dashboard. And, you have successfully configured Google Analytics on your website.
Set Up Your Google Analytics Goals
At this step, you want to set your goals on the Google Analytics dashboard and convey to Google what success looks like for you. For this, click the ‘Admin’ button. Head to the ‘View’ column, and select ‘Goals.’
Click the ‘New Goal’ and go through the various goal templates to figure out if any of these goals match yours. You can choose from an event, destination, duration, or pages per session. If these gaols don’t match your intended goal, click ‘Custom.’
A Bonus Tip
After you have saved your goals, Google Analytics will track them for you. Also, this robust tool can track a variety of data. If you are a newbie, you might get lost in all the key metrics you want to track. Therefore, experts recommend starting with a few metrics that matter most. This way, you will be in a better position to improve wherever needed.
Connect Google Analytics To Search Console
Your last step is to link Google Search Console to Google Analytics. There is necessary to see the bounce rate in google analytics. This sister tool of Google Analytics provides you with valuable data on search-related insights. It shows how well your website is performing on the search engine.
Below are a few steps to follow-
- Select the gear icon and head to the Admin section.
- Click the ‘Property Settings’ under the ‘Property’ option.
- Select ‘Adjust Search Console’ under the Search Console area.
- Click the Add button, and add a site to the GSC button.
- Enter your site’s name and click ‘Add.’
- Follow the directions and click ‘Save.’
Remember, your data won’t appear instantly. So, make sure to check later and see the data.
Conclusion
Now that you have set up Google Analytics, data analysis is at your fingertips. It’s time to look for ways to optimize your marketing efforts based on your analysis. If you work in a team, make sure to grant access to your website’s Google Analytics to your team members. This will allow you to work collaboratively on improving the website’s performance and run digital marketing campaigns more effectively.
To sum up, you can track your website’s overall progress from a single dashboard. So, get started with the steps mentioned above and setup Google Analytics for your website today!
