Google Analytics and WordPress – A Quick ‘n Dirty Guide
Getting With Google Analytics
Once you’ve obtained or signed into your Google Account (either through GMail, Google Premiere Apps, etc), visit the Google Analytics website at: http://www.google.com/analytics.
Adding a New Account
Get started by entering in the basic details of the website that you wish to track. You will also fill in some additional details on the following screens.
Tracking Instructions
Once you’ve put in the basic information required, Google Analytics will give you back some JavaScript code that you can paste into the footer of the pages of your website that you wish to track – but if you’re using WordPress, you can do something far more clever than that. Copy the tracking code from the window provided and put it in a safe place. Time to move on to WordPress.
Plugging It In To WordPress
Instead of pasting the code that Google gave us into every page we wish to track, we’re going to use a handy plugin for WordPress called ‘Ultimate Google Analytics’, created by Wilfred van der Deijl (http://www.oratransplant.nl/uga/). While you can download the plugin from the developer’s website, instead we’re going to use the WordPress Plugins feature, by clicking Plugins in the WordPress admin sidebar (note: you must be logged into your WordPress installation as an administrator for this to work)
Use the Plugins Search feature of Wordpress: http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.php and type in Ultimate Google Analytics. Once you’ve located the plugin, go ahead and install it. If you run into trouble installing the plugin, please make sure you have the correct permissions to install plugins, and that the wp-content/plugins folder can be written to.
Remember that JavaScript code from before? Somewhere in there is your Google Analytics ID. This is all you need
to copy and paste into the plugin. Navigate to the Settings section of WordPress, click on Ultimate GA , paste in your ID and then update. From here on in, pages on your website will be tracked by Google Analytics once it can see the code has been installed on your site.
Now that your code is in place, take the time to go and get familiar with Google Analytics. You can track who is looking at your site, what keywords they are using to find you, etc. You can also use the report features to have this information delivered to your email address on a regular basis.
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