How to Install and use Google Analytics & Google console
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Google Analytics
This is a free program allowing you to find out stats about what your audience is doing on your website.
Which pages they are looking at and for how long and also which pages they are leaving your website from.
This will help you plan your content for example-
If you have a really popular post- Google analytics will be able to tell you which page is getting the most pageviews how many people are visiting your website this will enable you to write more of the same sort of content to really improve your traffic.
Another useful metric is to look at time spent on posts which posts are high and which are low time spent reading the post – see if you can improve the posts with low time spent on page too. To find this you will need to go into Behaviour then Site content then All pages to get a view of time spent on page like this below:
If folks like one type of content from you –
My post 15 DIY sugar salt scrubs is one of my most popular posts – so to optimise this I also wrote another post on bath bombs to also hopefully gain the same sort of traffic.
Unfortunately Google analytics can be quite addictive and you will find yourself continuing to want to check them – they will be up and down like a yoyo so don’t get too fixated on them or you will get really disheartened. In the end, you want a nice steady increase -have a look at mine forget about the spike end of June that was a viral pin.
How to set up Google Analytics
Firstly make sure you have a google account set up!
Enter the details for setting up your account make sure you choose website not a mobile app you will then be given a tracking ID number which you need to add to your website.
I made things easy by installing Monster insights plugin in order to install Google analytics using the tracking code you will be given in Google Analytics.
If you want a video instruction to try out WordPress for beginners has a great run through here:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-install-google-analytics-in-wordpress/
The video goes into the various way you can install the tracking ID for instance the way I did it was with Monster Insights.
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Using Monster Insights
https://www.monsterinsights.com/
Install and activate the plugin if you are using this method. Once it has been installed you will have the menu for Monster Insights and you need to look for settings see below:
Once you get to settings page as above click on the blue button authenticate with your Google account and it will take you to your login page for Google accounts and ask you if you want to let Monster Insights access to your Google analytics to which you will need to reply yes.
Select the profile you want to track then you will be taken back to WordPress.
That’s it all done!!
Easy peasy.
If you don’t see anything on Google Analytics don’t worry it will take a few days for the data to show up.
You can also see data for your website under Monster Insights overview.
I haven’t covered the other methods as you can see them on the video and they are a bit more complicated.
If you want an overview of what Analytics means for your blog then head over
https://neilpatel.com/blog/google-analytics-5/
Google Console
Setting up Google Console is a must if you want help with SEO and increase your organic traffic from Google.
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-add-your-wordpress-site-to-google-webmaster-tools/
Has a video to show you through the process- note Google console used to be called Google Webmaster tools.
The aim of Google Console compared to Google Analytics is to show you how your website is doing in a Google search.
If you are using an SEO plugin like Yoast you just need go into settings and follow the instructions on the following page
First, you need to add your website property see mine has three variations make sure you add all of yours most likely the same as mine below. Unless you don’t have https you would only have two.
Regardless of whether its https or http you should add
www.nameofwebsite.com
And nameofwebsite.com
With each variation of http/https make sense?
If it doesn’t do get in touch with me and I can help you out as it confused me for a while too.
See the variations I have added below:
Make sure you verify your website for Google console to start the ball rolling you can do it by clicking on to settings at the top right corner of the page and scroll down to verification details and you should get a page like below:
Well as you can see I have verified using my Google Analytics after I set up my Google Analytics.
If you have Yoast Seo plugin installed then you can upload the HTML tag using this plugin.
If you have managed to verify your website you will get a big green tick.
Don’t forget to add your sitemap as well.
If you have Yoast plugin installed you only need to add in the sitemap index see this post
https://kb.yoast.com/kb/submit-sitemap-search-engines/
Quick flick for sitemaps
- Go to Yoast SEO plugin click on General and then features and you will see this below
Once you scroll down to XML sitemaps you want to click on the ? and you will see above then you expand see XML sitemaps as long as you have set this to ON you will see your sitemaps.
Next, you need to add these to Google console sitemaps see below
I have added all my sitemaps displayed on Yoast SEO plugin and you should see a success if they have been added.
Well done now what?
So what can you actually do with Google Console?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/4559176?hl=en
Answers this question for you.
Basically it gives you information on how Google monitors and shows your website presence on Google.
One of the most useful sections is your search analytics on Google console here is mine found by going to your dashboard initially:
Then click on search analytics to come to this page:
Queries opens a list of search terms people have used to get to your site and pages will show you which pages they have been looking at from Google great to see how your SEO strategy is doing.
If you click on clicks and impressions and CTR you will get a list of keywords what you want to look at is the number of impressions verse clickthroughs so more impressions but low clicks indicate people are seeing your keywords but not clicking through.
Here is a mega epic post on what you can do with Gooogle search console.
https://backlinko.com/google-search-console
Use the new version of Google Search Console.
I won’t go into what else you can do with it the article above gives you plenty to look at. As long as it’s set up initially for you to get started when you want to rock your SEO.
So you have your WordPress blog all nicely set up and you have installed Google Analytics and Google Console – now what?
How not to look like a newbie Blogger watch out for this next post!
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