Knowing how to set upward Google Analytics is the first step to understanding:

  • Who your website's visitors are
  • What content they want to run into from your business
  • How they behave when browsing your site

The best part? Google Analytics is absolutely free.

And once y'all have it implemented, Google Analytics allows you lot to rails and measure out your business' traffic goals and prove the ROI of your web and social media presence.

Yet, setting up Google Analytics tin can be hard (to put it mildly). Luckily for you, we have a footstep-past-step guide for digital marketers of any level to hands and painlessly set up Google Analytics.

Earlier we jump into how exactly to do that, let'southward take a await at what makes Google Analytics so great.

Bonus: Get a free social media analytics report template that shows y'all the most of import metrics to track for each network.

Why y'all need Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a robust and powerful tool that provides indispensable information near your website and visitors.

With more than than 56% of all websites using Google Analytics, it's also one of the nearly pop tools out there for digital marketers — and for proficient reason. The tool allows you to access a wealth of information regarding your site's visitors.

Hither's just a few pieces of data you can go from Google Analytics:

  • Amount of traffic your site gets overall
  • The websites your traffic came from
  • Individual page traffic
  • Amount of leads converted
  • The websites your leads came class
  • Demographic data of visitors (due east.g. where they live)
  • Whether your traffic comes from mobile or desktop

It doesn't affair if you're a freelancer with a apprehensive web log or if you lot're a large company with a massive website. Anyone can benefit from the data in Google Analytics.

At present that y'all know how dandy information technology is, let's jump into exactly how to set up Google Analytics for your own website.

How to set upwards Google Analytics in 5 unproblematic steps

Setting upward Google Analytics can be tricky. However, one time you lot accept it gear up up, you stand to gain a ton of invaluable information very apace.

This is pure lxxx/20 — with a pocket-size corporeality of work at present you stand up to gain disproportionate rewards after.

To set up upward Google Analytics, you lot simply take to follow these steps:

  • Footstep i: Fix upwardly Google Tag Manager
  • Pace ii: Create Google Analytics account
  • Step 3: Set up analytics tag with Google Tag Manager
  • Stride 4: Set up goals
  • Stride 5: Link to Google Search Console

Let's jump in.

Footstep 1: Set up up Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a complimentary tag management arrangement from Google.

The mode it works is simple: Google Tag Manager takes all the data on your website and sends it to other platforms such as Facebook Analytics and Google Analytics.

It also allows you to easily update and add tags to your Google Analytics code without having to manually write lawmaking on the back end—saving you lot time and a lot of headaches downward the road.

Permit'southward say you want to be able to track how many people clicked on a downloadable PDF link. Without Google Tag Managing director, you'd have to get in and manually modify all the download links to practice this. However, if you accept Google Tag Manager, y'all can just add a new tag to your Tag Manager to track the downloads.

First, yous'll have to create an account on the Google Tag Managing director dashboard.

Google Tag Manager Add A New Account

Enter in an account name and click continue.

You'll then set up a container, which is essentially a bucket containing all of the "macros, rules, and tags" for your website, according to Google.

Google Tag Manager Setup Container

Requite your container a descriptive proper noun and select the type of content it'll exist associated with (Web, iOS, Android, or AMP).

One time that'southward washed, click create, review the Terms of Service, and agree to those terms. You lot'll then exist given the container's installation code snippet.

Google Tag Manager installation code snippet

This is the piece of lawmaking you'll exist pasting into your website'due south back end in society to manage your tags. To do that, re-create and paste the 2 snippets of code onto every page of your website. As the instructions say, y'all'll demand to the first ane in the header and the 2d after the opening of the body.

If you're using WordPress, you lot can easily do this past pasting the ii pieces of code into your WordPress theme.

Pro tip: You tin make this process even easier by installing and activating the Insert Headers and Footers plugin for WordPress (or equivalent for other types of websites). This will let you lot to add together any script to the Header and Footer throughout your entire website, but you only have to re-create and paste information technology once.

Headers and footers plugin for WordPress

Source: WPBeginner

Once that's done, y'all tin can move onto Step 2.

Step two: Set up Google Analytics

Like Google Tag Manager, you lot're going to want to create a Google Analytics business relationship by signing upwardly on the GA page .

Sign up for Google Analytics page

Enter your account and website name, too equally the website's URL. Be sure to also select your website's manufacture category and the time zone you lot want the reporting to be in.

Enter account name, website name, and URL

Once you do all that, take the Terms and Services in guild to get your tracking ID.

Website Tracking ID and code

Source: Google

The tracking ID is a string of numbers that tells Google Analytics to ship analytics data to you lot. It's a number that looks like UA-000000-1. The first set of numbers (000000) is your personal account number and the 2nd fix (1) is the property number associated with your business relationship.

This is unique to your website and your personal data—so don't share the tracking ID with anyone publicly.

Once you take the tracking ID, it'due south time to move onto the side by side step.

Pace 3: Set up analytics tag with Google Tag manager

At present you'll learn how to prepare upwardly specific Google Analytics tracking tags for your website.

Become to your Google Tag Manager dashboard and click on the Add a new tag button.

Google Tag Manager add new tag

You volition be taken to a page where you lot tin can create your new website tag.

On it, you'll meet that you tin can customize two areas of your tag:

  • Configuration. Where the information collected by the tag volition go.
  • Triggering. What type of information you want to collect.

Configuration and triggering info on Google Tag Manager

Click on the Tag Configuration button to choose the type of tag yous want to create.

Yous'll want to choose the "Universal Analytics" option in order to create a tag for Google Analytics.

Tag Configuration button Universal Analytics

Once you click on that, you'll be able to choose the type of data you desire to rails. Practice that and and then go to "Google Analytics Setting" and choose "New Variable…" from the dropdown carte.

Google Analytics Setting New Variable

Yous'll then be taken to a new window where yous'll be able to enter in your Google Analytics tracking ID. This will transport your website'due south data straight into Google Analytics where you'll exist able to see information technology later.

Enter Google Analytics Tracking ID

In one case this is done, head to the "Triggering" section in order to select that information you lot want to transport to Google Analytics.

Equally with the "Configuration," click on the Triggering button in order to exist sent to the "Choose a trigger" page. From here, click on All pages then information technology sends data from all your web pages.

Choose trigger to select data to send to Google Analytics

When all is said and washed, your new tag gear up should look something like this:

Bonus: Get a gratuitous social media analytics report template that shows you the most important metrics to track for each network.

Get the free template now!

Google Analytics tag final page

Now but click on Save and voila! You have a new Google Tag tracking and sending data to your Google Analytics folio nigh your website!

We're not done even so, though. You lot still need to set up your goals — which brings us to…

Stride 4: Set up Google Analytics goals

While you probably know the key performance indicators for your website and business, Google Analytics doesn't.

That'due south why you need to tell Google what success looks like for your website.

In order to do that, you demand to set goals on your Google Analytics dashboard.

Start past clicking on the Admin button on the bottom left corner.

Use Admin button to set goals on Analytics dashboard

Once you practise, you'll be sent to another window where you'll be able to find the "Goals" button.

Goals button

Click on that button and yous'll then exist taken to the "Goals" dashboard where y'all'll be able to create a new goal.

Create new goal on dashboard

From here, yous'll exist able to look through dissimilar goal templates to see if ane matches your intended goal. You'll as well demand to choose the type of goal yous want. They include:

  • Destination. east.g. if your goal was for your user to attain a specific web page.
  • Duration. east.yard. if your goal was for users to spend a specific corporeality of fourth dimension on y'all site.
  • Pages/Screens per session. e.yard. if your goal was to have users go to a specific amount of pages.
  • Event. e.g. if your goal was to get users to play a video or click on a link.

Goal template including setup and description

From there, yous tin can go fifty-fifty more specific with your goals like choosing exactly how long users need to spend on your site in society to consider it a success. Once yous're done, salve the goal and Google Analytics volition get-go to track it for yous!

Save goal on Google Analytics

Remember: There is a wide variety of information you tin runway using both Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. It's piece of cake to get lost in all the metrics you can rail. Our recommendation is to start small with the metrics that matter virtually to you.

Stride five: Link to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a powerful tool to aid marketers and webmasters gain invaluable search metrics and information.

With it, yous can do things like:

  • Check your site's search crawl rate
  • See when Google analyzes your website
  • Find out what internal and external pages link to your website
  • Await at the keyword queries yous rank for in search engine results

To gear up it upwardly, click on the gear icon in the lower left hand corner of the main dashboard.

Google Search Console gear icon

Then click on Property Settings in the middle column.

Google Search Console Property Settings

Ringlet downwards and click on Adjust search console.

Adjust search console

Here you'll be able to beginning the process of adding your website to Google Search Console.

Add website to Google Search Console

Click on the Add button and you'll exist redirected to this page. At the bottom, click on the Add together a site to Search Console button.

Add site to Search Console

From here, you lot'll be able to add a new website to Google Search Console. Enter in your website's name and click Add.

Add new website to Google Search Console

Follow the directions to add together the HTML lawmaking to your site. Once you're washed with that, click on "Save" and you should exist taken back to Google Analytics!

Your data won't appear right away—and so be sure to check back later to run into your Google Search Console data.

What to do subsequently you've set up Google Analytics

Now, in that location are a ton of different things you can do with Google Analytics. The world of data analysis and spider web marketing is literally at your fingertips.

Here are a few suggestions of things you tin can do:

Grant access to your team

If you lot're working with a team, grant permissions to make sure other people can access the data on Google Analytics.

To add users, you but take to follow these six steps from Google:

  1. Click on the gear icon in the lower left hand corner to go to the Admin dashboard
  2. In the outset column, click on the User Direction button.
  3. Click Add new users
  4. Enter the email address for the user's Google business relationship
  5. Select the permissions yous desire to grant them
  6. Click Add

And voila! Yous should at present exist able to give others access to your business'south Google Analytics data.

Link Google Ads with Google Analytics

If your business uses Google Ads, you can now link that to your Google Analytics account then y'all can run across "the full customer bike, from how they collaborate with your marketer (eastward.g. seeing ad impressions, clicking ads) to how they finally complete the goals you've ready for them on your site (e.g. making purchases, consuming content)," according to Google.

To link the two accounts, follow the seven steps beneath:

  1. Click on the gear icon in the lower left hand corner to go to the Admin dashboard
  2. In the "Property" cavalcade, click on Google Ads Linking
  3. Click on New Link Group
  4. Click on the Google Ads accounts you want to link with Google Analytics
  5. Click Continue
  6. Make certain that linking is on for each property yous want to see data from Google Ads
  7. Click Link accounts

With your accounts link, you'll have even greater access to data yous need to determine your ad campaign's ROI.

Prepare up views

Google Analytics allows you to set up your reports so you only see the data and metrics that matter to you through "views."

By default, Google Analytics gives you an unfiltered view of each website in your account. That ways if you take, say, iii websites associated with y'all Google Analytics, information technology'll all exist sent to i property where the data is aggregated.

Notwithstanding, y'all can set information technology up and so you only get the information y'all desire to run across. For instance, you could take a view that helps you see simply organic search traffic. Or perhaps yous want to meet only social media traffic. Or you want to encounter conversions from you target market.

All can exist done through views.

To add together a new view, simply follow the steps below:

  1. Click on the gear in the lower left hand corner to go to the Admin dashboard
  2. In the "View" column, click Create new view
  3. Select "Web Site" or "App"
  4. Enter a proper noun for the view describing what it's filtering for
  5. Choose the "Reporting Time Zone"
  6. Click Create View

One time you create your view, you'll be able to edit the view settings to filter exactly what y'all want to come across.

5 ways to utilize Google Analytics to clarify your web traffic

Now that y'all've successfully fix Google Analytics and looked at some ways to optimize it, let'southward explore some ways you can analyze your traffic.

On the left sidebar, y'all tin can discover v reporting options that offer you different ways of looking at your web traffic.

Analyze web traffic using reports

Permit's have a await at each now and interruption down exactly what you can expect to find in them.

Existent-Time overview

Real-time overview

The Real-Time report shows you an overview of visitors to your site at that very moment.

The study even breaks downwardly how many pageviews you are getting each minute and second. Y'all'll be able to accept a look at where your audience is coming from, the superlative keywords you're ranking for, and how many conversions you're getting.

Though this can be very helpful for larger sites consistently bringing in several hundred, thousand, or million visitors each day, it'southward really non equally helpful for smaller websites.

In fact, yous might non see very much data on this report at all if your site is smaller and/or newer. Y'all'd be better off looking at some of the other reports on this list.

Audience overview

Audience overview

This is one of the almost powerful pieces of reporting you tin can admission from Google Analytics. The Audience reports gives yous information near visitors to your site based on attributes relevant to your business organization and goals.

This can be anything and everything from key demographics (e.thousand. location, age), returning customers, and more than.

You can even get really in the weeds and runway very, very specific types of audiences. For example, y'all could runway visitors who visited a sure landing page for a product on your website and then four days later returned to buy the product.

This information is incredibly beneficial for doing things like creating heir-apparent personas, choosing topics that your visitors might exist interested in for weblog posts, and tailoring your make's expect and experience for them.

Go deeper: Here'south how yous tin create audiences on Google Analytics.

Conquering overview

Acquisition overview

The Acquisition report shows you where your audience is coming from in the world equally well as online.

If y'all find that a specific web log post spiked in traffic, you'll be able to find exactly where online the visitors to that blog post are coming from. For example, after some digging, you might discover that the blog post was posted in a relevant Facebook grouping that really engaged with the post.

The Acquisition written report is very important and can assistance you make up one's mind the ROI of specific marketing campaigns. For case, if you recently started a big Facebook advertizing entrada, you'll be able to run into how many users are coming from Facebook to your website.

This better informs how you should approach social media and SEO marketing campaigns in the time to come.

Beliefs overview

Behavior overview

The Beliefs study shows you how your users movement through and interact with your website. More broadly, it shows y'all how many pageviews your site gets total, also equally how many pageviews individual pages on your site receives.

This breakup can be incredibly valuable. It'll show yous exactly where your audition spends the bulk of their time when they're on your website, correct down to the spider web page. Diving in even further, y'all can see the "Behavior Flow" of your users. This is a visualization of the path your visitors nearly oft accept on your website.

Behavior flow of website users

This follows the user from the first folio they typically visit all the way to the terminal folio they typically visit before they leave.

This can be a good way to gut bank check your assumptions about how your visitors approach your site. If they aren't taking a desired path (for example, you want them to go to a specific landing folio or a product folio but they're not), then you can re-optimize your website to assistance go them there.

The Behavior overview also gives you a good breakdown of each page individually. It showcases how many views those pages are getting, the average time visitors spend on those pages, as well as unique page views. This tin can be very valuable specially if you're leveraging SEO marketing for your site.

Conversions overview

Conversions overview

This is where you'll be able to run across the impact of all your marketing efforts. It showcases how much money you're earning by turning website visitors to customers.

There are three unlike reports in the Conversions tab:

  • Goals: This is the summary of how well your goals and conversions are performing. Yous'll be able to run across the number of completions along with the monetary value of each one. This written report is also crucial because you can use it to quantify the value and ROI of your campaigns.
  • Ecommerce. Relevant if you lot accept an ecommerce shop on your website. It'll testify you your product sales, checkout processes, too as inventory.
  • Multi-Channel Funnels. Gives you a look at how different marketing channels such as social media, landing pages, and advertisements work in conjunction to turn visitors into customers. For example, a client might take purchased from you subsequently finding your website on a search engine. However, they might take learned about your make after seeing you lot mentioned on a social media feed. This report helps you acquire that.

This is a very important written report you should become very familiar with if y'all want to improve sales overall.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is a must have for any digital marketer. It'll aid you track the performance of your website along with all your digital marketing campaigns.

With it you'll be able to determine ROI and larn more about your audience. Without it, you lot'll practically be sailing on an ocean without a compass and a map (which is to say, very lost).

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