When it comes to tracking and measuring website statistics, Google Analytics seems to be an industry standard, and although there are other options available, Googles Analytics is definitely the most popular.
The old saying “There is more than one way to skin a cat” definitely applies when installing Google analytics on your WordPress website.
For example take a look at a post I wrote recently titled 34 WordPress Plugins To Monitor Your Sites Traffic, there’s at least 30 plugins specifically for Google that will track your statistics in that list alone, and keep in mind new plugins will always be coming out in the future.
Plus there is always the old fashion method of just adding the javascript code into your themes footer.php file, but this may become a problem if you ever change your theme.
In this tutorial I want to show how you can install Google analytics on your site using the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin. I decided to use this particular plugin because it’s a light weight plugin that works seamlessly with the Google analytics product.
The first step is to Download the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin to your hard drive.
After Downloading it, Unzip the plugin file and upload it to your server using your FTP client.
The tutorial on How To Install WordPress Plugins Using Filezilla will walk you through the process of uploading and activating WordPress plugins.
After activating the plugin, we need to get our specific UA number for our site, If you haven’t already added your site to your Google analytics account, then read the article How To Add A New Website To Your Google Analytics Account before moving forward.
After logging into your Google analytics dashboard, you should see your websites domain name and next to it a UA number, Highlight and Copy the UA number.
The next step is to set up the Ultimate GA plugin.
Under the settings tab on the left sidebar of your WordPress admin, you should see a link with the text Ultimate GA. Click on it to Continue.
If you can’t see this link check to make sure you have activated the plugin.
After opening the Ultimate GA settings screen, you will notice there is a text box, Account ID with this text inside of it UA-XXXXXX-X
Replace this with the UA number you previously copied from your Google account.
- Paste in the UA number you previously copied from your Google account.
- Click on the Update options button.
After completing the steps above, go back into your Google analytics dashboard to finish off the installation.
In the dashboard, on the right hand side you will see on the same line of your new domain name, a link that says Edit. Click on the link to continue.
A new window will open and you should see a link on the top right hand corner of your page with the text Check Status. Click on the link to continue.
Google will do a quick scan of your website looking for the UA number you have just installed, and if all goes well you should see a confirmation message and some text saying it’s Waiting for Data.
It usually takes about twenty four hours to start seeing any results, Google does not display real time data, so come back tommorrow and check out how well your site is performing.
