I find after talking to webmasters for any extended amount of time though that some people are intimidated by the process of setting it up. They think it is too complicated or just something they don’t want to bother diving into. Im completely guilty of this!  Ive been niche and internet marketing years and I just recently dived in to Google Analytics.  So I hope this information helps as I wish I had these instructions when I started out!!

Sure some of the features give you more information that you probably need but better to have more than not enough. To help those who still have butterflies in their bellies – here is a step by step guide to get you going.

Getting Started with Google Analytics…

Go to the Google Analytics web site and sign up for an account or login with your Google login details. You already have a Google account, right? Post login, click on the “setup” button to get going with the setup process.

Give Google Your Web Site’s Details…

Next you load up a screen that wants you to put in some information about your web site. Type in your domain name, account name and set your time preferences. The account name will be the group name for the series of web sites you use Google Analytics on.

Fill in Your Contact Information…

The next page wants you to put in your contact information. If you don’t want to do this – just select your country and you should be good to go to the next step.

Check Out the Terms of Service and Agree…

One of the last pages you will see is Google’s terms of service and legal agreement. Skim through it, read it if you want to. I know your probably not going to though. Click the “I agree” check mark box and move on.

Cut and Paste the Code!

The last step gives you a ‘bit of javascript to cut and paste onto all of your web pages that you want to track. Just copy it from there and paste it into your web site. Get past that step and your done! You have successfully setup Google Analytics.

Adding Google Analytics on Blogs

In a Wordpress install, this will allow you to see how people are finding your posts, and how many are viewing your posts, and when. When used correctly, you can optimize which keywords are used and where to drive more traffic to your site.

How is it done? Very simple. Using your favorite editor, open upo \wp-content\themes\yourthemenamehere\footer.php and do a search for the </body> tag. (Hint, in most editors you can do a <ctrl-f> key command to find it)

Directly above the </body> tag paste in the code given to you by Google. It should like something like this:

<script src=”http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js” type=”text/javascript”>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
_uacct = “UA-0000000-0?;
urchinTracker();
</script>

The 0000000-0 would be replaced by the user account number provided by Google.

Save and upload your modified footer.php and you will be good to go. This will allow every post and the main page to be tracked. In general it will take a few hours for Google to begin tracking data so be patient.

Google Analytics Wordpress Plugin

Want a handy Google Analytics Tracking PLUGIN for your blog?!??!  Click here to see one of the coolest wordpress plugins for installing Google Analytics!

That’s it. Google Analytics updates every day, you can access the reports from your Google account or here: www.google.com/analytics