How to Set Up Google Analytics To Track Your Website Performance: Step by Step Guide

Would you like to understand how customers are using your website? Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool provided by Google that gives you valuable data insights into the performance of your website and marketing channels. This guide helps you set up Google Analytics to track and analyze your website performance.

Have you wondered where your website visitors are coming from? How much traffic you are getting on your website? Or which marketing channels are working for you?

Google Analytics gives you lots of valuable insights about how customers are using your website, as well as the amount and sources of your website traffic. You can use this information to make marketing decisions; improve your website performance; target the right customers and improve ROI and SEO (search) rankings.

Google Analytics 4 is the newer version of Google Analytics that can be used for both websites and apps. It was introduced in October 2020. A Google Analytics 4 property can be set up alongside the Universal Analytics property that was the earlier version of Google Analytics which supports only website measurement.

This article shows you how to set up a Google Analytics 4 property for your website or app.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service provided by Google that helps you track and analyze your website traffic. You can use Google analytics data to make changes to improve your website performance, marketing channels, advertising ROI and SEO rankings.

Why Do You Need Google Analytics?

Every business that has a website or app needs to use Google Analytics to track their website traffic. Google Analytics gives you valuable insights into how customers use your website; your website performance and sources of traffic. It is a powerful tool to use as part of your digital marketing and SEO strategy.

Google Analytics can help you track and analyze your website performance including:

  • The number of visitors who come to your website.
  • Where your visitors live.
  • Which sources of traffic send you the most visitors – direct traffic, search engines, social media or referral traffic from other websites.
  • Which pages your visitors are landing on.
  • Which pages visitors are exiting from.
  • Which website content is the most popular.
  • Your website bounce rate.
  • Your website speed.
  • Which search terms are being used on your site.
  • The number of goal conversions.
  • The success of your Google Ads marketing campaigns.

With the Google Analytics data about your website traffic, you can:

  • Optimize your website performance.
  • Make changes to marketing channels.
  • Improve advertising ROI.
  • Increase conversions.
  • Improve SEO rankings.
  • Improve customer experience
  • Measure lead generation.
  • Analyze and improve online sales.

The data from Google Analytics can help you focus on areas of your website that need to be improved to improve your leads, conversions and ROI. You can also determine if changes are needed in your digital marketing and SEO strategies to meet your marketing goals.

How to Set Up Google Analytics For Your Website

  1. Create a Google Analytics Account

To use Google Analytics, you will first need to set up a Google Analytics account.

>Go to google.com/analytics

> Click on “Start for Free”

If you have a gmail or google account, you can use that to set up an Analytics account. If not, you will need to set up a google account first.

Google Analytics Set Up Start Page

  1. Account Setup

You will need to set up your account,

>Enter your account name

>Enter your account data sharing settings

>Click Next

See the figure below for more information about this step.

 

Google Analytics Account Setup Screen

  1. Property Setup with Google Analytics 4

Once the account is set up, you will need to set up a property. The property is your website or app for which you want to track Analytics data.

Google Analytics 4 is the new version of Google Analytics that can be used to track data for both websites and apps. We will set up a Google Analytics 4 property in this step.

>Enter your property name

>Enter your time zone

>Enter your currency

>Click Next

See the figure below for more information about this step.

Google Analytics Property Setup Screen

  1. Enter Information about your business

Enter your business information in this step.

> Enter industry category

> Enter business size

> Check all areas that you intend to use Google Analytics for your business

> Click “Create”

> Accept the Analytics terms of service agreement.

The figure below provides more information.

Google Analytics Setup Business Information Screen

  1. Set up the data stream to collect data

Select the source of your data for the Google Analytics data collection. This could be a website or app as shown in the figure below.

>For a website, select Web

Google Analytics Data Stream Set Up Screen

In the next screen,

>Enter the URL for your website

>Enter a name for your data stream,  e.g. my website stream

>Click “Create stream”

Google Analytics Web Stream Setup Screen

  1. Set up Data Collection and Copy the Tracking ID

You will need to copy the tracking ID that is generated in this step and add it to every page of your website to begin collecting Google Analytics data.

>Select “Add New On-page tag”

>Click on Global site tag (gtag.js)” to expand that section

>Copy the tracking ID code shown under global site tag.(i.e. Global site tag gtag.js).

Your tracking ID is all the code starting from:

<!– Global Site Tag (gtag.js) – Google Analytics –>
upto
</script>

See the figure below for an example of a sample tracking ID. You will need to generate and use the unique tracking ID generated for your website by Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Setup Web Stream Details Screen

  1. Paste the Tracking ID on Every Page of Your Website

This is an important step.

The Tracking ID code that you copied must be pasted on every page of your website so that Google Analytics can collect data from your site. A web developer can help you get this implemented.

>Paste the global site tag code on every page of your website.

  • For this step, you will need access to the html code on your website. The tracking ID must be pasted after the <head> tag of every page.
  • If you have a WordPress site, it gets easier. You can install a Google Analytics plugin on your site. Good WordPress plugins include “Google Analytics by Yoast” or “Google Analytics Dashboard plugin by Monster Insights”. You will need to copy the global site tag code once into the WordPress plugin and the plugin will copy it onto your web pages.

Once your Google Analytics tracking tag is installed on all the pages of your website, it is ready to start tracking all your website data.

Google Analytics takes about 30 minutes after the tag is installed to start showing data. It will start showing data from the day the tag was installed.

You can now start checking your Google Analytics reports to track and analyze your website performance.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is a powerful tool to track and analyze your website performance. It gives you valuable insights into how customers are using your website and which marketing channels are driving the most traffic and conversions to your site.

By using Google Analytics data, you can make improvements to your website to improve your leads and conversions; make changes to your marketing strategy; improve ROI; improve your SEO rankings on the search engines and provide a better customer experience.

We hope you find this step-by-step guide useful to get Google Analytics set up on your website. Google Analytics is a valuable tool that every business should use to improve their website and SEO. Get started today!

Check back soon for more blog posts on Google Analytics and how to use Google Analytics reports to track your website analytics.

References

Need Help with Digital Marketing?

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