Google offers free service for their user to track their user’s website traffic. Google has launched this analytics service on November 2005. It has wide advantage over other third party tracking system. But the same time google uses these site data for providing targeted advertisement to their users.
Lets see What We can get it from google analytics:
Advantage:
1). Live website traffic and number of active user are surfing on your website.
2). Return visitor status.
3). Users Geo location
4). User’s Device
5). What pages do your users visit.
6). Browser type
7). User timing
8). Traffic sources (Search engine or direct entry)
9). How the traffic comes which means organic or direct or social or referral or others
10). Google has mobile apps, using that you can track your website easily.
Disadvantage:
1). Using this you cannot track your user’s IP address.
2). To know your live traffic you must come to google only, You cannot watch them on your website dashboard. To do this you have to install one plugin is called “Google Analytics” But you cannot get live active user status on this plugin.
Let see
How to activate google analytics to your website?
Step1: Signup using this link. To do this, You must have gmail id or create gmail id in google. => It will redirect you to signup pages.
Also see: How to create gmail id
Step2: You will see new page, here you select weather you want to track website or mobile apps. Select website.
Step3: Set account Name: here you just put your website title => Set your website name
Step4: Submit your website URL. Here you just select your website starts with https or http. If you activated SSL means then you just select https otherwise select http
Step5: Select website category “ if you do not know select others” => Select reporting time: select according to your country => Put tik on all the features => Click on get tracking code
Step6: Accept google terms and conditions according to your country. Click on accept
Step7: You have to verify your website ownership. You will get 8 methods, But if you do not know how to put verification code on header tag means then you can select plugin method. => Install this plugin and activate it => Come back to analytics tab => Click on Next => You will get new dashboard.
Step8: That’s all you have successfully activated google analytics to your wordpress website.
Advantage of this google analytics plugin:
1). Simple setup for wordpress beginner and non techie– Automatically adds Google Analytics JavaScript to every page
2) Account linking – no need to copy and paste any code or know your GA ID
3) Visitor trends on your admin dashboard
4) Traffic sources – Shows top 5 traffic sources where your visitors are coming to your website.
5) Trending Content – Shows a history of content that is performing better than average on your website.
6) Alerts – Sign up for alerts via email or Slack when your content is taking off
7) Counts Real visitors, it does not count admins page check views or editor trail check etc.
8) Ads free and fully free service
9) Keep on updating according to google.
How to put google analytics tracking code in your website header tag:
Step1: Login to your WordPress website admin panel => Go to appearance => Click on editor => Find Header.php on coding sidebar
Step2: Click on header.php => Press control+F => search <header> => After that put the tracking code below the header => Save it
Step3 => That’s all => Comeback to your analytics verification panel => Select verify => You will get new analytics dashboard.
How to View google analytics dashboard On your WordPress Dashboard:
To view google analytical data, you have to install the plugin is called google analytic dashdash board => go to settings => get access token from the google (before this process you could have completed above analytical activation process) => the select the website data you need to view on your account => Save it. Now you can get all the data directly from google using this plugin such as live user in your site, total page views, organic views status etc.
Conclusion:
Guys I never recommend to use any plugin to your website. Plugin will reduce your speed of your website. So better you just put google analytics tracking code on your header, that will give better result.