Add Google Analytics to WordPress in Three Simple Steps

Google Analytics is the industry standard for reporting on web based traffic. Integrating it into your website can give you insights that can increase the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns, resulting in more visitors.

So how does Google Analytics work?

After you sign up for Google Analytics for your domain you will add some code from Google to your website. This gives Google the ability not only to count visits to your website but to document how those users got to your website. The value in this is knowing which avenues are working for converting views into visitors as well as giving you the ability to know what users are doing on your website once they get there.

How to add Google Analytics to WordPress In 4 Simple Steps

There are probably plugins you could use to add Analytics to your WordPress, but they have to execute more code than if you just add the Analytics code directly to your WordPress theme. Although much more user friendly, the plugin route could result in slower load times, plugin conflicts, security concerns and many other issues.

So lets look at three simple steps anyone can do in the WordPress Admin section to get Analytics up and working with a website.

1.   Sign Up For Google Analytics

Go to http://google.com/analytics and sign in with your Google account.
Fill out the information and add your domain to your Google Analytics account.
Click the blue get tracking code button.

2.   Copy The Analytics Script

Copy (‘ctrl’ + ‘c’) the tracking code that Google Analytics generated for your domain.

3.   Add The Script To Your Theme

Login to your WordPress Admin.
On the menu select APPEARCNACE then select EDITOR.
This will allow you to edit the files for your wordpress theme. We are going to look in the right sidebar for a file called footer.php.
Select the file and search for the closing footer tag “/footer”
Paste (‘ctrl’ + ‘v’) the code immediately before the /footer tag.

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