Friday 12 July 2013

How to Add Google Analytics to WordPress in Three Simple Steps

Even though the dark overlords at Google have restricted a lot of the data that used to be available in Analytics, it’s still an extremely valuable tool for gathering intelligence on your site visitors. Analytics can show you where they landed, what they read, how long they stayed, what they were searching for, and a heap of other valuable stuff.

You can add Google Analytics to WordPress in 3 easy steps
Google Analytics gives you a closer look at your site’s performance
As a serious WordPress blogger who aspires to greatness, you really can’t afford to be without it. This article shows you how to add Google Analytics to WordPress with minimal fuss and very little effort.

Step One: Get a Google Analytics account

If you haven’t already signed up for analytics, you’ll need to venture over to Google and get hooked up with a free account. Don’t worry, it’s quick and painless.
Once you’ve completed the sign up process, you’ll be given a piece of JavaScript code. It looks like this:

This is the JavaScript code you need to add to your site to use Google Analytics
This code allows Google to gather anonymous data on how your website is being used

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Step Two: Add the Google Analytics code to your WordPress theme

To do this, you’ll need to open up the footer.php file of your WordPress theme. You can either use an FTP client to access your server, or edit your theme files directly from the WordPress dashboard. Your file editor is located under the ‘Appearance’ tab in the sidebar menu.
This is how you paste your Google Analytics code into your WordPress theme
In the list of template files to the right of the text editor, find footer.php and open it. To add Google Analytics to WordPress, you now just need to copy and paste your code immediately before the closing </body> tag. Like so:
This is how you paste code into your footer.php file
Make sure you save your footer.php file once you’ve pasted in the new code. Google Analytics should now be able to track every page of your WordPress site and provide you with that sweet juicy data.

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