Four Simple Ways to Integrate Google Analytics with WordPress (Using Plugins vs. Adding Code Manually). Many WordPress users struggle to link Google Analytics to their WordPress sites, and as a result, they miss out on valuable user data. Thankfully, there are various options for integrating Google Analytics with WordPress. These methods are quite straightforward once you know what you’re doing and can be effective in a number of scenarios. As a Web Designer in Orange County, we know how frustrating it is not to be able to add Google Analytics to WordPress, so we would like to help every WordPress user who struggles to do this.

In this article, we’ll go over what Google Analytics is and why it’s important for your website. Then we’ll show you four different methods to link it to WordPress so you can start tracking activity.

So, let’s get started!

Table of Contents

A Brief Overview of Google Analytics

Why Do You Need Analytics for Your WordPress Site?

How to Integrate Google Analytics in WordPress (4 Possible Methods)

 

A Brief Overview of Google Analytics

It’s best to understand what Google Analytics is and how it works before linking it to your WordPress blog. In a nutshell, this platform tracks the activity on your website and gives you useful information to help you improve it:

Google Analytics Home 1

-Google Analytics home

Google Analytics collects a wide range of data by inserting a code snippet into the header of each of your site’s pages, which may be classified into five categories:

Realtime: Shows what’s going on on your site at the time you’re looking at the report.

Audience: Includes demographics and information about who is viewing your site.

Acquisition: Describes how your website gets visitors.

Behavior: Displays how users interact with your site, such as button clicks and the most popular pages.

Conversions: An advanced report that works with Google Analytics Goals to measure activities like email list subscriptions and e-commerce transactions.

The following are some examples of particular data you could find in your Google Analytics reports:

  • The amount of people that are actively using your website at any particular time.
  • The number of users who visit your website over time.
  • The ages, genders, and localities of your visitors.
  • Where do your visitors originate? (e.g., organic search, social media, etc.).
  • What pages are visited and for how long.
  • Rates of bounce, click-through, and conversion.

In your Google Analytics dashboard, there’s a lot to see and learn. This can benefit your site in a variety of ways.

 

Why Do You Need Analytics for Your WordPress Site?

Analytics may be beneficial to many aspects of your website if you know how to utilize them effectively. The following are four key areas that are relevant to every form of website:

  • Content marketing strategy. You may figure out what your visitors like most by looking at your most popular articles, pages, products, or other content. Increasing pageviews and traffic requires creating more of the type of content that connects most with your audience.
  • Inbound marketing. Knowing where your visitors comes from will help you figure out which marketing methods are working and which aren’t. You may then devote the majority of your time and resources to the strategies that yield the best outcomes.
  • Audience segmentation. Understanding your audience is essential for efficient communication and conversions. You may establish subgroups for targeted marketing using analytics.
  • User Experience (UX) auditing. User behavior flows can identify navigational or site design issues. Identifying underperforming content and sites with high bounce rates might help you address issues.

The Conversions report is also useful for tracking sales and income if you have an ecommerce site.

As you can see, the numbers themselves aren’t necessarily the most essential factor. The value is in how you implement the insights you obtain from Google Analytics. Increases in traffic, conversions, and income may be achieved by addressing significant issues and employing the finest marketing tactics for your site.

“If you’re searching for a competent Web Designer in Orange County, we’d be delighted to help. Orange Web Group is a full-service digital agency specializing in website design and WordPress development in Orange County, CA.”

 

How to Integrate Google Analytics in WordPress (4 Possible Methods)

If you want to collect information about your visitors, there are several ways to integrate Google Analytics to your WordPress site.

We’ll assume you already have a Google Analytics account in each scenario. If you don’t already have one, go ahead and make one before continuing.

  1. Use a WordPress plugin for Google Analytics.
  2. Using Code to Manually Connect Google Analytics and WordPress
  3. Using Google Tag Manager, connect Google Analytics and WordPress.
  4. For Performance Reasons, Sync Google Analytics Locally

 

1. Use a WordPress plugin for Google Analytics.

A Google Analytics WordPress plugin is the simplest solution for most WordPress users to integrate Google Analytics to their website. This solution eliminates the need to alter your website’s code.

Two plugins are recommended for this:

Google’s Site Kit

If you want to integrate Google Analytics to your WordPress site, Google has you covered with Site Kit by Google, a simple yet effective plugin.

Site Kit By Google 1

Site Kit by Google WordPress plugin

In only a few clicks, this free plugin integrates Google Analytics to your WordPress site, but that’s not all. This plugin gathers data from various Google services, such as Google Search Console, Google AdSense, and PageSpeed Insights, in addition to analytics, allowing you to create a great dashboard using Google as your data source.

To get started, follow these steps:

Install the Site Kit by Google plugin and activate it, then click the Start Setup option.Google Site Kit Plugin

-Setting up Google Site Kit WordPress plugin

After that, you’ll need to link your WordPress site to your Google Analytics account.

As you would think, you’ll have to go through a few steps to confirm that you own the domain, authorize Google access to its data, and set up any service you want to add to WordPress.

Google Site Kit Successful Setup

-Google Site Kit successful setup

You’ll be able to see data from Google Analytics as well as all other services activated directly in your WordPress dashboard once you’ve successfully connected with your Google account. This is how it appears:

Google Site Kit Dashboard

-Google Site Kit dashboard

All of this information will always be accessible from the left-hand sidebar of WordPress.

You could use the next plugin if this plugin is too much for you and you want to keep things focused mainly on Google Analytics.

Google Analytics (GA)

Jeff Starr’s free GA Google Analytics plugin has over 400,000 active installations and a 5-star rating:

GA Google Analytics 1 1

-GA Google Analytics WordPress plugin

All you have to do now is enter your Google Analytics tracking ID in the plugin’s settings once you’ve installed and activated it. Go to your Google Analytics account and select Admin in the sidebar to get your tracking ID:

Google Analytics Admin 1

-The Google Analytics Admin tab

From the Property menu, select Tracking Info then Tracking Code:

Google Analytics Property 1

Accessing the Google Analytics tracking code under the property information

Your tracking ID will begin with the letter UA and appear at the top of this page:

Access Tracking Id 2

-Accessing the Google Analytics tracking ID

From your WordPress dashboard, select Settings > Google Analytics. Scroll down to the Plugin Settings section and add your tracking code into the appropriate field:

GA Google Analytics Settings

-GA Google Analytics WordPress plugin settings page

You may also decide whether the tracking code should be placed in the header or the footer, add custom tracking code, force SSL, restrict tracking for admin users, and a few other handy features with this plugin.

Scroll down and click the Save Changes button once you’ve changed it to your liking. Your WordPress site should now have Google Analytics enabled.

 

2. Using Code to Manually Connect Google Analytics and WordPress

If you don’t want to utilize a plugin, you may add the Google Analytics tracking code to your WordPress theme straight via the functions.php file.

If you go the manual approach, you’ll need to create a child theme to prevent your tracking code from being overwritten every time your WordPress theme is updated. It’s usually a good idea to create a backup before making any changes.

You’ll need to add your Google Analytics Tracking Code just before the closing </head> tag in your header.php file once your child theme is live.

To obtain your Google Analytics tracking code, go to your account and view your tracking information as detailed in the previous approach. The script may then be copied from the box under Google Site Tag:

Google Tracking Code

Copying the Google Site Tag code

Go to Appearance > Theme Editor to add it to your WordPress site. You won’t see header.php if your child theme inherits template files from its parent. You may access your parent theme by clicking on its name in the file list:

Wordpress Theme Editor 1 1

The WordPress Theme Editor for a child theme

After you’ve found and selected header.php, paste the Google Analytics Tracking Code in the Editor just before the </head> tag:

Edit Header Template 1 1 1

-Editing the header.php file in WordPress

Make sure to click the Update File button after that. WordPress is now equipped with a Google Analytics tracking code.

 

3. Using Google Tag Manager, connect Google Analytics and WordPress.

Google Tag Manager is another option for integrating Google Analytics with WordPress. This is intended for sites that use scripts for a variety of reasons, not only analytics.

Google Tag Manager is a mechanism for managing tags. It enables you to update tags and code snippets on your website or mobile app, such as those for traffic analysis and marketing optimization, easily and efficiently.

Instead of manipulating site code in WordPress, you may add and change scripts through the Tag Manager user interface. This minimizes errors and eliminates the need for a developer to configure tags.

The Google Tag Manager WordPress plugin is the simplest method to achieve this. It has more than 300,000 active installations and a five-star rating:

Google Tag Manager For WordPress 1

Google Tag Manager for WordPress plugin

You can get the Google Tag Manager plugin from the WordPress repository or search for it in your WordPress dashboard under Plugins > Add New. After that, you’ll need to create a Google Tag Manager account and your first container.

After you’ve performed the following steps, go to the Admin tab on the Google Tag Manager dashboard and search for a series of characters beginning with GTM:

Find Container Id 1

Finding the container ID in Google Tag Manager

Then, on the plugin’s settings page, paste your Google Tag Manager ID into the applicable space. To get there, go to Settings > Google Tag Manager:

Google Tag Manager For WordPress 1

Adding the container ID to the Google Tag Manager plugin

Any tag you create in Google Tag Manager (including Google Analytics tags) will now run on your WordPress site due to the plugin.

“Do you want to be the person who develops the next big site? Are you unsure if you can do it on your own? It is not necessary for you to do it yourself. Orange Web Group, LLC will assist you in creating the most impressive version of your website today. Our company is a top-rated Web Designer and WordPress Developer in Orange County, and we are currently offering free consultations for local business owners.”

 

4. For Performance Reasons, Sync Google Analytics Locally

The fourth option is to sync the Google Analytics script on your own server locally. Please be advised that Google does not support this approach.

There are, however, a few reasons why you would prefer to do so. For starters, synchronizing Google Analytics locally reduces the number of external HTTP requests. You’ll also have complete control over the file’s caching, allowing you to utilize your own server’s cache headers.

This is critical for better website performance. You may have seen a “Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy” warning for your Google Analytics script if you use Google PageSpeed Insights:

Pagespeed Insights Analytics 1

An example of a Google Analytics warning

The issue is that, as you can see from the warning above, Google Analytics has a two-hour cache time by default. This is most likely because if Google needs to make a change, it wants all users to be able to see it as soon as possible.

You may increase speed by changing the cache time by hosting the Google Analytics script on your own server.

Using the Complete Analytics Optimization Suite to Sync Google Analytics Locally

We suggest starting with the Complete Analytics Optimization Suite (CAOS), a free plugin developed by Daan van den Bergh. It has almost 20,000 active installations and a 5-star rating:

CAOS Host Google Analytics Locally Plugin 1

CAOS | Host Google Analytics Locally WordPress plugin

You can get it from the WordPress repository or search for it in your WordPress dashboard under Plugins > Add New.

With the CAOS, you may host your Google Analytics JavaScript file (analytics.js) locally and use wp_cron() to keep it updated. Other characteristics include the ability to:

  • Anonymize your visitors’ IP addresses.
  • Set an adjusted bounce rate.
  • Change the Google Analytics script’s placement (header or footer).

Before you use it, make sure any analytics plugins you have installed are turned off.

CAOS adds the appropriate Google Analytics code to your WordPress website when you install it and provide your Google Analytics Tracking ID. It then downloads and stores the analytics.js file to your server, and uses a wp cron() script to keep it updated.

We suggest adding the script in the footer by navigating to Settings > Optimize Analytics and choosing the Footer option under Position of tracking code:

CAOS Host Google Analytics Locally Settings 1 1 1536x948 1

Settings to sync Google Analytics locally

It’s important to keep in mind that CAOS is incompatible with other Google Analytics plugins.

 

Using Perfmatters to Sync Google Analytics Locally

Perfmatters is another local analytics plugin to consider. Brian Jackson and his brother Brett built this premium website speed improvement plugin:

Perfmatters 1 1

Perfmatters WordPress plugin

Syncing Google Analytics locally by providing your tracking ID is one of its many functions. You may set the script to load in your footer instead of your header, much like CAOS.

Summary

Although Google Analytics is an important tool for website owners and administrators, it isn’t the only analytics service accessible.

Tracking user activity, referral sources, and other data on your site is critical to expanding your audience and brand. You may use one of the following methods to link Google Analytics to your WordPress site:

  1. Using a plugin (Site Kit or GA Google Analytics)
  2. Manually adding code directly to your theme
  3. Using Google Tag Manager (easy with a plugin such as Google Tag Manager WordPress).
  4. For performance reasons, sync Google Analytics locally (using the CAOS or Perfmatters plugins).

Have you tried any other strategies to integrate Google Analytics with WordPress? If so, please share them with us!

 

Experience Top-notch WordPress Developer in Orange County

Looking for high-quality WordPress services? Orange Web Group’s leading team of WordPress developer in Orange County are here to help. We have you covered whether you need assistance with a few web projects each month or a full team of WordPress developers who can work directly in your systems.

Save money and time by avoiding hassles. Hire a Web Designer in Orange County today. For the time being, we are providing complimentary consultations to local business owners. Contact us and we will work with you to create the most visually appealing version of your website.

 

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