Setting Up Google Analytics On Your Blog

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 6:37 am

Yesterday we discussed the need to be tracking what is working so that you can improve things. If you do not know what is working or not working it is all too easy to waste your time and your money. I will be covering some other ways to track what is happening in the future but we will start with Google Analytics as it is my preferred method.

You need a Gmail account to use Google Analytics. You can sign up for a Gmail account if you don’t have one at Gmail. Once you have an account you can go directly to Google Analytics and login with your Gmail user name and password.

Once your are in click on Add Website Profile. Fill in the domain you want to track along with your country and time zone. Now that you have it set up you will need to add the code to your site on each page.

Now before we go further the instructions below are for where your blog is in the root of your domain. This means you access your blog by using mydomain.com and not mydomain.com/blog.

If your blog is not in the root you will need to manually add the java script code to the pages in your root (public_html) directory also.

There are many ways to do this with your blog. It will depend on your theme and if you want to use a plugin. On this blog my theme is coded to add the appropriate code. I only need to add the id I get from GA.

gacode

I just add the id that was generated when I set the account up in the theme options. You can add the Google Analytics plugin and again just add the id into the settings after you add and activate the plugin.

You can add the java script code into your theme header file if you do not wish to add a plugin or if your theme is not preset for GA.

gajava

You will copy and paste this code into your header php file right after the opening <body> tag. This will add the code into each page of your blog.

headerbody

Inserting all of the code there and saving the file will also set up your blog for Google Analytics.

Once you have added the code whether you did it manually, through your theme or using a plugin you need to check in your analytics account to make sure that Google is finding the code properly.

Open the profile for that domain in your account and you will see if they are getting the information.

Do remember that if your blog is not in the root of your domain you will need to manually add the code to the file that are in the root to get this to work.

tracking

Click on the check status link and it will go check your setup and let you know if it is working. Once you have succeeded it will take a day before you start to get the stats when you login to your account.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.

After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.

If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.