Google Analytics For Bloggers | Beauty In Beta

Howdy lovlies,

I hope you are all well this lovely Tuesday? Well, on my last SEO post I did a little poll on what you’d like to have a post on next, and the majority said Google Analytics, so here we go! Sorry it’s taken so long to get this out. 🙂

Obviously I’m no expert, but I use Google Analytics daily for clients at work, so I thought I’d put together a little post on what exactly GA is, and how to get it on your site.
I’m going to talk a bit about how to apply this to your blog, and how to get yourself set up. Unfortunately this only applies to those who have a Blogger blog or a self hosted WordPress, as I’m not familiar with any others! You’re unable to use GA on a WordPress.com site (one hosted through WordPress), so you’ll have to stick to the stats tab of their blog, sorry!

Firstly, let’s talk briefly about what Google Analytics is and how it could benefit you, then at the end I’ll let you know how to set it up on your site.

 

Google Analytics is a great way to really get to know the people who visit your site by gaining detailed information about them and how they interact with your site. Having this information is one of the best ways to increase readership and tailor your blog to ensure maximum exposure for your blog posts.

 

Once you’re all set up, you’ll see there are different tabs to explore. In the Audience tab, you can easily see a true number of visitors, what type of people are visiting your site and where they’re from. Here you can quickly see who your current target audience is, so you can use this to your advantage.

The next thing that you can keep track of is what happens when these readers reach your site. How long are they staying (bounce rate)? How many pages do they visit? If your bounce rate is high and your pages visited low, then it may mean that there is something on your homepage deterring a potential reader from staying on the site.

 

You can also go even further and see what pages people are leaving from, so that you can revisit those pages to see what might be deterring them. A feature that I think is really handy for bloggers too is seeing what time people are reading your website. By getting this information, you can strategically plan when is the best day/time to get your posts out there. Maybe a lot of your viewers are from somewhere with a different time zone to you? Maybe it’s worth rethinking your post scheduling times to take advantage of this readership? Or it could be worth doing something like scheduling posts on your social media so that they’re posted when those people are awake.

Another great thing to look at is to see where those visitors are coming from. For example, are they coming from Search Engines, a direct link (like your social media), or are you getting a lot of referrals from another site? If you can see where the majority of your visitors are coming from, you can utilise that information to ensure you get maximum exposure of your content.These are just a few features available in Google Analytics, but as you can see, it’s a great way to really tap into the mindset of your readers.How Do I Sign Up With Google Analytics?

OK, so the first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for a Google Analytics account, this can be done easily through the Google Analytics Signup Page.

Don’t worry it’s all completely free to use, all you need is a Gmail account! If you already have a Gmail account, you can just use this to sign up, if not, you’ll have to create a new one. Make sure you click website, not mobile app when prompted. Then it’s just a few more things to fill out like URL, name etc, then you are good to go.

You’ll next be asked to read through some terms and conditions etc, you know the drill and you can get going.

 

You then need to grab your tracking code, which you can find in your new GA account. All you need to do is:

• Head on over to your admin page
• Select your account in the ‘Account’ column
• Select the property in the ‘Property’ column
• Grab your Tracking Info

More information about all the tracking codes etc can be found here – GA Tracking Code Info

I know there are other blogging platforms out there, but as the majority of bloggers use WordPress and Blogger, I’m going to focus on those for now. I’m not sure how to install GA on any others, but if you have any questions I’ll try my best to help you find the answers!

Installing Google Analytics In WordPress

Make sure you leave the GA tab open as you’ll need to come back to it later once the code has been installed. Like I mentioned above, unfortunately you can only use GA if you have a self hosted WordPress blog (.org). There are three different ways to install GA into your WordPress blog, but I would recommend using a Plugin for simplicity, like Insert Header and Footer .

You can also directly paste your tracking code into your HTML, or if you’re skilled in php. you can also paste here. If you would like more information on these two options, leave me a comment below and I can walk you through it.

So, for the plugin, once you have downloaded it, it’s simply a case of pasting the Google Analytics code in the plugin’s setting page.  Once this has completed, you can go back to the tab we left open earlier, and click save. What should happen now is when you click on the Reporting tab you should be able to see a basic overview of your site. However, please bear in mind that it can take a while for your most recent stats to appear.

Installing Google Analytics In Blogger

If you have Blogger, it’s a bit more simple to get started with GA. All you need to do is log into your account, go to Settings > Other, then add the Unique tracking code, which we spoke about earlier. Also, the bit that says“This is your tracking code. Copy and paste it into the code of every page you want to track.” – Ignore this, you don’t need to do this! 

Just add in the number starting with UA to the bit that says Google Analytics, click  the ol’ save button and you’re good to go! If you’re just using a standard Blogger template then you’re all done. However, if you’re using a third party template, for example someone else has done your design for you, you will need some extra code added to your HTML. If you need to know how to do this, either leave a comment below, or send me an email using the contact form at the end.

As with WordPress, it can take a little while for you to start seeing your stats (normally up to 24 hours). Also, please do bear in mind that WordPress and Blogger will tend to count bots or spiders indexing your blog, which aren’t true indications of your stats from real human readers. So, this may mean that when you get started with Analytics your stats could look lower. Don’t be discouraged by this at first, it’ll be much better to get genuinely useful information about the people reading your blog.

Ok, so that’s it! I don’t want to go on too much about it, as I know it’s not the most thrilling thing to talk about, but if anyone has any questions, please do leave them in the comments below! Or feel free to shoot me over an email!

Love and squishes,