How To Add Google Analytics to WordPress: A Step-by-Step Guide

Google Analytics is a popular website tracking tool available on the internet.

The best thing about Google Analytics is its price. It’s free of cost, all you need to do is to implement it on your website and start getting the results. Let’s have a look at the ways How to connect google analytics to WordPress sites but before that, you need to know how to sign up for Google Analytics.

Signup For Google Analytics

1. Sign up for Google Analytics by creating an account on the Google Analytics sign-up page using your existing Gmail account or by creating a new account.

2. Choose the website option for setting up Google Analytics.
Enter the required information such as the URL of your WordPress site and click on the “Get Tracking ID” button.

How to install Google Analytics on WordPress

Installing or Adding Google Analytics to WordPress can be done easily by following two main methods:

Method 1: Adding the tracking code Manually
1. Copy the tracking code.
2. Log in to the WordPress site. In the Appearance menu, click on Theme File Editor.
3. Search for the template file named header.php in the list of templates.
4. Search for the head and paste the previous tracking code before the close head tag.
5. Update the File after you have pasted the code.
6. You’re all set! Now, You can track your data in your google analytics dashboard.

Method 2: By Using a plugin

You can add google analytics to WordPress websites using WordPress Plugins also.
For, the tutorial purpose, here I am choosing the “MonsterInsights” plugin.

1. first we go the https://analytics.google.com/
2. Now, If you have a google account sign in to the account, otherwise you can signup to create a fresh one.
3. so, this is what the google analytics dashboard looks like.
4. Now choose the admin menu, and click on the create account button.
5. In account details, just type the name of the website, and then press next.
6. after account setup, we are now at property setup. Here, you can enter the website name, I am typing my website tracking for example.
7. select the exact timezone, you want to monitor, you can select currency as well if you have an e-commerce store.
8. Now click on the “show advanced options”, and this new menu will pop up here. This is to create a universal analytics property, click on the toggle button here.
9. Now, enter the website URL and choose from http and https options and then, click on create a universal analytics property only.
10. All done here, now we can press next.
11. Over here, it’s asking for information related to our business.
12. Fill in the details that suit your business, and hit the create button. Accept the terms of the service agreement, check it, and press the accept button.
13. now we got our, tracking ID, and global site tag code.

We can now, copy this code and go to our website header section and paste it manually. But we are doing it with a plugin.

so, we will go back to our wordpress dashboard. Go to the add new plugin option, and search for monsterinsights plugin. Install and activate the plugin.

Click on the launch wizard button, and begin setup of the monsterinsights plugin.

1. select your website category, here I am choosing a business website. Press save and continue.
2. press the connect monsterinsights button here, to connect it with our google analytics account.
3. Now, choose your google account which is associated with your google analytics account.
4. It is asking for permission, just allow it.
5. select the profile, click on that check box if you want to receive promo options or updates from monsterinsights and press the “complete connection button”.
6. In the third step, here are some of the cool features provided by monsterinsights. I will keep it the default for now and press save and continue.
7. You can choose add-ons if you need them. For now, just hit save and continue.
8. Awesome, You’re all set! Just press finish setup and exit.

Now, on the left-hand side of your wordpress dashboard, you can find the “Insights” menu. Click on reports. Here you can get all the analytics.