WordPress now powers 17% of the world’s websites. 1 in every 6 websites are wordpress sites, and more than 100,000 wordpress websites are being launched each month.
If you’re thinking of getting a new website for your local business, or even redesigning your existing site, we highly recommend WordPress (the self hosted option, not wordpress.com).
Secrets of Google Analytics for WordPress Websites.
As a key element of our internet marketing strategy, we focus on setting up Google Analytics for your WordPress blog. There is a lot of setup required to make the most of it. Simply adding the Google analytics code to your site is not enough.
Here are the steps that you can take to make sure your Google Analytics settings are working properly:
1. Signup for Google Analytics
You will need a Gmail account in order to be able to sign up for Google Analytics. Another option is to use your Google Apps email. If you have Google Apps for Business (Currently at $50/year), you can use it to signup with analytics.
2. Create A New Account, and Don’t Forget to Enter all the Details
You’ll need the name of your website, URL, country, and time zone. Enter them below.
Google Analytics Accounts? Properties? Profiles?
Accounts can either be your business account or personal account. If you are managing both personal websites and business websites in one Google account, you’ll want to separate them in different accounts. Just label them as personal and business.
Properties would be your website presence. If you have 3 websites, you’ll need to create 3 separate properties for each website that you have.
Profiles are “snapshots” or “subdomains” of your website.
Here’s what we did for our own website: http://www.yourwsiadvantage.com/
It’s under the Business Account and this website is 1 Property. Our business account have several properties (client websites)
Property: http://www.yourwsiadvantage.com/
This property then has 3 Profiles.
Profile 1: http://www.yourwsiadvantage.com/
Profile 2: http://blog.yourwsiadvantage.com/
Profile 3: Raw Backup for http://www.yourwsiadvantage.com/
It’s great practice to always have a backup of your data without ANY filters. Create a backup copy of the main profile without setting any filters. We like to name it RAW (Don’t Touch) as a way of reminding us not to mess with this raw profile.
In case there was problem with the main profile, you can always compare it with the unfiltered data from your backup profile.
3. Set Goals in Analytics.
Goals or conversions are probably the most important metrics to measure on our website.
They can either be a download, a thank you page, a sale made, length of visit, or even pages browsed on your site.
It’s important that these goals are properly setup, especially if you are launching a paid advertising campaign.
The easiest way to set goals in analytics is to use the URL destination as a goal.
Simply enter the goal url that you would like to track when conversions are met.
4. Use one account for Google Analytics, Webmaster tools and Adwords.
It’s best if you can use a single account for all these tools. It will allow them to communicate with each other a lot better. But if that’s not possible, you can request the admin to give you access to your website’s profiles.
If you’re a local business owner, you’ll need lot of skills,knowledge and patience to understand how Google analytics work.
Let us do the work for you, so that you can focus on your business.
Here at WSI Milton, we handle the tracking and conversions for hundreds of WordPress website owners.
