Okay, so you’ve installed Google Analytics. Now what?

When you head to your Google Analytics dashboard, you might feel confused by all the different numbers and reports.

Yes, there’s a ton of data in Google Analytics, which can feel overwhelming if you’re new to it and you don’t know what everything means.

Google Analytics Terminology 101

When you log in to your Google Analytics dashboard, Google is going to dump a bunch of terminology on you:

Thanks, Google … but what does all that even mean?

Here’s your cheat sheet:

• Users — The number of unique visitors to your site for the specified time period.
• Sessions — The number of visits to your site. One User can have multiple Sessions. For that reason, the number of sessions will almost always be higher than the number of Users (and can never be lower).
• Bounce Rate — The number of people who leave your site without completing any actions. For example, if a visitor immediately clicks the “back” button, that counts as a bounce. Because of how Google Analytics calculates Bounce Rate, a user might still count as a bounce even if they only click the “back” button after spending ten minutes reading your post.
• Session Duration — How long, on average, each visit to your site lasts. From the screenshot above, you can see that the average visitor spends 48 seconds on my site. Don’t take this number as gospel, though. It can be a bit misleading.

3 Basic but Helpful Google Analytics Reports for Beginners

Google Analytics is mind-bendingly deep in functionality. And one of the joys of Google Analytics is finding creative new ways to structure reports and approach your data from different angles.

But if you’re just signing in to Google Analytics for the first time, that doesn’t mean anything to you.

So we’re not getting into all of them here, but let me share some basic reports with you to get your feet wet:

1. CHECKING YOUR VISITORS’ DEMOGRAPHICS

Knowing your visitors’ demographics can provide incredible insight into your audience. Where they’re from, what age they are, what they’re using to access your website. You won’t believe how useful this can be.

For instance, on one of my sites, 80% of my visitors use their computers, while on another, over 80% visit from their smartphones. That’s a massive difference. And you’d better believe I put a higher emphasis on mobile-friendly content on the second site.

Learning more about your audience’s demographics will help you find little idiosyncrasies like that for your site.

To do it, head to Audience → Overview:

You can click on any of the links under the Demographics column to see a more detailed report.

For example, if you click on the Operating System option under System, Google Analytics gives you a breakdown of your visitors’ operating systems:

2. FINDING YOUR MOST POPULAR CONTENT

Do you actually know which posts get the most traffic on your blog?

Don’t guess. Go to Behavior → Site Content → All Pages and look at the real data:

3. DISCOVERING HOW PEOPLE FIND YOUR SITE

Figuring out which content sources drive the most traffic to your site helps you focus your efforts on the channels which deliver the best bang for your buck.

Better yet, you might find some sites sending traffic to you that you never knew existed! Maybe you can reach out to them and form a stronger partnership.

For all those traffic insights (and more!), head to Acquisition → Overview:

You’ll see a breakdown of the different channels that drive traffic to your site:

• Organic search — Traffic that finds your site through a search engine.
• Direct — Traffic that types your URL directly into their browser’s address bar.
• Referral — Traffic that finds your site through a link on another website.
• Social — Traffic that finds your site through social media.

To see more information about a specific channel, all you need to do is click on it.

For example, if you click on the Referral option, Google Analytics will show you a report of all the websites that drove traffic to your site for the specified time period:

Let’s say you published a guest post on an A-list blog, and you want to see exactly how much traffic it sent you. This report will tell you!

Congrats! Your Days of Guessing Are Over

You’ve just learned how to stop guessing and start knowing. Gone are the days of wondering what’s making your blog and its visitors tick.

Now you’ll have all the relevant data right at your fingertips, ready to pull up at a moment’s notice.

You’ll know which marketing strategies and content work the best, as well as which could use a little rethinking.

That means you can work smarter and build a better, more data-driven website/blog.

And that, friends, is pretty dang awesome!

Thanks Colin Newcomer for your Wisdom

Whether those posts you work so hard on are attracting traffic, and where that traffic is actually coming from?

Whether your last marketing campaign was a smashing success or an unfortunate bomb?

Because if you don’t know whether what you’re doing is working, you’re basically running around blind. And that means you could be wasting valuable time and energy on stuff that just plain ain’t moving the needle.

There’s great news, though…

If you install Google Analytics on your website/blog, you’ll never have to wonder how your website/blog is doing again.

Why Every Website Needs Google Analytics

Google Analytics is what replaces “I think this works” with “I know this works.”

It tells you where your visitors come from, which posts they just can’t get enough of, and, well … almost anything else you can think of.

Seriously, Google Analytics is like your own personal spy agency for your website.

But here’s the thing:
Google Analytics can only do those things if you can actually get it installed on your WordPress blog.

And that’s why I’m here to lend a helping hand.

How to Make Google Analytics Friends with WordPress

Installing Google Analytics is actually quite easy, even if you’re not a tech-head. Honestly, you can have it installed in five minutes or less.

Basically, there are two distinct parts to this process:

Part 1: You need to create a Google Analytics account and add your website to Google Analytics. All of this happens inside the Google Analytics interface. You won’t lay a finger on your site.

Part 2: You need to add the tracking code that Google Analytics gives you to your WordPress site. This is the part that trips a ton of beginners up. No worries, though. We’ll get through it together.

I’ll give you detailed step-by-step instructions for each of these processes below.

Ready? Let’s go …

Part 1: Creating Your Google Analytics Account

Alrighty, the first step in your journey to the goodness of Google Analytics is to actually create your Google Analytics account.

For this, I’m going to assume that you already have a regular ‘ole Google account because, well … you’re on the Internet. If not, you can always create one right now.

To get started with Google Analytics, head here. If you’re not already logged in to your Google account, Google will prompt you to sign in. If you are logged in, you’ll see a signup wizard right away.

Go ahead and click that big Sign up button on the right:

Next up, you’ll need to add details about your website. Here’s what you’ll need to enter in the Setting up your account section:

• Account Name — This is just for internal organization. You can enter whatever you want. In my analytics account, I put “Personal Projects” in this box.
• Website Name — Again, this is for internal organization. Just enter the name of your website in plain words. For example, “Smart Blogger.”
• Website URL — Paste in your website’s URL. The only tricky thing here is to make sure that you choose either http:// or https:// from the drop-down, depending on whether or not you’ve enabled SSL. Just look at the beginning of your URL to figure out which applies to your site.
• Industry Category — This is optional. Google uses it to help provide tailored reports for your industry. If you don’t see a category that perfectly fits your website, feel free to leave it blank. It’s really not worth stressing over.

Reporting Time Zone — Most of the time, you’ll want to set this to your own time zone. But if your target audience has a radically different time zone from your own, it can be helpful to choose the time zone where most of your audience lives so that your analytics sync with their daily life.

Once you’ve knocked that out, scroll down to the Data Sharing Settings options. There are no right or wrong answers here — it just depends on your penchant for privacy.

I’m a grouch on the topic, so I always uncheck every single box. But you can feel free to check and/or uncheck according to your own preferences. And once you’re done deciding how much data to fork over to Google, scroll to the bottom and click that nice blue Get Tracking ID button:

You’re almost there, but first, Google wants you to read their lengthy Terms of Service Agreement which, let’s be honest, you probably won’t read (I know I didn’t!).

Once you accept their terms of service, Google will dump you straight into the Google Analytics interface:

Part 2: How to Add the Google Analytics Tracking Code to WordPress

Sara’s Tip: If you’re using All In One SEO Pack you can add it there.

OR add the Google Analytics tracking code to your WordPress site by adding the Google Analytics Dashboard for WP plugin (GADWP), which helps you both install the tracking code and view analytics reports inside your WordPress dashboard.

Thanks Colin Newcomer for your Wisdom

Now that you have Google Analytics see this Quick-Start Guide!