Back to Basics: Setting up Google Analytics on your Blog

Today's post covers how to install Google Analytics on the Blogger and WordPress blogging platforms. Adding analytics to your blog can tell you things like:

• Which referring sites send you the best traffic
• Which visitors are most likely to subscribe to your email list
• Which keywords have the highest engagement
• Which articles have the lowest bounce rate
• Which articles monetize best using AdSense
  
• and much more.

For more information about how web analytics can be useful for bloggers, check out Avinash Kaushik's post on useful goals for blogs.

Installing Google Analytics on Blogger

Installing Google Analytics on Blogger is very easy. Here are the basic steps:

1. Sign up for a Google Analytics account
2. Add the GA tracking code to your Blogger template
3. Wait 24 hours and login to Google Analytics to start analyzing your data

For a detailed explanation of how to complete a successful installation, read this tutorial created by eblogstemplates.

Installing Google Analytics on WordPress

You can use the same basic steps above to install Google Analytics on a WordPress blog. The team at WordPress has produced this terrific step by step video explaining this process. A huge thanks to Michael Pick for his hard work in creating this. Note, you can also use a plugin like the Analyticator plugin we described last week to install Analytics on your WordPress blog.



To view the video in a larger size, visit wordpress.tv. For more videos on Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics YouTube Channel.

Leave a Comment

That's it for now. Still having trouble? Visit the help forum or leave a comment and let us know where you're stuck. Have you used analytics for your blog? Tell us about it!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team