Installing analytics tracking scripts on your WordPress website is the best way to learn as much as you possibly can about your site’s visitors. Analytics can tell you where your visits are coming from, how those visitors are finding your website, how long visitors stay on your site, what pages they viewed during their visit and what page they exited from. Google Analytics is considered the standard among website analytics options, and WordPress gives you two different options for incorporating a Google Analytics tracking script.

Using Google Analyticator with WordPress

Google Analyticator is a plugin that you search for and install from within your WordPress website. Once activated, you’ll notice that the plugin integrates a 30-Day graph plus some additional basic stats like pageviews, visitors, and bounce rate into your Dashboard.

1. To add Google Analyticator to your WordPress website, search for and install the Google Analyticator plugin.

2. After activation, navigate to the Settings section in the left sidebar of your Dashboard and open “Google Analytics“.

By default, your Google Analyticator will be disabled. You need to create a Google Analytics account (if you haven’t already done so), choose to “Enable” logging in and then authenticate this plugin with your Google Analytics account.

3. After authentication, continue to scroll down within the Google Analyticator settings. You have the option to not track certain users (for example, yourself as the admin), determine which users are shown the dashboard widget and include your AdSense ID.

Manually Installing the Google Analytics Tracking Code

Having a snapshot of your analytics integrated into your WordPress dashboard is convenient, however some website owners may prefer to not see their stats “front and center” every time they log in or may prefer to not have an extra plugin potentially slowing down their load time.

You can find tracking code to add to your WordPress website by signing into your Google Analytics account. From the Home tab view, click on the gear icon on the right side. Choose “Tracking Code” and then scroll down to copy the analytics tracking code to add to your site.

Where you paste that code varies by WordPress theme. Google Analytics notes that the tracking code needs to be placed before the </head> tag. Premium themes like Thesis and Headway make it easy with designated fields to house analytics tracking scripts.

In Headway

In Thesis

Whether you choose the plugin option or manually paste analytics tracking code into your WordPress website, having this type of valuable traffic data will benefit you over the long term.

Do you have an analytics tool installed on your website?