What are the Best Google Analytics Plugins for WordPress?
Introduction
In this day and age, it’s become very hard to imagine to get an online business up and running without relying on the all-important insights provided by Google Analytics. This goes for just about any type of website out there. Regardless whether you are building a small eCommerce platform, starting a blog or a business. It’s simply a must-have toolkit for anyone seeking to establish themselves in the modern online market. This is why this article will focus on the best Google Analytics Plugins for WordPress.
Now, we’re not saying your website is never going to take off without using Google Analytics. We are just implying that there is an extremely helpful, insightful, easy to use as well as free means of gaining some very important knowledge on your existing visitor base. Consequently, this can prove essential when targeting your potential website visitors. You’ll have a better chance at gathering a larger visitor base. Moreover, you can even learn how and where to find your audience. Perhaps you’ll gain insight on how to provide them with relevant content. This could also teach you how to make a focused and streamlined website experience, and much more. This is exactly why we strongly recommend using this freemium web analytics service.
There are a few ways you can connect your WordPress website to Google Analytics. There’s the most basic approach, which consists of installing Google Analytics by using code. After this, add a new Google Analytics account and you’re ready to go. In this article, you’ll be presented with a couple of the best Google Analytics Plugins for WordPress. Alongside this you’ll get the easy to follow step-by-step guides for installing these plugins and connecting your website with Google Analytics.
Getting Started
For starters, you’ll need your Google Analytics account. In case you already have your Google account set up, you can feel free to skip to step 2.
As the beginning of this article suggests, you can connect your site to Google Analytics by simply using code. However, we cannot recommend this method to beginners. Aside from the fact that you need to be at least somewhat adept at using the code, some users might experience certain setbacks when using the “no plugin” method. Namely, the the tracking code could disappear from code after theme update or switch, to name one. This is why we advise using a plugin on your site.
When it comes to Google Analytics plugins for WordPress, there’s a number of options you could go for. Therefore, we have compiled a short list of some of the ones we saw in action and can say that have shown themselves extremely well.
Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights
This plugin is the most popular Google Analytics WordPress plugin out there. It has more than 2 million active installs, and some world-famous websites in its resume.
Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, this plugin is very easy to install and activate. MonsterInsights has both Free and Pro versions. For the sake of this article, we’ll focus on the free version of the plugin here. Pro version will give you some additional perks and feats. These include the E-commerce tracking, Author tracking and more. Nonetheless, the free version is a very impressive and capable tool on its own.
It’s time to get cracking! The first thing you need to do is install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin.
There are a few ways to install and activate any plugin:
- You can download the plugin and extract the contents of the zip file you will obtain in your theme’s Plugin folder. You can locate this folder in the wp-content folder of your theme. All that’s left now is to navigate through your WordPress admin area (aka dashboard) and locate Plugins >> Installed Plugins. There you will find MonsterInsights. Check the box next to the plugin, select Activate from the dropdown above the plugin list and click Activate.
- The second method is perhaps more straightforward. You should navigate through your dashboard and find Plugins >> Add New. Once you are there, type the name of the plugin in the upper right box and you will be able to locate the MonsterInsights. You can click Install Now button once you have located the plugin in the search results. The installation process should be finished in a few moments. After this the Install Now button will be replaced by the Activate button. After clicking the Activate button, you are good to go.
Now that you have installed and activated the MonsterInsights plugin, you should first authenticate it with your Google account. You can achieve this by navigating to Insights (this is a new menu that will appear in your WordPress user dashboard after activating the plugin). Click Settings from this menu. Alternatively, you can click the notification at the top of the screen in your admin area to achieve the same.
From there, you should click the Authenticate With Google Account button after which you will be prompted to allow MonsterInsights to connect to your Google Analytics account.
Finally, you will be asked to pick a profile you wish to connect with. Choose All Web Site Data from the dropdown that appears beneath the website that corresponds to the site you’re connecting. Next click the Complete Authentication button.
You’ll be happy to hear that this is the last step! All that’s left is to wait for 12-24 hours for your first data reports to start coming in. You are sure to have a neat overview of these in the Reports section of the MonsterInsights.
Insert Headers and Footers Plugin
Here’s another plugin great for connecting your website with your Google Analytics account and obtaining the all-important tracking data. The key difference between this plugin and MonsterInsights is the fact that this plugin, unlike MonsterInsights, will not let you view the traffic data reports you collected in your WordPress dashboard.
First off, you should install Insert Headers and Footers and activate the plugin. The process is exactly the same as for the MonsterInsights plugin, and you can refer to this part of the article if you are unsure how to achieve this.
After you install and activate the plugin, navigate to Settings >> Insert Headers and Footers. Paste your Google Analytics tracking code here. After you do this and click Save Changes, you’re all set. You can start monitoring your traffic data on Google Analytics once the info starts rolling in.
Alongside these two plugins, there are quite a few more notable Google Analytics plugins for WordPress, like Google Analytics + , Google Analytics WD , Analytify and Google Analytics Dashboard for WP , to name a few.
If you’re looking for an alternative, you might prefer the Independent Analytics plugin. It’s a free analytics plugin made just for WordPress, so you don’t need to create an account anywhere else to use it.
Independent Analytics runs lightning fast, offers superior data privacy, and adds a beautiful dashboard right inside your WP admin.
This makes it easy to review your site’s performance and dig deeper with filters and sorting. There are also dashboards to see your top traffic sources and the geolocation of your visitors.
We hope that you found this article to be helpful. If you liked it, please feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
