Video transcript
In this video, I want to show you how to set up your Google analytics account and how to add the tracking code for your newly set up Google analytics account to your website. Actually I’m going to show you a couple of ways to do both.
First off, to be able to access or use the Google analytics account which by the way is free, you have to have a Google account whether it’s an add words accounts, a Gmail account, Google drive, whatever, you need that first to be able to sign in or to be able to create an account for Google analytics. I’ve already logged into my Gmail account but you’re still going to have to log into Google analytics through your account if you go here first.
Let me just demonstrate. Come on in here. Click on sign in. remember, I’ve already logged in. you’ll know that because your username will be up here. Click on sign up and here we are. Now you’ll get to the same page if say you’re already logged in to your Google account.
If you come over here to the drop down arrow to the right of your username, click on account, that will bring you to your accounts page, click on the products link here at the bottom of your left side bar, that will bring you to your products page, your products page may look a little bit different than this one, but what you’re looking for is the analytics icon.
Just click on that and where we are. It looked familiar huh? Go ahead and click on the sign up and again, here we are. Now it just says here, this is a Beta setup which means that this could change it any time. That’s one think you need to know about Google analytics, is that its interface can change from time to time. You can in fact, track interactions within android and iOS applications but we’re just going to stick with the website data tracking for right now.
So we come on down here. You want to enter the website name and frankly, I usually use the same here as I do down here under account name. Some people will put in the URL here. I, myself, just use the name like this. I just copy and paste. Now we want to add the website URL and use this as an example right here. Be sure to add the www at the beginning and no trailing slashes at the end. Industry category, just pick one that you think best fits your websites category.
Reporting time zone. I’m snacked up in the middle of the country so mine is central time. Again, put in the account name and the data sharing settings, totally optional as it says here. It gives you a bit of a description here. Get tracking ideas.
Next step, before you do that, you have to agree to the terms of service. Be sure and read through this if you will and click on I Accept if you want to and here we are.
At this point, we now have the tracking code right here. You have other information here that you can customize but for the time being, this is really all we need. Grab this code. Depending upon the type of website that you have or depending upon how you add this. For example, if you have a droople or joomla or WordPress site, then there might be plugins, add ons or modules to add to your particular CMS or website that would require you to add this code a different way. For example, I know that with WordPress, there’s a plug in and I’ll demonstrate this here in just a second that only requires the tracking ID.
We will cover that in just a second. For the time being, I’m going to add this to a static website which is my demonstration of my static website. Now, with a static website, you need to put that code on each and every webpage that you want tracked. Usually with WordPress or these other CMSs like droople or joomla, you put it in one spot and it’s tracked throughout the entire website by putting it in what’s called the footer of that particular site.
Here if we check out the source code, what we’re going to be placing that code is right here above the closing body tag. That’s the forward slash followed by the word body. So to do that, you can do it a couple of different ways either through like your C-panel, file manager. Just navigate to the pages that you want to track, open them up in your editor, add the code, save it, and you’re good to go. I’m going to demonstrate it by using FileZilla or the FTP client that I’m using and that’s FileZilla.
So I am going to log in and I want to go to the public_html, that’s where the index.html page is located at. I’ve got my FileZilla client set up to edit on the fly. So I’ll go to view/edit and if you do not, then what you want to do is just download the files you want to track to your desktop, make this edit, and then upload them, overwrite the existing files on your server and you’ll get the same results. So I’m going to go to source, come on down here just above the closing body tag, and add that code. Save. Close. Click on that. Click on yes. And we’re good. Come on back. Get this out of the way here. Come on back to our page. Refresh this. And there’s the code. It’s that simple.
As you can see on the page, there’s no sign of that code being here. It’s kind of working behind the scenes. Using word press as an example, we would go to plugins, add new, do search for Google analytics, click on search plugins and I use the analyticator quite a bit but there’s a lot to go with that so to keep things simple for this video, I’m just going to go with Google analytics.
If you’re new to this, then what you might want to do before you install now, check out the details, so I’m going to go ahead and install them now, click on activate, come on over to settings, go to Google analytics, simple Simon. All are asking for you here to make Google analytics work on your WordPress site using this plug-in is the web property ID. Come on back to Google analytics, grab our tracking ID here, that’s what the talking is about. Copy. Back here. Paste. Save changes. And we’re good to go.
So that’s a couple of different ways that you can add Google analytics to your website plus a couple of different ways that you can sign up for Google analytics.
Before I close out the video, one last thing, just head on back over to the Google analytics website and one thing I want to point out here is on the learn tab, come on down here to the get starting section, this set up checklist is pretty good page to bookmark. As you go through here, you’ve got links to the various tasks involved in setting up your GA account so as you go through and you complete that particular task, hit that check mark and so when you come back to this page later on, you know where you left off at.
That’s going to bring us to the end of this video on setting up your GA account. Thanks for watching and you have a great day.
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