One big reason to have a website is to generate traffic for your business or brand, right? The only way to know if that effort is successful is to track your website. Luckily, there is a free tool you can use to measure your site’s traffic and learn more about your audience. Here’s a look at Google Analytics for beginners so you can get started.

Why You Need Google Analytics

Whether your site is personal or for business, understanding your audience will help you develop better content. Data about your site will help you measure your success and set goals. Some of the questions that can be answered using Google Analytics are:

How many visitors does my site have?
Where do my visitors live?
What websites send traffic to my site?
Which marketing tactics drive traffic to my site?
How many visitors convert into leads or customers?
What content do my visitors view most?

This is just a small sampling of the kinds of valuable data you can gather using Google Analytics.

How to Start

You will need a primary Google account to set up Google Analytics. When you visit the Google Analytics page, click on the “start measuring” button to get started. Follow the instructions to create your account. If you have more than one website you can list them under your one Google Analytics account.

After you have finished registering, click on the “Get Tracking ID” tab. This tracking ID must go on every page of the site that you wish to get data for. The tracker is available as a Tracking ID or as a web code. There are different ways to add the code to your site, depending on your platform:

If the theme you use has an area that lets you add code to the header or footer on your site, copy and paste the tracking code there.
WordPress users can install a variety of plugins (such as MonsterInsights) that allow you to easily add the tracking code to your site.
Websites built with HTML files can use text editor programs to add the tracking code before the </head> tag on each page of the site. Then use an FTP program to upload the file to your web host.
Shopify e-commerce store users will go to the Online Store settings and paste the tracking code where specified.

Types of Google Analytics Reports

Once the tracking code has been installed you can set goals and start tracking your progress. Even without setting goals you still have access to loads of great data about traffic and activity on your site. The standard Google Analytics reports features include:

Audience overview: from demographics to behavior, see who is visiting your site, what devices they are using, what they are looking at, and much more.
Acquisition reports: learn what drove people to your site and what they are searching for.
Behavior Reports: find out the top pages on your site, your site speed, AdSense results, and more.
Conversions: set goals and let Google Analytics measure how many visitors you convert.

Google Analytics is one of the best free tools that you can use to measure the success of your website. This Google Analytics guide for beginners will help you get started. Have questions about Google Analytics? Our experienced team can guide you through the process.