Sign up for Google Analytics for free
Google Analytics is a free tool and anyone with a Google account can sign up and benefit from this amazing tool. Follow the steps below to sign up for Google Analytics:
- Go to analytics.google.com in your favorite browser
- On the Sign Up page, click the Sign Up button and sign in with your Gmail ID .
- Fill out the form with basic details about your site and site type category
Submit the registration form and accept the terms and conditions together with the GDPR compliance policy
- That’s it, you’ll now be navigating to the Google Analytics admin page
You have now successfully signed up for a free Google Analytics account.
Get the Google Analytics tracking code
Once you’re on the administration page after you first sign up, you’ll see the Google Analytics tracking code that you’ll implement on your site. Or you may need to navigate to get the tracking snippet.
Follow these steps to get the Google Analytics tracking code:
- Sign in to your Google Analytics account
- Click the Administrator tab with the Gear icon – there will be 3 sections: Account, Property, and View
- Select Tracking Information> Tracking Code in the Property section
- In the Website Tracking section of the Tracking Code, you’ll find the global site tag (gtag.js)
- This is your Google Analytics tracking code with tracking ID: UA-XXXXXX
Copy the tracking snippet and paste it with the <head>… </head> tag on your website.
Enter the Google Analytics tracking code
We can easily insert the Google Analytics tracking code into a WordPress site without using any additional plugins. Follow the steps below to insert the GA tracking code:
- Log in to the WordPress dashboard
- Navigate to the Theme Editor from the Appearance menu
- Open the header.php file in the Theme Editor
- Look for the closing head tag – </head>
- Copy and paste the Google Analytics tracking code just before you close the </head> tag
- Update and Save the header.php file in the Theme Editor
- That’s it!
The GA tracking code is inserted into the WordPress <head> on the site.
Refresh and test the visitor in real time
Once the GA tracking code is installed, you can check your own visit session in the real-time presentation report.
- Sign in to your Google Analytics account
- Place your cursor and click on the tab in the left bar named – Real-time
- And select the Overview Report in the real-time tab
Here you can check all the pages you interact with on your site in real time.
Quickly browse some pages or post on your site and see the graph per second for the number of page views . The most important active pages will display the page you are currently visiting.
You can check out other reports tomorrow to see the full aggregate interaction with other visitors you’ve received on the site. Although you can only identify yourself if you are the only visitor to your new site.
Google Analytics is also available as a native smartphone app on both Android and iOS devices.