Google Analytics: A Guide for Beginners

As, various tools are available to accomplish this but it seems to be confounded when the matter comes to opt for perfect tool. But nothing to worry, as I am here to help you.

Google Analytics is a robust and easy to use tool that can be implemented by everyone for tracking and analyzing a website data. Most interesting thing is that you can congregate in-depth Google Web Analytics including what keyword resound the visitors, what are those key factors that leads the people get away, from what source you are getting more traffic from referrals to search engines, and many more.

Among many of us own their website but still are not aware with Google Analytics tracking as well as some knows but don’t have appropriate knowledge to implement properly and credit its achievements. Therefore, by targeting those users in this post Google Analytics: A Guide for Beginners I am presenting easy to comprehend Google Analytics Tutorial that will teach about Google Analytics Login, Google Analytics Setup, Google Analytics Report and all other features.

So, lets go and have a look over this Google Analytics Tutorial that will answer all your question that you asked yourself or pent-up inside yourself. Before we proceed further lets have a look over this Google Analytics Interface Tutorial that will take you through Google Analytics Dashboard and distinct reporting section. Also, it will state about which search engine is driving traffic including country, time of staying on page and miscellaneous.

Step 1: Set Up Your Google Analytics Account

In order to access Google Analytics, first of all you are required to set up an account accordingly. In return you will got a unique identifier with an instruction to add this in your website.

• Visit Google Analytics Website.
• If you still haven’t got your Google account, click “Sign Up Now” button that is situated in the left of sign-in box.
• If you already have your Google account, Sign in with your e-mail address and password.
• Now, Click Sign Up to continue.
• The next window will appear where you are required to provide the URL of the website you wish to track and analyze.
• Now, specify an account name that will be obvious to track multiple websites in future.
• After that, select the country your website is based in or the country where it is serving and select appropriate time zone.
• Click on Continue button
• Put your contact information in the next window.
• Again Click to Continue
• Now, Google Analytics terms of services will appear in the next window, Click YES if you are agree.
• Click Create New Account
• Finally, Google will deliver a block of code. Save this code that will be asked to insert in your website.

Step 2: Insert Google Analytics Code to Your Pages

Now, the Code provided by Google Analytics is need to be insert in the pages you wish to track and analyze.

Insert Google Analytics Code in multiple Sites

In order to insert the code first of all you are supposed to get into HTML code of your page.
If you are employing a service like WordPress, open the footer.php file and insert this code their.

• Now, at the bottom of HTML designate </body> just above the </html>
• Above the </body> tag designate the code urchinTracker(), utmLinker(), utmSetTrans() or utmLinkPost(). If found add this Google Analytics Code just above this code and if not you can paste it above </body> tag.
• If your website incorporates any templates add this code accordingly into them.
• After incorporating and uploaded the codes in desired pages to the site, you will be able to track information.

Step 3: Get an Overview of Your Website Performance

After setting up your account and etching code into your page, Google Analytics is now working and will provide the insight reports and charts regarding your website’s performance. However, it may take upto 24 hours to congregate data for your website.

Sign in Google Analytics

You will found Website Profiles in the center of the page. Click View Reports link located at the right of the name of website in which you are interested. It will drive you to Dashboard.

• A chart with visual representation of your website traffic with past month will appear at the top of page.
• This chart will deliver data only from the time you inserted the Google tracking code into your pages.
• If you wish to view the data of specific time span you can select the date from calendar which placed on upper right-hand corner or simply type the date manually.
• You can establish a comparison between two periods of time, first select one time period, then click compare to past and assign the time period you want compare with.
• You will find a menu Visits just below the dates, click on it to transform the graph according to page views, pages per visit, average time spent on the site, bounce rate and percentage of new visits.

Just below the chart a header named by Site Usage sits there incorporating six small charts. Site Usage is very obvious that deliver quick information on several statistics of website traffic for the time period appear in the main chart. Further each contain an individual chart.

• Visits says the number of visits to your page. It is referred as a page view when user hasn’t visit any other page on your site in past half hour.
• Pageviews indicates the number of times a page on your website viewed.
• Pages/Visits tells average number pages an users view then they come to your website
• Bounce Rate states the percentage of users who left just after viewing only one page.
• Avg. Time on Site shows the average time of users spent on your website.
• New Visits proclaims the percentage of users who comes to your website for the first time.

The Visitors Overview graph says the number of visitors who view your website. In order to get more information about your website’s visitors click on View Report

“Map Overlay” shows from which countries your visitors are coming from. Click View Report to get insight information about your visitors.

Traffic Source Overview tells the percentage of users coming to your website through directly typing your URL in their browser, search engines, referring sites or any other sources like emailed links.

Content Overview displays the five top most viewed pages over the period of time you are looking at. You can get in-depth information regarding page overview just by clicking on the name of a page. Also click on View Report to have detail information concerning the overall performance of the pages in your site.

Step 4: Get Daily and Hourly Performance of Your Site

Google Analytics can provide a complete overview of your website regarding peaks during specific times of a day or specific days of a week.

• In the left menu click on Visitors.
• You will view a number of distinct statistical breakouts in the left under main chart.
• Now, you can click on any word to achieve a bar-chart of daily performance in context of website traffic measurement.
• You can see hour by hour graph for the time span just by clicking on the word Hourly.
• In order to compare two distinct time spans, you are supposed to click on dates just above the line graph. Now, select the first time period then check Compare to Past box. After that specify another set of dates and click Apply Range button.

Step 5: Analyze From Where Your Traffic is Coming

You can find out from where most of traffic to your website is coming either from search engines or any other referral links.

You will found your site’s 5 top most-accessed pages in the lower right-hand of the Dashboard. You may click any of these.

Underneath the chart present on the right hand side, you can see a heading Landing Page Optimization. Now, you are required to click on Entrance Sources link beneath it.

A table will appear just beneath the chart which lists the places from where users came from to visit your website.

If you desire to get information regarding other pages, you can. You are required to click on the Content by Title menu item present under the Content menu in right. Now, take a look over all your content to congregate information on each and every page.

By clicking on the Dashboard sits in the upper-left corner you can return to the main Dashboard.