Are you looking for a free way to track your website’s traffic?
If you have a website, you probably want to keep tabs on the traffic and behavior of your visitors. There is no need to pay for this as there are amazing free programs readily available. The best free website traffic tracker I’ve found is called Google Analytics.
Google provides this service completely free to its users, and all you need to sign up is a Google account. Most likely you already have an existing account if you use Gmail or Google+.
No worries if you don’t… it’s very easy.. just visit google.com/analytics and select “create an account” within the top right header.
Here’s a video tutorial I made explaining the process of signing up and connecting it to your website (I’m using WordPress)
Go ahead and sign in (or sign up) and follow the steps I’ve outlined them within the video. The best way to install the code into your website is to paste it into the “header” section of your editor. The header is within every page on your site and this way you’ll be able to track visitors no matter what pages they land on and view. This is the way I’ve explained within the video so go ahead and follow along as I do it.
Keep in mind some themes will not allow you to edit the code. If this is the case, you can look and see if the theme has provided boxes for you within the options to insert any needed codes (most likely it will have this somewhere within the theme options). Go ahead and look for the place to insert any “header” code and insert the code into the box instead.
If not, you may need to rely on a plug-in. If you use the All-In-One SEO plugin you can easily insert the tracking ID into the plugin’s options and it should work.
Keep in mind: If you ever change the theme, you may need to reinsert your analytics code as it could get swiped out with a new theme install.
Now with Google Analytics set up you will be able to keep track of all your website’s visitors!
Not only that, but it lets you view pretty in depth data involving all aspects of their behavior which can come in quite useful. It’s actually a pretty complex program, but you can also use if to easily view basic data as well. FIguring out what all the data actually means and what to do with it is another tutorial in and of itself, but for now you’ve got the first step down!
If you have any issues trying to connect it on your site just drop me a comment and I’ll help ya out! 🙂
-Wendy
Owner, SurvivingAfterCollege.com
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