STUDENTS
arnold on Sep 04, 2018
Today we are going to be installing several digital marketing tools into our WordPress websites.
The first thing we are going to install is Google Analytics. With Analytics we are able to learn a ton of information about our websites. On a basic level, analytics will tell you how many people are visiting your site, how they found your website, how long they stayed, which content they viewed, where they are from, what devices that are using, etc. There are thousands of different things that Google Analytics will tell you about your website.
If you want to play around with some real live analytics you can access the Google Store account (but you need to sign up for an analytics account first):
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6367342
Before we sign up for Google Analytics we are going to first install a couple plugins into our WordPress website. These plugins are going to make it very easy for us to install everything we are doing today without knowing how to code. Without these plugins we would have to insert code onto each page in our website. That wouldn’t be too hard now since we only have a homepage. But imagine if we were building a 10 or 20 page website. And what about an E-commerce website with thousands or products, each with their own page?
How To Install Plugins in WordPress
The first thing we need to do is get logged into the dashboard of our websites.
So enter: www.yoururl.com/admin or www.yoururl.com/wp-login.php
That will take you to the dashboard of your website.
We then need to go to the plugins page which we access from the left side of the tool bar where we will click “Add New”:
MonsterInsights
We aren’t using Themify plugins for this like we did last class. We are going to use third party plugins. So instead of uploading a plugin we are going to search for one. The first one we want is called “Google Analytics For WordPress By MonsterInsights.” We can find it easily by searching for the keyword “monster” on the top right. It should be the first plugin that comes up. Please click “install now” and then click “activate”
Yoast SEO
We will come back to that plugin later. The next plugin we want to install is called YOAST SEO. This is a plugin that we are going to be using to optimize our website for the search engines. That’ll be in a couple weeks but we are going to install it today so we can start collecting data about our websites. Go back to your “add plugins” page and search for the keyword “Yoast.” The first plugin that comes up should be this:
Please install and activate this.
How To Install Google Analytics In A WordPress Website
Now that we have all the plugins installed we will be able to easily install all our digital marketing tools into our website. We first need to create some accounts. Let’s start with Google Analytics.
You first need to sign up for a Google account if you do not have one. If you have Gmail then you have a Google account. If you need a Google account then go to this link: https://accounts.google.com/SignUp and get signed up.
Do not use your CSU email or email account. It will cause you a lot of problems later in the semester. Make sure you are using a @gmail.com account.
Now go to: https://analytics.google.com/
Click Sign Up:
Get signed up like this example:
Then Click “Get Tracking ID” and accept the privacy notification that comes up.
You will need to accept their terms of use:
This will take you to a page that contains the following information:
Now you have signed up for an Analytics Account. But we still need to link it to our websites so our websites can send data to our Analytics account. Luckily we have some plugins installed that will make this very easy. 🙂
Go back to your website and find the plugins section of your WordPress dashboard. Go to MonsterInsights and click “Settings”
The click Authenticate and the “next” when it comes up.
You Will Then Need To Choose your Google Account:
Then select “Allow”
You will then have to choose your property. Select Your property similar to the screenshot below.
Then Click “Complete Authentication”
It will take you back to the MonsterInsights settings. Make sure you click the Save button at the bottom:
How To Check Real Time Analytics In Google Analytics
The next thing we need to do is to check to see if analytics was installed correctly.
Let’s go back to our analytics and look on the home page.
You might see that the total people on the website is 0.
Go to your URL and load your website and see if you can get your traffic up to 1. You might need to load it from another browser or from your phone or from a neighboring computer. Some of you will be able to see live traffic right away. For some of you it will take 24 – 48 hours. That is no big deal. Just check it again over the weekend. Once you see this you will know it is working and installed correctly.
How To Install Google Search Console Into A WordPress Website
The next program we are going to install is going to be Search Engine Console. This is going to be similar to installing Google Analytics. This is a program we are going to use later in the semester for Search Engine Optimization.
To install this, we need to go to the following URL:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en&pli=1
You should see a screen that looks something like this:
You will need to enter your URL and click “Add a property.”
After you click “Add” it will want you to verify that you in fact own the website. There are multiple ways to do this but we will do it the easiest way which is copying a piece of meta data from GSC and then pasting it into our Yoast program.
The image below shows you how to get the meta tag. Click on the “HTML tag” in the “Other Verification Methods” and then copy the tag.
Now go back to your plugins page on your wordpress website and click “General” in YOAST on the sidebar. Then click “Webmaster Tools” at the top. Here you need to enter your meta tag from Google Search Console. You can paste the entire line and Yoast will pull the information it needs. One you enter it click “Save Changes”
Go back to your Search console page and click verify. If you did everything correctly you will see this page:
You are all set for now. You can “Go To Property” and look around or close out your GSC. There won’t be any data yet but Google will start to collect information about your website and there should be some information there in a few weeks.
