It is vital for any self- hosted blogger to know how the users interact with their website. This information can be gained by analyzing the traffic statistics of the website. This can be done best by installing Google analytics on your WP website. It’s free and it provides all the information you need to know about your users.

Importance of Google Analytics for Bloggers:

Bloggers can obtain the following statistical information using Google analytics:

Geo location of the user:

Google Analytics gives your anonymous user data, such as geographic location of the user, the browser from which the user visited your website and other less important details such as the screen resolution, flash support of the browser, JavaScript, language in which the user prefers to read your content and more.

The above captured information can then be used to customize your website to suit your user’s needs. For example, if a majority of the users who read your website on a screen resolution of 1280, then your website design must be suitable to such resolution. If a majority of users use a specific browser, then you can design your website that best utilizes the features of the browser. Such small changes will attract more users and keep them faithfully returning to your website again and again.

User activity on the website:

Google Analytics gives you information such as which section of your website catches the most attention of your users, the bouncing rate of your website which determines the number of users leaving your website after viewing only your first page and the duration of their stay on a given page on the website. You can use this information to focus your content on the topics that relate more to the user and increase your website’s traffic statistics.

Peak visiting hours on your website:

Google Analytics tell you the peak visiting hours on your website. Knowing this information, you can plan your posts and publish it when there are maximum users on your website. When a new post is added to a website while the user is still navigating it creates an impression that the website is active and may hold lots of useful information for the user. If the peak time of the website does not blend well with your time zone, you can also schedule the posts ahead of time.

Advertisement means of your website:

Google Analytics not only tells you what the user is doing on the website, but also how the user stumbled upon your page in the first place, whether it was by the means of clicking on a search result of a search engine or a referral link, a direct link or from any other forum where you might have promoted your website. Technically, it gives you a detailed percentile statistics of the different sources from which a user can land on your website. For example, in addition to telling you that most users visit your website by clicking on a result listing on a search engine, it also tells which of the search engines is directing the users to your website i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo or is it a social networking platform such as Twitter or Facebook that is driving most users.

Once you have this information, you can focus on your source and contrive strategies to retain your user strength from that source. For example, your website awareness is generated more from your Facebook pages, then you must focus on how your page is presented on Facebook and make efforts to improve it.

If your users come in from a particular website, you can consider developing partnership with the other website. Basically, Google Analytics tells you the best means by which you can promote your website.

User-Content interaction on your website:

Google Analytics tells you which content on your website got the maximum clicks. Google Analytics can be your best bet if you want to perform usability testing on your website. You can perform split testing on your website by developing content experiments to identify which areas need improvement. The results from these tests will tell you what exactly the users think about your website. This information can be useful when branding your website.

Signing Up on Google Analytics

Follow the below given steps to create new Google Analytic account.

Step 1: Creating an account on Google Analytics is easy. First, create one Gmail account if you don’t have one. Then go the Signup Page of Google Analytics.

Below is a screenshot of how your Login page will look like.

Step 2: After you have successfully signed in using your Gmail credentials, Click on Sign up to create your account on Google Analytics.

Step 3: Next, you must choose the website option for tracking. You can either choose the universal analytic account or a classic analytic account. Although universal analytics account will give you extra features, selecting classic analytics account will also do a good job.

Enter the details of your account and the website which you wish to integrate with Google Analytics.

On submitting the form, you will get a new tracking id.

Step 4: To link the newly created tracking id to your website, copy the tracking code and enter it into your website.