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Nitty Gritty: Google Analytics Day One

by Megan

Welcome back to an all NEW series of The Nitty Gritty of Blogging! This time around we will be focusing on Google Analytics (“GA”), and how you can use the data found there to improve your blog. I’m going to be dealing with the basics this time around, but there is a LOT you can do with Google Analytics. Maybe I’ll have to do a more advanced “part two” in the future.

Today we are going to talk about how to get set up with Google Analytics. Chances are good that many of you are already set up, but if not you’re going to need this information before I go any further, so read on!

Getting set up with Google Analytics:

1. Go to the Google Analytics home page.

2. Click on “Create an account” (orange button, top right), then click on “sign up.” You will need a Google account to be able to sign up and sign in. You will come to this screen:

3. Give your account a name (probably your blog name), type in the URL, and make the appropriate selections. Then accept the terms of service and continue.

4. You will be taken to the admin page for your account, and if you scroll down, you will see the text box with your tracking code in it:

5. In a separate tab, open up your Blogger dashboard, click the drop-down list, then click “template.”

On the next screen, click “edit html.”

Click “proceed” to open up your blog’s html, and then hit ctrl-F to bring up the “Find” box. Enter <head> to find this code in your html.

6. Now go back to Google Analytics and copy your tracking code. Then, paste the tracking code you copied from GA, right before </head>.

7. Hit the “preview” button to preview your blog, to make sure that nothing odd happened while you were editing the html. If it looks normal, then go ahead and “save template.”

8. Refresh your GA admin page, and you should see where it says “tracking installed.” This may not be instantaneous, so check back if it doesn’t say “tracking installed” right away.

Note: There is a second way to install GA on your blog, which you may find easier. Go into Blogger and to “Settings.” Then click on “Other” and scroll to the bottom:

Here you can enter your GA Property ID, which you can find on your admin page in GA:

Thanks to Nikkiana for showing me this alternate way!

And that’s it! It will take a little bit of time for GA to start receiving data from your blog, so give it a day or two before you start checking your stats.

Well, if you weren’t already signed up with GA, you should be now, so come back tomorrow and the rest of the week to learn about how to use the GA data to improve your blog!

nitty gritty google analytics

Thanks for reading, and if you found this helpful, please feel free to share!

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13 comments

Michelle September 17, 2012 - 12:28pm

GA is great for blogs! More people need to look at it.

Reply
brooke September 17, 2012 - 5:01pm

i haven’t set this up yet, but i will tonight! thank you so much for the step by step instructions!

Reply
Lauren {at} Life.Love.Lauren September 17, 2012 - 5:19pm

I followed all the steps and for some reason it won’t say that tracking is installed. hmm. odd

Guess I will have to have the hubby look at it :-)

Reply
Lauren {at} Life.Love.Lauren September 17, 2012 - 7:46pm

Oh hey, turns out it just takes a while to change the status. Neat. Looking forward to more posts about this!! :-)

Reply
Renee C. September 17, 2012 - 6:22pm

Great! I’m looking forward to this series as I’m a bit Google Analytics-obsessed. lol

Reply
Evani Gatsby September 17, 2012 - 6:39pm

Hmmm wonder how this works with WordPress…

Reply
Nikkiana September 18, 2012 - 1:11am

There’s actually a way easier way to do this in Blogger. If you go to Settings -> Other, there’s a field in there for the Analytics Web Property ID, and it’ll add the Google Analytics code without having to dig into HTML.

Reply
Maegan September 18, 2012 - 4:42am

Awesome thanks! Just like Lauren it isn’t refreshing that the tracking has been installed, I’ll check again in the a.m., hopefully it just takes a little time. Very easy instructions!

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