Being able to track the visitors to your website is not optional when you have a business website. Improving the performance of your website on a regular basis is an essential task. The only way to know if the website’s performance is improving is to measure and track. Luckily there is a free analytics software called Google Analytics that can track more information than you could ever want on your website. Today I am going to walk you through step-by-step in setting up a very basic Google Analytics Installation.

Step 1 – Set up a Google Account or Sign In

Navigate to www.google.com/analytics and click on sign up for Google Analytics link in the upper right hand corner. At this point you will have to sign in with your Google Account (you have a Google account already if you use Google services such as Gmail). If you don’t have a Google account you will need to create one. It is free to create a Google Account and relatively painless. You can use any email address to set up your Google Account. It doesn’t have to be a Gmail account.

Step 2 – Enter Website Information

Next you will need to enter in the website url, the name of the account (by default it is the url), and your time zone.

Step 3 – Enter Your Name

Next your will enter the name of the person who will be managing the account. If that is you, then enter your name.

Step 4 – Agree to the Terms of Service

You will now be asked to agree to the terms of service. One thing to note about the terms of service. They require you to have a privacy policy for your website that states that your website uses first party cookies.

Step 5 – Copy and Paste Your Tracking Code

This will probably be the most difficult step for anyone who doesn’t know html. For most websites the standard code will work fine. Since this is a guide for a basic Google Analytics Install, we will focus on the standard code. The below screenshot shows what the code looks like.

You will want to copy all of the code and paste it onto every page of your website just before the </body>  tag (please note that is the closing body tag, not the opening). By loading the tracking code just above the closing body tag you ensure that it doesn’t slow down your page load times.

Now your website is ready to start tracking your sites visitors. A best practice install requires quite a few more steps, but you will at least be able to start tracking, which is an essential first step for improving your website’s performance.

Have any questions installing Google Analytics? Let us know by posting a comment below.

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