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A re wondering how to see analytics on WordPress and get actionable insights on your blog? Well, then you’ve come to the right place!
When it comes to WordPress analytics, you have a ton of options to choose from. What data analytic tools you use will make a huge difference — because the data you need and the way you view it is different for everyone. Analytic companies and plugins have distinct differences and are not all the same. They all have a niche that can be compatible with your site — and you may end up using. Games watched (2020/21): Spurs (h), Fulham (a), Leicester City (a), Burnley (h), Spurs (a), Sheffield United (a) Attacking Performs to the confines of a set system very well, with consistent, high-quality movement between the lines, deep or in behind, and into or from any of the three central lanes.
Viewing your analytics can be a little tricky as a beginner. So, you might be wondering, how do I see traffic on my WordPress blog?
Unfortunately, you can’t view Google Analytics directly from your WordPress blog. This makes it time-consuming and inconvenient to check your website stats.
But with a WordPress analytics plugin like MonsterInsights, you can easily view your WordPress analytics right from the WordPress dashboard.
In this guide, we’ll teach how to see the analytics on your WordPress blog, step-by-step.
So without further ado, let’s dive in.
In This Guide:
What is Google Analytics?
First, let’s talk about what Google Analytics is and how it can be helpful for your blog.
Google Analytics is a free analytics platform that gives you detailed reports of your website.
These reports give you useful information about how users interact with your website so that you can make informed decisions about what to change on your blog. This is a great way to boost your traffic and sales.
Instead of guessing how well your blog is performing, you can get real-time actionable insights with Google Analytics.
And the best part of Google Analytics is that it’s completely free to use!
Now that you know what Google Analytics is, let’s connect it with your WordPress blog.
How to Add Google Analytics to your WordPress Blog
As we mentioned previously, you aren’t able to view your website stats from your WordPress blog with just Google Analytics. To see your analytics from WordPress, you need a plugin.
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It has over 2 million installs, and websites like PlayStation, Bloomberg, Zillow, and many others use it daily.
MonsterInsights is the easiest way you can connect and view your Google Analytics report from your WordPress dashboard.
Right from your WordPress dashboard, you can monitor your:
- Pageviews over time
- Top posts and pages
- Top traffic sources
- Important conversion stats
- And much more
MonsterInsights offers a free version and a premium version.
You can get all the necessary features in the free version but if you really want to use MonsterInsights to its full potential then you’ll have to subscribe to its premium version.
To get started, you need to install and activate the plugin on your WordPress blog.
Then, you’ll be taken to the setup wizard. All you have to do is follow the prompts to connect MonsterInsights with your blog. Finding zen.
It’s super easy and you don’t have even have to touch the tracking code!
For step-by-step instructions, check out our guide on how to install Google Analytics on your WordPress blog.
How to View WordPress Analytics with MonsterInsights
Now that you know how to install and connect MonsterInsights with your WordPress blog, let’s show you how to see the analytics on your blog.
First, you can get a quick overview of your analytics in the WordPress Dashboard.
Here you can see the number of sessions, pageviews, bounce rate, top posts and pages, and more.
If you want more detailed reports of your WordPress stats, you can go to Insights» Reports from the WordPress dashboard.
The first thing you will notice is the Overview Report. It will look something like this:
The graph shows you the pageviews and the sessions for the last 30 days.
A pageview is recorded when a user views a page on your website. A session is a group of interactions a user has on your website in a given time frame.
If you want, you can also change the graph’s period from 30 days to any custom time period you want. For example, instead of viewing your blog’s performance for the last 30 days, you can change it to last 7 days or any other custom period.
Right below the graph, you will see a comparison of your website’s performance within the last 30 days. It will compare sessions, pageviews, average session durations, and bounce rates. Followed by a comparison of new vs. returning visitors and the type of devices that were used to access your blog.
You can read more about these specific SEO metrics in our SEO for bloggers guide.
In the next fold, you will see the top countries that visit your blog and referral websites that send your blog the most traffic.
Further down, you will see your blog’s top posts and pages at a glance. This section will show you which of your content gets the most traffic.
You will notice some tabs at the top of the screen. We have already walked you through the Overview tab; now, let’s look at the other tabs.
Publishers Report
In this section, you will get more information about the top posts and pages that you’ve published on your WordPress blog. You will get detailed insights on which articles get the most traffic, along with their average visit duration and bounce rate.
Analyzing your most popular blog posts will show you what your visitors are interested in the most. Then, you can use those insights to brainstorm new blog post ideas that your readers will love.
The Publishers report also shows you the exit pages of your blog. You can use this information to optimize pages where your visitors leave your website and boost conversions. For example, you could add an email popup to stop your visitors from leaving your blog.
And if you’re monetizing your blog with affiliate marketing, you can see which of your affiliate links are performing the best.
You can use this information to make changes to your under-performing affiliate links and boost your affiliate sales.
The Publishers report will also tell you stats like:
- Top Download Links – If you offer downloadable content on your blog, like ebooks, you can see which ones get downloaded the most.
- Top Outbound Links – See which outbound links your visitors click on the most.
- Visitor Demographics – Discover the demographics of visitors like age, gender, and interests.
If you want to take advantage of the Publishers report, you will have to purchase the pro plan of MonsterInsights. Check out the MonsterInsights pricing page for more details.
Search Console Report
With MonsterInsights, you can view the Google Search Console reports from the dashboard. This report helps you see which keywords your blog is ranking for on Google and helps you with your keyword research.
You can also view the click-through-rate (CTR), average ranking positions, and the search impressions of the keywords you are ranking for.
You can use this report to improve your blog SEO and rank for more targeted keywords.
eCommerce Report
The eCommerce report tab is ideal for bloggers who have started an online store.
This report lets you see your store’s performance with a single click on WordPress. But do keep in mind that you will need the Enhanced Ecommerce add-on and the MonsterInsights Pro plan to take advantage of this report.
Once you have the add-on, you can use the eCommerce report to track conversion rate, transactions, revenue, and average order size.
It also shows you the list of your best selling products on your store and the pages where your visitors convert the best.
Dimensions Report
Next, we have the dimensions tab. You can set up custom dimensions you want MonsterInsights to track here.
For example, if you run a blog with multiple authors, you can track which author gets the most views. You can also track the most popular blog categories, tags, post type, and much more.
You can check out this guide on how to set up custom dimensions for more information.
Forms Report
Want to see the analytics of the forms on your blog?
Forms tracking is yet another awesome feature of MonsterInsights. Subscribe to the pro plan and install the Forms Tracking add-on to see how your forms are performing on your blog.
You can view the performance of each individual form on your blog such as contact forms, email optin forms, event registration forms, and more.
You can track their impressions and conversion rates and optimize the forms that aren’t performing well.
Real-Time Report
The real-time report lets you track your blog’s performance in real-time. It shows you how many visitors are active on your blog at that very moment.
You can also see which pages they are visiting, which website referred them, and which country and city they are visiting from.
And we’re done!
We hope that this guide helped you learn how to see analytics on your WordPress blog.
The valuable information you get from Google Analytics can help you grow your blog to new heights so it’s important that you know how to track analytics on WordPress.
And with MonsterInsights, you can easily view Google Analytics from your WordPress dashboard.
If you liked this guide, then also check out our list of the best SEO tools to explode your blog traffic.
Don’t forget to sign up to our email newsletter so you can get useful content like this sent right to your inbox!
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If you want to understand what visitors are doing on your website and where they’ve come from, you need a web analytics tool. And when it comes to web analytics, there’s one name that dominates the market — Google Analytics.
According to W3Techs, Google Analytics is used by 84% of all the websites with a known analytics tool. So, basically, almost every website you visit is probably using Google Analytics.
If you want your WordPress site to join the club, there are two basic routes you can follow to add Google Analytics to your site:
- You can manually add the tracking code to your site.
- You can use a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
The benefit of the second approach is that, in addition to making it easy to add the tracking script, most WordPress Google Analytics plugins also help you work with the tool in other ways — such as viewing your website analytics inside your WordPress dashboard and configuring more advanced tracking methods without needing code and/or technical skills.
As the title of this post suggests, we’ll be focusing on the second approach. Below, I’ll share the seven best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress, and help you to pick the best one for your needs. Visual studio code for chrome.
MonsterInsights — FREE/$100
Active on more than 2 million WordPress sites, MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin at WordPress.org. It comes from Syed Balkhi and Awesome Motive, who are probably best known for WPBeginner.
MonsterInsights does several different things to help you work with Google Analytics on WordPress. It:
- Helps you add the Google Analytics tracking script to your site without needing to edit any code.
- Lets you see Google Analytics data inside your WordPress dashboard.
- Lets you set up more advanced tracking, such as tracking link or button clicks.
Once you set it up, you’ll be able to see stats for your site inside your WordPress dashboard:
With the premium version, MonsterInsights adds a lot more advanced tracking, such as:
- Enhanced Ecommerce tracking to view the stats for your eCommerce store (this is a core Google Analytics feature that I’ll talk about in more depth later on).
- Enhanced Link Attribution to see which specific buttons/links get the most clicks.
- Easy custom events tracking to create your own tracking conditions.
It also has some unique features that help you to segment your stats by features in WordPress using custom dimensions — for example:
- Segment logged-in WordPress users vs non-logged in users to see trends.
- See which post types get the most traffic.
- Segment your traffic by the focus keyword in Yoast SEO.
- See how your traffic correlates with your Yoast SEO score. For example, do pages with a higher Yoast SEO score have better metrics?
- See which authors on your site get the most traffic.
If you think you’ll make use of these sorts of advanced analytics, it may be worth it to pay for the premium version of MonsterInsights. But, if you just want something to help you add the tracking code to your site and view basic stats, you can stick with the free version (or pick another plugin).
GAinWP (Fork of GADWP) — FREE
In the past, the second most popular Google Analytics plugin (behind MonsterInsights) was Google Analytics Dashboard for WP, or GADWP for short. It was popular in large part because, in addition to having a very useful feature list, it was 100% free.
In 2018, the plugin was acquired by the same developer behind the MonsterInsights plugin from above and rebranded into ExactMetrics. About a year or so after that, the developer re-released the plugin and split it into free and paid versions, which led to a barrage of one-star reviews.
That’s a lengthy introduction to explain why GAinWP is next on our list despite not being as popular as some other plugins — GAinWP is a fork of that previously-popular GADWP plugin that retains all of the features in GADWP and keeps the 100% free price tag. If you’re not familiar with the term “fork”, it basically means that the forked plugin is based on the exact same code as the original GADWP plugin. In other words, it’s a copy of how GADWP used to be, but it’s still actively maintained to ensure compatibility with current versions of WordPress.
The plugin helps you both add the Google Analytics tracking code to your site and also view a variety of reports from right inside your WordPress dashboard. You’ll be able to see overall stats for your site, as well as stats for individual pieces of content.
Beyond that, you’ll also get access to a number of advanced features, including the following:
- Enhanced Link Attribution.
- Real-time stats.
- Affiliate link/file tracking.
- Download tracking.
- Custom event tracking.
- Custom dimensions (e.g. see stats by WordPress author, publication year, category, etc. — it’s the same as the feature in MonsterInsights).
- Sampling rate controls.
I don’t find the interface to be as nice as MonsterInsights. But the advantage is that GAinWP gives you a lot of features for free that MonsterInsights charges for. So, unless you’re willing to pay a premium for an improved user experience, this one is a great budget option that is, and should remain, 100% free.
Site Kit by Google — FREE
Site Kit is a newly launched official plugin from Google. It helps you to connect your WordPress site to six different Google services and bring data from those services into your WordPress dashboard.
One of those services is — you guessed it — Google Analytics.
The other services are Google Search Console, AdSense, PageSpeed Insights, Google Optimize and Google Tag Manager.
Site Kit doesn’t offer as detailed a feature list as MonsterInsights or GAinWP, but it does help you with two things:
- It helps you to add the Google Analytics tracking code to your WordPress site.
- You can view basic stats for your entire site and specific pages from inside your WordPress dashboard.
To set your site up with Site Kit, you’ll need to go through a few authorization steps. The setup process doesn’t require any code, but you will need to click a bunch of buttons.
Then, you’ll be able to view the stats from your WordPress dashboard. If you go to Site Kit → Dashboard or Site Kit → Analytics, you can view high-level stats for your entire site, such as:
- Traffic overview
- Your top-performing content
One neat thing here is that Site Kit also includes search query terms from Search Console in the main dashboard, so you can see how those match up with your most popular content:
You can also use the search box to open the stats for specific pages on your site. Again, the plugin includes queries from Search Console for that specific page, which is really convenient:
Overall, if you don’t need the detailed features of the other plugins, and just want a simple solution to view basic data from all of your Google services in one spot, this is a really neat plugin.
Note: If you read the plugin reviews at WordPress.org, you’ll see some one-star reviews from people who are having issues. Personally, I’ve been using Site Kit on two of my sites for over a year now and everything has worked great, so don’t be put off by those reviews.
Analytify — FREE/$39-Plus
In addition to helping you add the Google Analytics tracking script to your site, Analytify also lets you browse detailed stats without leaving your WordPress site.
You can see comprehensive stats inside your WordPress dashboard, and, when you’re browsing the front-end of your site, you can also see the stats for individual posts and pages.
This latter feature is quite nice as it makes it easy to access stats for specific pages without needing to use filters.
While the free version of Analytify at WordPress.org is great for creating a stats dashboard on your WordPress site, I think the most distinguishing features are available in the premium version.
First, if you’re running a WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads store, the paid version helps you to set up Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce tracking and view that data inside your dashboard.
If you’re not familiar with Enhanced Ecommerce tracking, it basically means you can see store-specific stats in Google Analytics, such as:
- Transactions
- Total revenue and average order value
- Number of times people add/remove items to/from their carts
- Product clicks
- Coupon usage
- Refund tracking
- Individual product performance — e.g. how often a product is purchased/added to cart
You can not only collect that data, but you can also view it all inside your WordPress dashboard. MonsterInsights also lets you set this up, but I’m a fan of Analytify’s eCommerce dashboard.
The Pro version also adds real-time stats and lets you send yourself automated email reports.
The core paid version costs $39, but if you’re running an eCommerce store you’ll also need the WooCommerce or EDD add-ons, which cost $39 to $49 each. You can also get a bundle of the Pro version and WooCommerce add-on for just $79, which makes it a bit cheaper than MonsterInsights.
WP Google Analytics Events — FREE/$79
WP Google Analytics Events isn’t an all-purpose Google Analytics plugin, unlike many of the other plugins on this list. Instead, it’s focused on helping you to benefit from one specific Google Analytics feature — Event Tracking.
If you’re not familiar with Google Analytics Event Tracking, this feature basically lets you set up your own custom actions that you want to track.
For example, you could track how many people:
- Click a specific CTA button
- Watch an embedded YouTube video
- View an image
- Scroll down the page
Event Tracking lets you do all of that plus a lot more.
The downside is that it can be a little complicated to set up, which is what this plugin aims to fix for you. It gives you an easy interface inside your WordPress dashboard from which you can set up Event Tracking.
This one is definitely not for everyone, but, if you want to be able to track and analyze specific actions in Google Analytics, it’s a great tool.
The free version lets you track basic actions such as link clicks. For more advanced tracking, such as tracking whether people watch a YouTube/Vimeo video, you’ll need the Pro version, which starts at $79.
GA Google Analytics — FREE/$15
GA Google Analytics is a popular Google Analytics plugin from Jeff Starr, a well-respected WordPress developer. It comes in both a free and a paid version.
There are two ways you can use this plugin:
First, if you just want a simple, lightweight plugin to help you add the Google Analytics tracking code to your site, all you need to do is:
- Install the free plugin.
- Add your Google Analytics tracking ID.
- Save your settings.
- Start tracking your visitors!
You also have some other options, such as excluding admin users from being tracked to avoid polluting your analytics data with your own actions:
If you want to set up more complicated implementations, though, GA Google Analytics also comes with some other features you may find helpful, which is the second way to use the plugin.
For example, the free version at WordPress.org supports the following features:
- Display Advertising — to set up remarketing ads.
- Enhanced Link Attribution — track the specific links that users click.
- IP Anonymization — anonymize the IP addresses of the hits you send to Google Analytics.
- Force SSL — forces Google Analytics to always use SSL, even on HTTP pages.
With the paid version, it adds new features, such as:
- A visitor opt-out box to let users opt-out of Google Analytics tracking (great for GDPR compliance!).
- More advanced options for choosing who to track. For example, you can exclude all logged-in users or disable tracking for specific posts, post types, user roles and more.
- Custom tracking, including an option to use custom code on specific pieces of content.
One thing this plugin doesn’t do, though, is show you actual statistics inside your WordPress dashboard — you’ll need to head to Google Analytics to view that data. That’s not a criticism — just something to be aware of when you consider how this plugin compares with the others.
The paid version is quite affordable, starting at just $15 for use on a single site and ranging up to $120 for unlimited sites. All of those plans also come with lifetime updates, which means you’ll never have to pay to continue receiving updates.
CAOS (Complete Analytics Optimization Suite) — FREE
Lastly, we have CAOS (Complete Analytics Optimization Suite), which is a useful plugin for advanced users and WordPress performance junkies. If you’re a beginner, you might want to skip this one, but advanced users might like the additional functionality that it unlocks.
Specifically, this plugin helps you host the Google Analytics tracking script locally on your WordPress site’s server and keep it updated to the current version.
The “normal” way to add Google Analytics to WordPress is to embed the tracking script from Google’s servers. This ensures you always have the most recent version of the tracking script, but the downside is that it doesn’t let you control browser cache expiration times (which Google sets at two hours by default).
For this reason, some speed test tools such as GTmetrix (our tutorial) and Pingdom (our tutorial) might reduce your score and hit you with warnings such as “Add Expires headers” or “Leverage browser caching”. Now, I think people focus too much on speed “scores” over actual load times…but I can’t deny that hosting Google Analytics locally is a way to improve your score if that’s what you care about.
The plugin works by downloading the most recent version of the tracking scripts to your site’s server and then keeping them updated using WP-Cron. Beyond that, it also unlocks some advanced features, including the following:
- Outbound link tracking
- Enhanced link attribution
- Adjusted bounce rate
- Exclude certain cookies from tracking
It’s also compatible with many of the other Google Analytics plugins on this list, including MonsterInsights and Analytify. That is, you can use those plugins for their features but rely on CAOS to host the tracking script locally. This compatibility is useful because CAOS does not let you see stats inside your WordPress dashboard by itself.
All in all, if you want to improve your performance scores by hosting the Google Analytics tracking script locally, this is the best plugin to get the job done.
Wordpress Analytics
What’s the Best Google Analytics Plugin for You?
As is always the case with any list such as this, there’s not a single plugin that’s the ‘best’ option in all scenarios — it depends on the features you want and what you’re willing to pay.
If you just want a simple way to add the Google Analytics tracking code to WordPress and don’t care about in-dashboard stats, go with the lightweight GA Google Analytics plugin. With the paid version, you can also get access to additional features to control where/when to add the tracking code.
Or, if you want to host the Google Analytics tracking script locally for performance reasons, you can consider the free CAOS plugin. Honestly, I don’t think most sites need to bother with this. But if you want a perfect performance “score”, you might need to do this. You can also achieve something similar if you’re using the WP Rocket plugin (our review), which includes a built-in Google Analytics feature to accomplish this.
On the other hand, if you do want to see your stats inside your WordPress dashboard (along with some other features), you have several good options.
If you don’t need too detailed stats, I really like the official Site Kit by Google plugin as it unifies the data from multiple Google services in your WordPress dashboard. This is what I’ve been personally using on some of my sites and I’ve had a good experience so far.
If you want more detailed reports, such as the ability to drill-down by post types or authors, then check out:
- MonsterInsights if you want the best dashboard and are willing to pay.
- GAinWP if you want a free option with a slightly less convenient dashboard.
MonsterInsights also has a free version — you only need to pay if you want the more advanced features.
I also think Analytify is great if you’re running an eCommerce store and the WP Google Analytics Event plugin is convenient if you specifically want to set up your own custom event tracking.
Finally, I didn’t include it in the list, but it’s worth mentioning that you might not even need any of these Google Analytics plugins if you pay for the popular Jetpack plugin (learn about it in our Jetpack review). If you’re on the Jetpack Security Daily plan or above, Jetpack includes a built-in feature to help you add the Google Analytics tracking snippet to your site – click here to learn more about this feature. While you probably don’t want to use Jetpack just for the Google Analytics integration, this is a convenient option if you’re already using Jetpack for security, backups, or one of its many other features.
Used/using any of these plugins? Thoughts?
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