Google Analytics is a robust analytics program that can help you gain valuable insight into your PPC performance. You can see where visitors are dropping out of your shopping process; you can see how long they stay on your landing page; and you can learn on which pages visitors convert most highly. The best part is, Google Analytics is free!
When you analyze them properly, you can gain invaluable, numerous insights that are from Google Analytics. We could write an entire book on installing and analyzing web analytics, but luckily we don’t have to! As we mentioned last week, a great resource for learning everything you need to know about analytics is Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, which shows you how to slice and dice your information so that you become a master of actionable analysis.
For now, here are the basic steps for getting Google Analytics installed on your website and landing pages:
- Open a Google Analytics account. You can do this by going to www.Google.com/Analytics.
- After you’re in your account, click Add Website Profile.
- Enter the URL of your website, select your country, and choose a time zone.
- The next page displays the universal tracking code that needs to be inserted on every page of your website. Copy the code.
- Insert the snippet of Google Analytics code on every page of your website.
After you complete this process, you should link your Google AdWords account to your Google Analytics account. This way, your PPC traffic is tracked correctly in Google Analytics, and you can access your Google Analytics account directly through AdWords. To link the accounts, follow these steps:
- Click the Reporting tab within AdWords.
- Choose Google Analytics from the drop-down menu.
- Enter your Google Analytics account ID to link the two accounts.