How to Setup Google Analytics: 5 Quick Videos That Make it Easy

October 2014 by Andy Crestodina

 

 

Everyone goofs sometimes. But an ‘error of omission’ is the worst. It’s incomplete work, started and never finished.

 

In Google Analytics, the most common mistake is not finishing the setup.

 

But, it’s an easy fix. After you add the tracking code to your site, setting up Analytics just takes a few clicks. To keep this simple, we’re not just listing the steps. We’ve made a tiny video for each type of setup.

 

• Goals
• Filters
• Site Search
• Webmaster Tools
• Dashboards

 

Easy peasy, right? Let’s go.

 

1. Setting Up Goals in Google Analytics

 

Why set up goals? So that you can see how many visitors are taking action, converting into leads, subscribers and customers. You can see what sources of traffic are sending visitors that are most likely to convert, and which pages are the most convincing.

 

A “destination goal” is easy to setup and works for most accounts. Here’s how to set up goals in Google Analytics:

 

 

Step-by-step Instructions:

 

Step 1: Click “Admin” in the header

Step 2: Under “View” click “Goals”

Step 3: Click the “New Goal” button

Step 4: Enter in the name of your goal. For example: Contact Lead

Step 5: Select “Destination” as the type of goal and click on “Next step”

Step 6: Under Goal details, set the destination equal to your thank you page URL, such as “/thank-you”

Step 7: Select “Value” > “On” and assign a monetary value to your goal, even if it’s arbitrary. Setting a $1 value for each goal is perfectly fine.

Step 8: Select “Funnel” > “On” and enter in the URL of your Contact form “/contact” then select “Required” > “Yes”

Step 9: Click on “Create Goal” and you’re all set!

 

Troubleshooting Goal Setup:

 

Your website needs “thank you” pages in order to set up goals using this process. This is because Google Analytics is based on Javascript on pages. There are two main reasons why websites don’t have thank you pages…

 

The website has a simple email link on the contact page, rather than a contact form.

The website has a popup thank you message, without a separate page and URL, when a contact form is submitted.

 

These are big problems for Analytics. Without thank you pages, you’ll need to create “event” goals, which require a bit of programming. Not only is that more work, but you miss out the marketing benefit of thank you pages.

 

2. Setting Up Filters in Google Analytics

 

Why set up filters? So that traffic from you and your office doesn’t show up in your stats. You are not your target audience, so you don’t want your data in your Analytics. Clean data means better decisions.

 

An “IP address filter” is the easiest to setup and works well for most accounts. Here’s how to set up an IP filter in Analytics:

 

 

Step-by-step Instructions:

 

Step 1: Click “Admin” in the header

Step 2: Under View, click on “Filters” > “Create New Filter”

Step 3: Name your filter

Step 4: Choose Filter Type > “Predefined Filter”

Step 5: “Select filter type” > “Exclude”

Step 6: “Select source or destination” > “traffic from the IP addresses”

Step 7: “Select expression” > “that are equal to”

Step 8: To find the IP address of your network, search in Google for “what is my IP.” Your IP address will be at the top of the search results page. Copy and paste it into the IP address field in Google Analytics.

Step 9: Click “Save”

 

Troubleshooting filter setup:

 

An IP address filter only works if the IP address of your network doesn’t change. If your office or home network doesn’t have a “static” IP address, then your network is grabbing a new IP every time and the filter won’t work!

 

3. Setting up Site Search in Google Analytics

 

Why set up site search? So you can see what people are searching for on your website. If visitors are confused by the navigation, they may use your search tool. Knowing what they’re searching for may give you ideas for tweaking your navigation, moving content to the home page, or renaming things.

 

It’s a way to listen to your visitors. Here’s how to set up the Google Analytics Site Search report…

 

 

Step-by-step Instructions:

 

Step 1: Click “Admin” in the header

Step 2: Under “View” in the third column, click on “View Settings”

Step 3: Under “Site Search Settings,” select “On”

Step 4: If you don’t know the query parameter of your site search tool, perform a search on your website and look for it in the URL. For example, a search for “Keywords” on the Orbit blog, shows this in the URL: http://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/?s=keywords&submit=Go%21

The query parameter appears just before the keyword in the URL, so for the Orbit site, it’s “s”

Step 5: Click on “Strip query parameters out of URL”

Step 6: Click “Save”

 

Troubleshooting site search setup:

 

The Google site search report works by pulling the keyword from the URL. So if the search tool on your website doesn’t cause the keyphrase to appear in the URL, Analytics won’t be able to see it and you won’t be able to use this report without special programming.

 

Of course, this report only works for websites that have a search tool on their website. Not every website has (or needs) a site search. No site search, no report.

 

4. Connecting Google Analytics to Google Webmaster Tools

 

Why connect GA to GWT? When you connect these two accounts, they share data, making more reports visible in Google Analytics: the “Search Engine Optimization Reports.”

 

These reports show how your site is performing in search. They include the following:

 

• Queries: Which keywords are you ranking for? Which are getting clicked?
• Landing Pages: Which pages are ranking? Are they on page 1 of Google?
• Geographic Summary: Where in the world are your search visitors from?

 

The first two are especially useful. They allow you to see and improve the performance of your website in search engines. The insights here let you do real blog optimization.

 

 

 

Step-by-step Instructions:

 

Step 1: Click “Admin” in the header

Step 2: Under “Property” in the second column, click on “Property Settings”

Step 3: Under “Webmaster Tools Settings” > select “Edit” (Note: This will open a new tab in your browser)

Step 4: Select the Webmaster Tools site that you’d like to associate with your Google Analytics account.

Step 5: Click “Save.” Once you get the “Add association” popup, click “ok.”

Step 6: This should take you back to your Google Analytics account. Click “Save.”

 

Troubleshooting Google Webmaster Tools / Google Analytics setup:

 

To check to make sure it’s set up properly, click on “Reporting” in the header. Scroll down on the left column until you see Acquisition (where people are coming from). Select “Search Engine Optimization > Queries.” You should see the full Query report.

 

5. Adding Dashboards in Google Analytics

 

Why add dashboards? Because you’re busy. Not only do dashboards make all of your favorite reports visible with one click, but they can be automatically emailed to your inbox on any frequency you’d like.

 

The most common complaint about Analytics is “I don’t have time,” so this little trick fixes that problem by making the most important reports more visible to you. The easier it is, the more likely you are to use it.

 

Here’s how to create a Google Analytics dashboard and have it emailed to yourself regularly…

 

 

 

Step-by-step Instructions:

 

Step 1: While viewing your favorite report, click “Add to Dashboard” in the header

Step 2: From the “Select Dashboard” dropdown, click “New Dashboard”

Step 3: Enter a name for your dhasboard, and check the boxes for the report “widgets” you’d like to add

Step 4: Click “Add to Dashboard”

 

Or start with a dashboard that’s already been created…

 

Step 1: Click “Reporting” in the header

Step 2: In the left column select “Dashboards > New Dashboard”

Step 3: Here you have the option to use the starter dashboard or import a dashboard from the Solutions Gallery.

Step 5: Once added, you can edit the dashboard reports or layout. Add reports that are meaningful to you and your business!

 

Now email the dashboard reports to you and your team regularly…

 

Step 1: Above the dashboard click on “Email” and enter the email(s) you’d like to send it to.

Step 2: Select the frequency “daily, weekly, monthly” and the day of week or the day of month.

Step 3: In the Advanced Options, set the duration for this automatic emails (i.e., 6 months) and the message within the email.

Step 4: Click “Send”

You hadn’t set these up yet? Don’t feel bad…

 

Even expert marketers and big blogs often haven’t finished setting up Analytics. It’s very common. Even worse, Analytics may be set up perfectly, but the marketers don’t look at the data, even though a simple dashboard would make it easy.

 

Analytics is more than a scoreboard, it’s a decision support tool.

 

Once you have things all set up, it’s time to start paying close attention. Don’t just look at weekly traffic and smile or frown. Ask questions and look into your Analytics for answers. Analytics isn’t just a scoreboard. It’s for analysis!

 

Special thanks to Analytics pro, Amanda Gant for her help on this one!

 

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