Google Analytics for Dummies

Google Analytics can be a tricky thing to learn when venturing out into the world of online business, leading many to search “Google Analytics for dummies.” It is an effective and free tool. You can use Google Analytics to provide in-depth data about the people who visit your website. This can include what they are looking at, what pages they spend the most time on, what they searched for to get to your website, and many more important factors.

This guide is for Google Analytics beginners or Google Analytics for dummies if you will. We will go over the most basic steps in learning how to use it, the benefits of using Google Analytics, and discuss some other web analytics services.

web analytics service

What Is Google Analytics?

When it comes to “Google for dummies” or, more specifically, “Google Analytics for dummies,” Google Analytics is a great tool to use when engaging in SEO for your company. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the data-driven process of fine-tuning and editing your website to bring the most web traffic possible to it.

This process can involve a number of things, from adding links to your website when appropriate to choosing and highlighting the correct keywords on your web pages and many more processes. Search engine optimization is critical for making sure people visit your website, and thus is an incredibly important tool to master for building your online business.

Google Analytics comes into play for search engine optimization by automatically collecting a massive amount of data about your website for free. This wide range of data can show what people are searching for on your website or why people click off your website after only visiting a page or two.

All of this information and more is critical in ensuring your website’s search engine optimization is always the best it can possibly be. You can access this information on customer behavior whenever you want to, and it will update in real-time, allowing you to always be on top of what is going on with your website and its web traffic.

Google analytics for beginners

How to Start Using Google Analytics

Create an Account

When researching “Google for dummies” or “Google Analytics for dummies” so you can begin using Google Analytics, you first need to make an account. After successfully creating your Google Analytics account, you will be taken to a screen to enter your website’s information. Fill in all the categories provided to the best that you can, based on what information is on your website.

Once you have filled in those categories, you will proceed to a new screen that gives you the option to choose how and where your website’s data can be used and shared by Google. Check the boxes that you want, and then get your tracking identification from the blue icon at the bottom of the page.

Install Tracking Code

You need to put the tracking code that Google Analytics gives you on every page of your website. This process differs depending on what type of base your website is built on. You can install the tracking code on a variety of common website builders, such as WordPress or Shopify.

After you have completed the installation of the tracking code on your web pages, you can then configure what you want Google Analytics to accomplish for your website. This is done by going to your website’s profile on analytics and clicking on the goals option under view all website data.

Choose Your Goals

From there, you can choose specific and customizable goals in Google Analytics that you want to achieve for your website. You can have up to twenty different goals active at one time.

View Your Data

Once you have your website set up on Google Analytics, you can then start viewing all the data it provides you. To do this, simply go to the audience overview report, which will pop up each time you log into your account. From there, you have options to view data based on date and time, the location from whence your website was searched, and many more options. This allows you to take advantage of numerous ways to utilize your data to increase your website’s effectiveness.

You can also access more than 20 different kinds of data reports for your website, which means you can view almost any type of data from your website. You can also have the reports emailed to you or others and set up a consistent email schedule for them so you do not have to go into your account every time you want to view your reports. These are the main processes of using Google Analytics for beginners.

Google Analytics for Dummies

Why Should I Use Google Analytics? 

There are several reasons to use Google Analytics for any website. With Google Analytics, you can use data science to understand customer behavior. You can help identify why people are only looking at a page or two on your site and then leaving it. You can see which specific pages may be causing this, allowing you to fix them before they become a big issue.

Google Analytics also allows you to see the demographics of people viewing your website. You can see the age and gender of people visiting your site and what location they searched it from. You can also see what those people were interested in when they searched for your website. All of this information can allow you to optimize your site for the people who visit it the most and spend the most time on it.

Another great feature of Google Analytics is that you can see which social media sites lead people to your website the best. You can then invest money in advertisements for those specific social media websites accordingly. These are just some of the main uses for Google Analytics, but there is a great deal more you can learn about as well. Knowing how to make the best use of this data is a key part of using Google Analytics.

Web Analytics Services 

While Google may have an effective analytics service, there are other web analytics services out there you can explore, too. Yahoo has a service similar to Google’s that provides a little more in-depth data but can be more complicated to use. It is also free, similar to Google, which is a nice bonus.

Another free web analytics service from Google is their website optimizer. This is great for use in search engine optimization as it can test different variations in your web pages and provide data on which ones perform the best and receive the most views. This is great for seeing how your website can improve its SEO.

A similar paid web analytics service is Optimizely. This service can test your website’s SEO on different pages. Another great web analytics tool is 4Q. 4Q provides surveys to people who visit your website. The survey questions may be why they visit your site and what they do on it. This can be an effective way to learn how to better cater to your website’s visitors and keep them interested. These are just a few of the alternatives available online to Google Analytics.

The tools that these services provide are crucial in building up your website’s search engine optimization. They make it much easier than collecting and analyzing the data on your own and should be used accordingly. They will save you time and, most importantly, money. Most are free, and the paid ones are generally only necessary for large companies that can easily afford them.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics for Beginners

Google Analytics is a great and free tool to assist in developing your company’s search engine optimization for your website. This service is a great starting point for anyone interested in learning more about search engine optimization and making data-driven decisions. There are a ton of tools the service provides to you. We suggest taking your time and exploring which ones you think would be the most effective to use for your business.

By doing this, you will get the most relevant data with which to improve your website. Fooling around with all the tools and options available to you is a great starting point in using Google Analytics for beginners. The best way to get better at something is to practice it, so definitely spend time becoming familiar with the tools that Google Analytics offers.

Search engine optimization is a huge factor in building a successful and effective website for your business. As a newcomer, it can seem quite daunting to figure out where to start for this process. We suggest keeping it simple at first. By researching some easy ways to improve your website’s search engine optimization, you will then have building blocks for when you want to take the process further.

This will also lead to a better understanding of how search engine optimization works. Using Google Analytics as a beginner is a great first step in accomplishing this. You will have all the data you need to work on your website’s search engine optimization from this service.

Need Help With Google Analytics?

If you do not know where to begin in developing your website’s search engine optimization and find yourself searching “Google for dummies” or “Google Analytics for dummies”, you may want to consult a company that specializes in those services. SEO Design Chicago’s analytics experts can help you set up your Google Analytics account and create goals to help you improve your website and your business.

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