This is a simple plugin that takes the information from Jetpack and displays it on your website. It’ll require a free Jetpack and WordPress.com account to work correctly.

Even if you don’t use any of the modules in Jetpack, the visitor tracking of the plugin is probably worth the install.

This tutorial is for:
WordPress 5.9
Plugin: Post Views for Jetpack v1.3.0

How to Use Post Views for Jetpack

For this tutorial, I’m going to assume you have Jetpack installed and ready to go in WordPress.

This plugin is a very simple and easy-to-use tool. It currently doesn’t have settings to manage and will start working once you’ve added the plugin.

Essentially, it adds the shortcode functionality to call visitor data from Jetpack to your posts or pages.

Step 1: Install and Activate Post Views for Jetpack

Go to the Plugins section of WordPress and click the “Add New” option.

Search for “Post Views for Jetpack” in the search field.

Find the plugin and click to install and activate it.

Step 2: Add the Shortcode to Post or Pages

This plugin utilizes a shortcode that you can place virtually anywhere on a website. When triggered, it’ll pull the correct data for the number of views to show it on the particular post or page.

The shortcode to use for Post Views for Jetpack is:

[jp_post_view]

Open any existing post or page, or you can create a new one. For this tutorial, I’m simply going to open one of my temp posts for testing purposes.

Paste the shortcode above anywhere within the content. In this example, I’m going to add it to the end of the post.

You can use a Shortcodes block in Gutenberg or just paste it directly into your content with a Paragraph block.

NOTE: If you use a Paragraph block instead, you have limited ability to customize the appearance of the counter. I’ll explain how to do that in a moment.

Once you’ve placed the shortcode, just update or publish the post or page. Your view counter will show where you placed the code.

I know…it looks a little bland, right? Well, later, I’ll give you some examples of how to spruce it up a bit.

Step 3: Using Jetpack Post Views as a Widget

If you don’t want the counter directly on the post or page, you can use it as a sidebar widget. That is as long as your theme supports sidebars.

If not, you can always add a custom sidebar to give you more options for delivering content.

Go to the Appearance section and click the “Widgets” option.

Now, there are a couple of different ways you can add a widget block in WordPress. In this tutorial, I’ll just show you the method I use the most.

Scroll to the very bottom of your sidebar and click the “+” button.

Search for the “Shortcode” block and click it. For me, it’s displayed as one of my most frequent blocks. That’s because I use the Shortcode block quite a bit. You may have to use the search field to find it yourself.

Paste the Post Views for Jetpack shortcode from above into the block.

This next part is a personal preference. You can use the arrows to move the block to the desired position in your sidebar. In this example, I’m just going to leave it at the bottom.

Once you’re done, click the “Update” button on the top right of the Widgets section in WordPress.

Now, you’ll see the post views count in the sidebar of any post or page you visit on your website.

NOTE: Depending on how your homepage is set up in WordPress, your counter may say “0 views.” If that is the case, I suggest hiding the widget on the homepage.

Customizing the Post Views Block to Add Aesthetics

So, this plugin is pretty basic. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with it or use it in a few different ways. However, you cannot use the Shortcode block in Gutenberg for these ideas.

You can only do these if you placed the shortcode within a regular Paragraph block.

Text Before and After the Shortcode

When using a Paragraph block, you can add text before and after the Post Views shortcode to make it easier to understand.

For example, you could put something like, “This post has had (shortcode) since it was published.

There are a lot of different ways you can use this to pique the interest of your readers. Yet, just adding the simple text as I did in this example lets them know what had “x” number of views.

Hopefully, the developer adds a feature in which you could edit this default text from a settings window.

Changing Typography

Another thing you can do is alter the typography of the shortcode to give it more flair from a Paragraph block. All you need to do is highlight the shortcode and then change the typography of the text in question.

You can also change things like underlining, highlighting, subscript, strikethrough, and other adjustments.

If you have a text formatting plugin like Advanced Editor Tools, you might be able to change more of the shortcode’s typography.

Using Background Color

The Paragraph block also gives you the option to change some of its settings, such as the color and drop cap toggle. You can also change the default text size, text color, and background color.

Changing the background color of the block lets it stand out when a visitor is reading through the post or page. You could even use a bit of color theory and add a call-to-action after the Post Views counter.

To view the Paragraph block’s settings, just click on it and the options will appear on the right in the Gutenberg editor.

Do Post Views Really Matter?

In earlier times, a post counter was a common element for just about every page out there. It was a way to show popularity while letting people know just how often a page had been read.

Nowadays, though, the traffic counter just doesn’t get as much attention. In fact, a lot of creators choose to opt-out of showing the number of visits a page has because it could denote the failure of that particular piece.

No author wants to see “0 views” after spending hours writing an article.

In any case, I’ve shown how easy it is to add the feature to show how many views a certain post has received. And it could be something interesting to your audience.

From an SEO or performance standpoint, though, showing the visitor count doesn’t really make that much of a difference. It’s more of a cosmetic thing that your target audience might appreciate.

Personally, I use the Top 10 plugin to show the most popular articles on my blog for that day. It’ll let visitors know what’s trending and perhaps pique their interest to explore more of the site.

What Post Views Plugin Do You Like Most?

The plugin I featured today is quite a bit on the basic side. It’s a fairly new development, and the creator is asking for ideas for future updates.

Regardless, it’s a quick and easy plugin that can show off your visitor counter in WordPress.

Thanks to the nature of WordPress and the Gutenberg editor, it’s easy to change the appearance of shortcodes in a Paragraph block to make the counter fit your design aesthetic.

Though, keep in mind that it won’t look very impressive when you write a new post. It may take time before visitors start flocking to your content.

What kind of WordPress visitor counters do you like most? Has adding a visitor counter made a difference for your website?

The post How to Show Traffic in WordPress with Post Views for Jetpack appeared first on GreenGeeks.

It’s a great tool that adds a visitor counter so you can see how each post and page is performing. That said, you will still want to use tools like Google Analytics to get the most detailed information and see if there is something affecting your rankings on Google.

Today, I will demonstrate how to use the WP Visitor Statistics plugin to keep track of visitor stats.

The Importance of Analytics

Analytics is the most important part of any website because they let developers know what’s working and what isn’t. Sadly, even if the content you produce is great, sometimes it just doesn’t perform well.

In some cases, these tools will also give you a better idea of your audience. For instance, Google Analytics will provide you the age group, gender, and even location. By understanding your audience, you can create content that is tailored to their likes.

And these types of tools can even do a much deeper analysis. For instance, you can see how visitors are interacting with your website. Are they clicking on a button? Do they interact with the links? How long do they typically spend on a page?

You can find all of these answers and more by using powerful analytical tools. These can help you build an amazing website that drives traffic.

How to Use WP Visitor Statistics

Step 1: Install WP Visitor Statistics

WP Visitor Statistics is a visitor counter plugin for WordPress that provides a plethora of user information. With it, you can keep track of the number of visits, where the visits come from, track first-time and returning visitors, and even see how many visitors are currently online.

All of this information can be viewed directly on your website in a variety of ways. There are simple counters you can view to see the numbers, you can use a world map to view where visitors come from, and there are a variety of charts and graphs to display the information.

And almost everything is automated, so once you install it, you’re pretty much ready to go.

Let’s start by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for WP Visitor Statistics in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the WP Visitor Statistics plugin, click on the “Install Now” button, and activate it for use.

Step 2: Settings

In reality, the plugin is already working, however, there are a handful of settings that you may want to change.

On the left-hand admin panel, click on Visitor Statistics and select the Settings option.

At the top, you will be able to set your timezone. Underneath this, you will find options for how long the chart and archive data are kept. By default, it is 30 days, but you can select other options. There is also an option for keeping the data after uninstalling the plugin.

Pick the options that best suit your website.

At the bottom, you can select which user roles have access to this plugin’s information and settings. By default it is limited to the Administrator role, however, you can add as many roles as you need. That said, I only recommend giving access to people that need the information.

Lastly is the IP/Robot Exclusions, which if you don’t know what that is, leave it blank. If you do know, go ahead and fill out the information.

Essentially, you’re telling your website to exclude specific bots and IP addresses from registering as a visit. So, if you know your IP address, you can enter it here to remove yourself from skewing the data.

When you are done, click on the “Save Changes” button.

And that takes care of the settings. Now let’s cover what you can do with the plugin.

Step 3: Using the Plugin

The plugin begins collecting data automatically after activation. And you can view all of it in real-time. To view it, select the Traffic option.

At the top, you will see the General Stats box that contains the total page views, total visits, page views per visit, and the last hits time (last time a visitor visited). And to the right of this, you will see a pie chart that shows the visits from each country.

Note: If you only get views from one country it will just be a blue circle.

Underneath this, you will find a grouped bar chart that contains information for the last 30 days (or whatever you chose in the previous step). You can see the number of first-time visitors, the total visitors, and the number of page views for each day.

You can also see the average visit length at the top of the chart.

Underneath the graph is a forecast for your website. However, the forecast will not be accurate after installing the plugin. Instead, you will need to allow the plugin to compile information to make an accurate forecast. For now, it will have 0% in all values.

The graph at the bottom shows similar information to the first graph but in a different format.

There are other options on the admin panel, but they actually just focus on specifics you can find on the overview page. Some may contain a few extra stats, so I strongly encourage you to view everything within the plugin.

Congratulations on setting up WP Visitor Statistics. This WordPress visitor counter plugin is a great tool for every website.

Get More Analytical Data

Your website data is only one part of the puzzle. There is a lot of additional data available on other platforms.

For instance, most websites have some form of email subscription in one form or another. You typically have to pay for a service like MailChimp to keep it running smoothly. These types of services also provide analytical information.

You can see how many subscribers click on the links within the email or just how many bother to open it.

Another great place to get analytics from is your favorite social media platform. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and many other platforms all provide deep analytical data. This will give you a better sense of how you are performing on these websites.

In any case, there is a lot of analytical data available, you just need to look for it.

Understand the Data You Are Looking At

I’ve talked a lot about the importance of analytical data and where you can find it, but what’s even more important than access to the information is understanding it. Some tools do provide short explanations about what each piece of data represents, but many do not.

For instance, you can view the bounce rate on many tools, yet what does this mean? By definition, it is the percentage of visitors who reach your site, then leave that webpage without taking any further action.

While other pieces of information like total post views are obvious, some are not. Make sure you do the research to understand that data. Only by understanding it can you use it to improve your website.

What’s your favorite WordPress visitor tracking tool? How easy did you find the WP Visitor Statistics plugin to use?

The post How to Use WP Visitor Statistics in WordPress to Build a Better Site appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Before you add this new Google Analytics to WordPress, it is important to know how beneficial having analytics on your WordPress site is. Analytical data and traffic numbers coming from your site can give you insights into all sorts of numbers that can be used for marketing, interaction, SEO, social media, and more.

Why Add GA4 to WordPress?

As stated above, the importance of Google Analytics and the data it can provide you can’t be overstated. For that reason, when Google releases big updates or versions of Analytics, it is important to upgrade and give your website all of the latest benefits that come with the update.

For example, the Google Analytics 4 update brought with it 4 really great features that everyone can take advantage of. These include:

• Smarter Insights
• Deeper Integration with Google Ads or Adwords
• Customer-Centric Data Measurement
• More Data Controls

These are important tools you can take advantage of and really help get your site marketing to the next level.

Today, I am going to show you how to set up Google Analytics 4 in WordPress. Let’s get right to it.

Note: The rest of this tutorial assumes you already have Google Analytics set up on your WordPress website. 

Add GA4 to WordPress

Step 1: Go to Your Google Analytics Account

Go ahead and start the process by heading over to the Google Analytics homepage and login with your Google account. This gives you access to your dashboard and we can move forward from there.

Step 2:  Create a New Google Analytics 4 Property

Now that you are inside your Analytics dashboard, you want to create a new GA4 property. You can either click on Admin > Create Account, or select an existing account that you want to set up your new property on.

Since this tutorial assumes you already have a Google Analytics account, we are going to simply click on “Create Property” on an existing account.

Step 3: Add All Property Details 

Clicking on the “Create Property” button will take you to the Property Details page. Here, you can add all the relevant property information needed.

Go ahead and name your property, report a time zone, and add any other relevant details that are needed. You set this up how you see fit.

When you are finished, click on the “Next” button to move forward. This takes you down to a few more details you may want to add. This includes business size and a couple of other questions. You can fill this out how you see fit.

When you are done, click on the “Create” button at the bottom of the page.

Step 4: Select “Web” Option

At this point, you will be on the “Data Streams” page. You will see that there are three different options available. iOS App, Android App, and Web. Select “Web.”

Step 5: Set Up Web Stream

When you click on the Web option, a screen pops out to allow you to set up your web stream. Go ahead and fill out all the relevant information to create the stream. This includes adding your URL, giving your stream a name, and adding or subtracting any enhanced measurements you want.

Click on the “Create Stream” button when you are finished.

Step 6: Connect Your Existing Analytics Property to GA4

Go back to your existing UA property by clicking on the Admin button and then select your UA Property from the drop-down.

Now, click on the “Tracking Info” option, and in the dropdown menu select “Tracking” code.

On the screen that pops out, copy your tracking code so that you can have it.

Finally, switch back to your new GA4 Property by selecting the new GA4 Property from the drop-down. Then click on the stream you created above, and look for “Connected Site Tags.” Click on it.

Enter or paste the tracking ID that you copied above, give it a nickname, and then click on “Connect.”

Step 7: Install Tracking Code on Your WordPress Website

You have now made it to the last step of the process. You need to install the tracking code on your WordPress site and then you will start receiving all the data and analytics that come with Google Analytics 4.

From your web stream, click on the “Add new on-page Tag” option and Select Global Tag (gtag.js).

Copy the tracking code. Now let’s head to your site and add the code.

Note: In this case, we are using a WordPress website. You can enter the code into the “head” section of your website. Again, you can go straight into the theme options and add the code, or you can do it by using a plugin that gives you easy access to add code to the head. Either way is fine.

Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard and paste the code into the head of your site as described in the note above. Click on the “Save” button to save your code.

You can do this by using a plugin like Insert Header and Footer. This lets you place code directly into those sections of WordPress. Or you can manually place the code into your site files.

That’s it. You should now be running Google Analytics 4 on your site and you will start to see those numbers come through in your Analytics dashboard shortly.

Can I Add GA4 Using a Plugin?

The short answer, yes! There are a number of Google Analytics plugins available and at this point, many of them give you the ability to add Google Analytics 4 tracking options. How you do it will be based on your particular plugin settings.

That being said, there is a Google Analytics plugin I recommend using to do this with.

GA Google Analytics

GA Google Analytics is one of many really great Analytics plugins that allows you to easily integrate Google Analytics into your WordPress website.

To enter and enable Google Analytics 4 using the plugin, simply copy your tracking (measurement) ID and then paste it into the plugin setting that is available called “GA Tracking ID.” Then, select “Global Site Tag” for the plugin setting, “Global Site Tag.”

That’s it. You don’t have to worry about trying to put it in a site head, as the plugin takes care of it for you.

Final Thoughts

Google Analytics 4 update can be viewed as a major update that can impact the life of marketers in several positive ways. You now have the ability to choose when and how to use customer data to optimize ads. You also have the ability to limit data use for the purpose of measurement only.

Overall, if used correctly, you should be able to meet all customer requirements and improve products and overall marketing strategy. If you are a marketer, anything that can be done to make the process easier is always welcomed.

I hope this tutorial was able to show you how easy it is to upgrade your site and add Google Analytics 4 to it. With the above info, you can add this all to your website manually or by using a plugin as described. Good luck with it from here, as you should see results pretty quickly.

Have you already been using GA4 in WordPress? Do you prefer to add it through a plugin instead of manually?

The post How to Add Google Analytics 4 to WordPress and Why appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Analytical tools allow you to view valuable data concerning your website. This information often times helps you identify where you should be marketing. Overall, they help you boost traffic.

Today, I will demonstrate how to use the Clicky by Yoast plugin to assist with this analytical data.

What is Clicky?

Clicky is a full analytics tool that allows website owners to see a variety of information about their website. Unlike many other analytic tools available, Clicky displays information in real-time.

Some of the information you can view includes bounce rate, engagement, heatmaps, searches, time spent on-site, where traffic comes from, and so much more. You can find a full list of features on its website.

This all sounds great, but I know what your thinking…what does it cost?

It is free to use if your website gets under 3,000 daily page views. However, once you exceed this amount, you will be required to subscribe to the service, but that is luckily inexpensive. You can find a full list of packages here.

This means the majority of all new blogs and websites can get Clicky for free.

How to Integrate Clicky in WordPress

Clicky by Yoast is a terrific plugin to accomplish this task. It allows you to view important statistics directly on your WordPress dashboard. It even adds an image of your traffic on the WordPress toolbar.

Note: You may recognize the name Yoast, as this is the same team behind the fabulous Yoast SEO plugin. I highly recommend using it for all of your SEO needs in WordPress.

The plugin and settings are pretty straight forward, so let’s get right into it.

Step 1: Installing Clicky by Yoast

Click on Plugins and select the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for Clicky by Yoast in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the clicky by Yoast plugin. Click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Step 2: Obtain Clicky ID and Site Key

You will now need to obtain three pieces of information. These include the Site ID, Site Key, and Admin Site Key. You will need all three to integrate Clicky with WordPress. If you already have this information, feel free to skip this step.

Note: I will be demonstrating how to create a free account below. You can upgrade to premium at any time.

First, visit the Clicky website. You can either log in or create a new account. Click on the “Register Now” button.

Here, you will have to enter your name, email address, username, password, and agree to the terms and services. Once this is done, click on the “Register” button.

Enter the URL of the website you want to add Clicky to and click on the “Submit” button.

You can now change some account details and preferences. This includes things like nickname, time format, time zone, alignment, and more. Click on the “Submit” button when you are done.

Note: You don’t actually have to change anything here.

You will now need to add a few lines of code to your website’s header. You can do this a number of ways, but the easiest is with the Insert Headers and Footers plugin.

Copy the code and paste it into your website’s header. Click on the “Verify tracking code” link when you are done.

If the test is successful, you are good to go. To find the information you need, click on your user name to go to the dashboard and click on Prefs.

The information you will need is on this page. To enter this information, open up a new tab and go back to your WordPress website.

On the left-hand admin panel, click on Settings and select the Clicky option.

Enter the necessary information and click on the “Save Clicky Settings” button.

Step 3: Advanced Settings

The plugin should be fully functional at this point. But before you start using the analytical tool, take a quick look at the advanced settings.

These are simple to use and include a few checkboxes.

You can disable the admin bar stats, ignore admin users, disable cookies, and track commenter names. There is also an option for outbound links (mainly for affiliate links) that helps you track the click rate.

Note: I personally recommend checking the ignore admin users. This means the website will not monitor your interactions and time on the website. After all, it’s easy to unintentionally inflate stats when you are starting out.

Click on the “Save Clicky Settings” button when you are done.

Step 4: Viewing Clicky Data

On the left-hand admin panel, click on Dashboard and select the Clicky Stats option.

You can view the general info that clicky offers directly on your website. This includes the number of visitors, the actions they take, total time spent on the website, average time per visit, bounce rate, link info, searches, and content viewed.

If you want more detailed information, you will have to visit the Clicky website. There are many additional options you can explore there, so I highly recommend checking them out.

Note: There is an option to reset the values for Site ID, Site Key, and Admin Site Key. If you reset these values, you must re-enter them in the plugin’s settings. If you do not, the plugin will not work.

Congratulations on setting up Clicky by Yoast in WordPress.

Why Analytical Tools Matter

Analytical tools are not only about understanding who uses your website, but how they use it.

These tools allow you to quickly identify what type of visitors like what type of content. This makes it easy for you to create content for a specific audience. Even more importantly, is tracking where the visitors are coming from.

This helps you identify what is working in your marketing campaign and what isn’t.

Without this critical information, everything you are doing is the equivalent of guesswork. The quicker you can identify what is working, the quicker you can put more resources into it and pull them out of things that are not.

However, it would be a mistake to not mention that these stats are great ways to advertise your website to advertisers.

If your website gets a ridiculous amount of traffic, share it with the world. Sharing crazy and impressive accomplishes is a great marketing device.

There Is More Than One Analytics Tool

Clicky web analytics is just one analytical tool available. It is a great one to select, but there are plenty of others to try. Sometimes using multiple analytical tools can highlight problem areas you might miss.

One such tool is Google Analytics. It is one of the most robust options available in web page data collection. It’s something that every website should use and similar to Clicky, you can integrate it directly into your WordPress dashboard.

How useful do you find the Clicky Stats page on your website? Has the Clicky Analytics tool helped you identify your audience?

The post How to Use Clicky by Yoast in WordPress and Why You Should appeared first on GreenGeeks.

This is great for website owners who are trying to figure out what content to make next based on the interest of their visitors. Today, I will demonstrate how to use WP Search Insights for on-site search analytics.

Why Analytical Tools Are Crucial For Success

Analytical tools allow you to record user information on your site and track user interaction. With this information, you can tailor the experience to what your users are looking for.

Trying to decide what type of content to create without analytics is like playing darts blindfolded. You just can’t predict how your user base will interact with it. In some cases, this can be devastating when a long project fails because your audience does not like it.

As a result, web developers need to be somewhat confident that the content they are putting out will be well-received. Especially if it is resource-intensive (time & money).

The WordPress search insights plugin will be able to provide all of the necessary information, so allow me to demonstrate.

Step: 1 Installing WP Search Insights

WP Search Insights is a search analytics plugin that records all of the search history on your website. It also provides what articles show up in the search results and ranks keywords on your website. This helps developers create content based on visitor activity.

Most importantly, unlike other analytic tools, this can all be viewed directly on your website. The information is presented in an easy to understand format, which makes it perfect for fledgling websites.

As with all plugins, the first step is to install it.

Let’s start by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for WP Search Insights in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the WP Search Insights plugin. Click on the “Install Now” button and activate it for use.

Step 2: The Tour

Upon activation, the plugin will immediately start working with the default settings. The plugin will attempt to introduce you to all of the settings in the form of a tour. On it, you will get a short description of what each one does.

Note: This tour is optional. You can safely ignore it, but it does do a good job, so I recommend taking it. Even if you do not follow the tour, the descriptions will still appear when you first view them.

The tour will lead you to the dashboard widget. This will display the top 5 searches that do not display results and the top 5 searches overall.

Note: The plugin shows you the top searches without results to help you identify potential content your website may be missing. If a visitor is searching for it, you probably want to add it.

On the left-hand admin panel click on Tools and select the WP Search Insights option.

The tour will cover each part of the plugin. Simply click on the “Next” button to move the tour forward, or press the “Previous” button to move backward.

Going through the tour will help you find everything the plugin has to offer.

Note: Once you click the “End Tour” button, you can no longer view that information.

Step 3: Setting Up

Luckily, the plugin only has a few settings and for most websites, you probably won’t have to change a thing.

If you followed the tour, you should know where the settings are located. If not, click on Tools and select the WP Search Insights option. Then click on the Settings tab.

The settings are pretty basic. In the General Settings, you will find a few simple options that include excluding admin searches, excluding searches with a certain amount of characters, who can view the dashboard widget, enable Ajax search tracking, and custom search parameters.

Change these settings to meet your website’s needs and click on the “Save” button.

There is a Filters section that allows you to enter key phrases you do not want the plugin to track. Simply enter the phrases into the text box.and click the “Save” button.

Finally, the Data section is all about managing the plugin data. Specifically exporting it and deleting it. You can export any search info for a given period of time in a CSV file by clicking on the “Export” button.

You can choose to delete data when you uninstall the plugin or outright delete the data by clicking on the “Clear all searches” button.

Note: This is permanent. If you want to save particular information, export it first.

That cover’s all of the plugin’s settings.

Step 4: Viewing Data in WordPress

All of the setup for your plugin is complete. All that’s left is actually using it.

The data the plugin collects can be viewed in two places. The first is the dashboard widget. However, it is extremely limited in what it can show. Instead, the best place to view the data is on the plugin’s main page.

You can view a comprehensive list of every search that has ever occurred on your website for a given time period. It even has a search function. You can simply type a phrase or keyword, and the plugin will pull up all visitor searches that matched.

All of the information will be displayed on this page for your viewing pleasure. Congratulations on adding WP Search Insights to your WordPress website.

Not A Replacement for Google Analytics

This plugin is great for analyzing the searches visitors are making on your website, but it only focuses on the site itself. The majority of your website’s traffic will come from organic searches, which really means Google.

When it comes to analytical tools and Google, there is no better option than Google’s own analytical tool, Google Analytics.

It offers a wide variety of features that include:

• Visitor demographic information
• When your target audience is accessing your content the most
• Who is visiting your website
• The way visitors are interacting with your content
• Referral tracking

And much more. If you are a web developer, setting up your Google Analytics account should be one of your first priorities. And since it’s free to do, there really isn’t an excuse to not set it up.

Expand Your Content Offering

The main point of using insights for search analytics is to identify holes in your content offering. Ideally, when a visitor searches for something on your website, they should find a result. If they do not, that’s your cue to start making content catered for those searches.

Otherwise, that visitor is likely to look somewhere else.

As a result, making sure there is always content to fill search results is a great way to keep visitors on your pages and away from the competition.

Did you notice any content your website was missing based on search results? How easy did you find the plugin to use?

The post How to Analyze Visitor Behavior with WP Search Insights for WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Website heatmaps show you the most popular and unpopular sections of a page. It represents an aggregate of user behavior over a given period of time.

Heatmaps are a unique presentation in the world of website statistics. Most other statistics provide information on which pages were visited and for how long. Heatmaps give you an idea of what visitors did while they were on the page.

Aurora is a free heatmap plugin that will work on any WordPress website. Let’s install it and take a look at what it has to offer.

Installing the Aurora Heatmap Plugin

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Plugins” link and click the “Add New” link.

In the “Search plugins…” box, enter, “Aurora Heatmap.”

When you find the plugin, click the “Install Now” button.

Now the plugin is installed, but it has to be activated before you can use it.

Click the “Activate” button.

That’s all there is to it. The plugin has already started gathering data.

Configuring Aurora Heatmap

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Settings” link and click the “Aurora Heatmap” link.

The “Heatmap List” tab won’t have any data on it immediately after installing the plugin. It takes some time to collect enough data to display a map. How much time depends on your blog traffic.

The WordPress Aurora Heatmap does not log admin visits. So you can’t click around and create a heatmap yourself unless you’re logged out of your WordPress admin dashboard.

So before looking at a heatmap, let’s check out the plugin configuration options.

Click the “Settings” tab.

Data settings

• Accuracy is the number of data points used to create the map. Sites with fewer visitors may want to choose the “Standard” setting. Otherwise, leave it set to the default “High accuracy.”
• Non-singular pages – choose whether to include “non-singular” pages in the report. Non-singular pages are archives, search results – pages with more than one article or links to multiple articles.
• Ajax delay time – time in milliseconds before the plugin starts logging activity. The delay helps ensure all the supporting page scripts are loaded.

Display settings

• Number of drawing points is the amount of data included in the map. Depending on what you’re looking for, too much data can reduce the effectiveness of a heatmap. In other (or most) circumstances, you want all the data you can get. Remember, the purpose of a heatmap isn’t to count visitors. It’s to analyze their behavior.
• Count bar runs vertically along the edge of the heatmap results page. It shows the number of clicks on the line. You can disable it here, but it’s a handy feature, so leave it set to “Show.”
• URL hash – if you use anchor links, you can choose whether to count the link as a separate page. Individual display treats this URL as a separate page: ggexample.com/blog/article#important-point. Integrated display combines the data for ggexample.com/blog/article#important-point and ggexample.com/blog/article (without the hash URL)

If you make any changes here, be sure to click the “Save” button.

These are the options for the free version of the plugin. There are additional options if you buy the premium version of Aurora Heatmap.

The Heatmaps

Now for the fun part, the heatmaps themselves.

To open a heatmap, click the “Heatmap List” tab.

The free version of the plugin counts clicks. So there are two views for each heatmap, desktop clicks, and mobile taps.

Click the number to the right of the URL in the list to open the heatmap.

A new window will open, displaying the heatmap. You can see the colored areas where a visitor clicked, and the number of clicks in the count bar.

One of the things you might not expect to see if you’ve never used heatmaps before is this:

Yes, those are clicks in empty areas. No link, no picture.

But you’ll see those in just about every heatmap. More often than not, they’re accidental. But if you see a lot of clicks on an item that isn’t clickable, it could indicate a problem.

You may have an element that appears to be clickable but isn’t. You should do what you can to change that.

Or, you may have a small image on a page that people click in order to see a larger version. In those cases, you should consider linking to a larger version of the image. Your users are demonstrating with their clicks that they want to see a larger version.

This WordPress Heatmap Plugin Is Cool, but What Can I Really Get From It?

Do you have an important link on your website? Perhaps a buying link or a newsletter sign up? Wondering how to improve its performance? A lot of factors affect link performance, but a heatmap can help you see if the location is a problem.

Much of a heatmap’s value lies in the “cold” areas of the map. Where the links and page elements that aren’t getting any attention.

You’ll notice that behavior on just about every page follows some general patterns. Most visitors concentrate on the upper left part of a page. That’s interesting because it’s not necessarily the “visual center” of a page.

Our eyes naturally gravitate to an area slightly to the upper right of the center of what we’re looking at. But we focus our attention in different places when looking at a photograph and a page of text.

We may be predicting where visitors will look, but we never really know. A heatmap on a website shows us where people interact with the page. That may not be where they look first, but it’s where the action is.

So if your map is “cold” around an important link or element, you have two options. One, you can try to attract attention to the important element to create a new hot zone. Or two, you can move the important element to a part of the page that you know visitors interact with.

As you can imagine, it’s easier to move the important page element into the action. It’s more difficult to draw visitor’s attention to a cold part of a page. Which isn’t to say it can’t be done. It’s possible to draw attention to any part of a page. But the quick fix is to move things into the hot zone.

What Happens if You Uninstall the Aurora Heatmap Plugin

If you uninstall the plugin, you will no longer be able to view heatmaps.

If you delete the plugin, you will no longer be able to view heatmaps. The database tables created by the plugin will be deleted, and the data collected by the plugin will be lost.

The above issues are what we found in our testing. There may be other issues our testing did not uncover.

Which Came First, the Heatmap, or the Website?

Website heatmaps are advanced web technology, but they aren’t new technology. Statisticians and scientists have used different forms of heatmap-like graphic representation to visualize data for hundreds of years.

Like this 1870s “heatmap” that displays data about the different districts of Paris.

Humans are always looking for a way to “see” numbers, and heatmaps let us do just that. Have you ever used heatmaps on a website or blog? Have you made changes to the site based on heatmap results?

I’d love to hear from you. Let me know in the comments.

The post How to Install and Use Aurora Heatmap for WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Download Monitor has a few advantages over a generic file download link:

• You can see how many times a file has been downloaded.
• Stats for all downloads, including totals, daily average, and most popular.
• Ability to track downloads of different versions of the same file.
• You can define a download as “members only,” which only allows downloads for users logged into your site.
• Set up paid downloads.
• You can create download categories and tags.
• Style and customize download buttons (available as a paid extension).

If any of those features sound useful to you, follow along as we install the plugin and configure a download.

Installing the Download Monitor Plugin

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Plugins” link and click the “Add New” link.

In the “Search plugins…” box, enter, “Download Monitor.”

When you find the plugin, click the “Install Now” button.

Now the plugin is installed, but it has to be activated before you can use it.

Click the “Activate” button.

The WordPress download monitor is installed; let’s complete the configuration.

Configuring Download Monitor

After activating the plugin, you’ll see a “finish the installation” notice at the top of the Plugins page.

Click the “click here” link. And never anchor your own links as “click here,” just a reminder. 😉

The plugin needs certain pages to be created. It will create them for you.

On the “No Access” line, click the “Create Page” button.

For this tutorial, we’re not going to cover the details of selling downloads. So I’m not going to create the “Cart” or “Checkout” pages. You’ll want to create those pages as well if you intend to sell downloads.

If your WordPress site uses an HTTPS URL (which it should!), the page creation buttons may not work. If that’s the case, you can create a page titled “No Access,” and enter this shortcode in the body: [ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ][dlm_no_access][/ht_message]

Creating a Download

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Downloads” link and click the “Add New” link.

The plugin will link to downloads in your Media Library or files uploaded via FTP to your site.

In the Title field, add a download title. This will be the text for the download link, and it’s how you’ll recognize the download in the downloads list.

Scroll down to the “Downloadable Files/Versions” section and click the “Add File” button.

You’ll see there are buttons to upload a file or to browse for a file.

• Click the “Upload file” button to upload a file from your computer or WordPress Media Library.
• Click the “Browse for file” button to locate a file you uploaded via FTP to your site.

If you’d like, add a description in the “Short Description” section. The description is not displayed with the download link, so adding it isn’t required.

Scroll up and click the “Publish” button.

When the download is published, and the page refreshes, you’ll see a shortcode in the right column. Copy the shortcode.

So we’ve successfully added a download, but the link isn’t visible anywhere yet. Let’s take care of that.

How to Show the Download in a Page or Post

You can paste the shortcode into any page or post.

To do that, we’ll paste the shortcode that we copied into a post.

I’m using the WordPress Gutenberg editor. If you use the “classic” editor, you’ll paste the shortcode into the page or post body the same way.

Now when we update the post, the link appears.

You’ll notice the download count inserted after the download name. If you’d rather not display the count, you can remove it.

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Downloads” link and click the “Settings” link.

On the “General” tab, find the “Default Template” drop-down.

Select “Title – Shows download title only.”

Scroll down and click the “Save Changes” button.

Now the link is displayed without the download count.

The download count is based on the visitor’s IP address. So, as in this example, if I download the file multiple times the count remains “1.”

The plugin logs and reports will reflect multiple downloads from the same IP address.

You can’t exclude an IP address from being counted, but you can blacklist IPs to prevent problem users from accessing your downloads.

How to View Download Statistics

Tracking downloads is what the plugin does best, so let’s take a look at the available stats.

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Downloads” link and click the “All Downloads” link.

You can see the number of visitor downloads for the file in the downloads list.

To see the overall download stats, in the left column navigation, mouse over the “Downloads” link and click the “Reports” link.

What Happens if You Uninstall the Download Monitor Plugin

If you uninstall the plugin, pages and posts that used the plugin will be affected.

• Pages created by the plugin will be deleted.
• The plugin shortcodes will stop working, so the shortcodes themselves will be displayed anywhere they were used.
• The plugin creates database tables that are not removed when the plugin is uninstalled. If you want to drop the tables, they have the “dlm_” prefix.

That’s Not All, Folks!

This was a basic tutorial on creating a download and adding it to a post or page. But the plugin has many more features and abilities. If you’d like to investigate further, check out the plugin documentation.

If you sell downloads, whether it’s a web image download, PDF, software, etc., the plugin can manage that. The process is a bit involved to get into here in a basic tutorial. But the framework is in place if you decide to use it.

You can also display a list of all available downloads or lists by category or tag. There are content templates and download boxes – do take a look at everything the plugin offers. When you see what it’s capable of, you’ll understand why this was just a basic tutorial. Covering everything would require a series of articles.

But there’s value in the plugin, even if you only use the basic download tally. Who wants to dig into server logs to see how many times something has been downloaded? I can also imagine situations where the ability to track different versions of a file would come in handy. So, admittedly, we’ve only scratched the surface.

Have you offered downloads on your site before without the ability to track the number of downloads? Can you think of any applications for this plugin that we didn’t cover? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

The post How to Use Download Monitor to Track Visitors in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

But before we get into the specifics of the Google Tag Manager ID, let’s back up and talk about tags.

What Is a Tag?

A “Tag” is another name for website tracking tool code. You’re probably using at least one tracking tool on your website. For instance, Google Analytics is a tracking tool. Facebook has a tracking tool called “Facebook Pixel.” Website user analytic—or “heatmap”—programs like CrazyEgg are tracking tools.

In most cases, to use tracking tools, you have to insert a bit of code into your pages. People who work in marketing often call those bits of code “tags.” So when we talk about tags, that’s what we’re talking about. Bits of code (or tiny image files called “pixels”) that track some kind of website activity.

These elements track page loads, clicks, form submissions, and just about anything else a visitor can do on your site. When a visitor lands on your website, your tracking codes, or tags, are loaded, and the visitor’s actions are tracked.

Adding a single tag to your site is easy, and it only has to be done once. But if you want to use multiple tracking tools, you’ll have to add more code to your site. And later on down the line, you may have to modify or remove existing tags.

To maintain everything correctly, you’ll benefit from using some sort of tag management system.

What Is Tag Management?

A tag manager centralizes your tags in one place. No need to go into your site and figure out where certain tags are used. They’re all in the tag manager. Make your update there, and the new or modified tags appear right where they need to be on your site.

How does it do that? First, you enter the tags from your website into the tag manager in a “container.” The tag manager then creates the code or tag for the container, and you add that to your site.

Then, you can remove all of the other tags from your website, leaving just the tag manager container tag. The tag manager code pulls all of your tags from the tag manager and inserts them into your site.

What Is a Container Tag?

Tag Manager uses “containers,” so you can set up different groups of tags. That’s helpful if you manage multiple sites, or want to use different tags on different parts of a single site. Each container has a unique ID, and the code for the container is the container “tag.”

The important thing to remember is when we talk about “tags,” we’re talking about a few lines of Javascript code.

How to Set Up a Google Tag Manager Account

If you don’t have a Tag Manager account yet, you can set one up in a couple of minutes.

Log in to your Google account (Gmail, Analytics, or any other Google account) and go to the Tag Manager page.

Click the “Start for free” button.

Enter an account name. That can be anything—for example, the name of your site.

Next, you’ll create your first tag container.

Give the container a name in the “Container name” field, and click the “Web” section.

Click the “Create” button.

If your website complies with EU GDPR rules, check the “GDPR Data Processing Terms” box at the bottom of the page.

Click the “Yes” button to agree to the terms of service.

Implementing the Tag Manager Code on Your Site

When your Tag Manager account setup is complete, a popup will be displayed. It contains the code needed to use Tag Manager on your site.

There are two code blocks. The first one is pasted into the tag of your site, the second directly after the tag.

How you insert the code depends on how your site is built. The code has to appear on every page, so it works best with a website using a universal header file. Most modern sites are made that way, using a single header file that is inserted into every page automatically.

If your site uses WordPress, you can insert both pieces of code once, and they’ll appear on every page. I’ll show you an easy way to add Tag Manager to a WordPress site later.

But the Tag Manager can be used on smaller sites made up of pages where each section is different. In fact, those kinds of sites are where Tag Manager really shines.

Yes, it’s tedious to add the code to every page. But once you’ve done it, you can manage tags on all of the pages using Tag Manager. If you’ve ever avoided using tracking tools on a site without a common header, Tag Manager opens that door.

Publishing (Activating) Your Tag Manager Container

Your newly created container is empty, and it’s not yet activated. Let’s add a Google Analytics tag and publish our container so you can see how it works.

Click the “Tags” tab in the left column of the Tag Manager navigation.

When the “Tags” area opens, click the “New” button.

Click the “Tag Configuration” icon.

Click “Google Analytics: Universal Analytics.”

In the “Google Analytics Settings” section, click “Select settings variable…”

Select “New variable…” from the drop-down.

Enter your Google Analytics tracking ID and click the “Save” button.

A window will pop up, prompting you for a variable name. Enter whatever you’d like and click “Save.”

Now scroll down and click the “Triggering” icon.

Click “All pages.”

Now give the tag a name and click the “Save” button.

Click the “Submit” button.

Enter a “Version Name” and “Version Description” and click the “Publish” button.

Now your tag container is live on your site.

The Google Analytics code will be automatically added to every page of the site. Additional tags are added in the same way we just created the Analytics tag.

What Is My Google Tag Manager ID and Where Can I Find It?

Speaking of WordPress, a lot of website builders use plugins. And sometimes, when you install a plugin, it will ask for your Tag Manager ID. There are a couple of ways to find the tag ID.

First, it’s displayed at the top of the page in Tag Manager.

If you don’t want to log in to Tag Manager to find it, it’s displayed on your website.

Right-click on a page and view source. The ID can be found in the Tag Manager tags. Look for:

or:

In those code blocks, the Tag ID will be “GTM-” followed by seven random numbers and uppercase letters.

How to Add Your Google Tag Manager ID to a WordPress Site

You can add a Tag Manager ID to a WordPress site by editing the theme header and page template(s). Bear in mind, of course, that you should always use a child theme when you edit WordPress theme files.

But editing WordPress theme files is no fun, and when you edit, there’s always the risk of accidentally breaking something. The beauty and strength of WordPress are the available plugins that do the dirty work for you.

There’s a Google plugin that can add your Tag Manager ID (and a lot of other things) to your site. It’s called Site Kit. I’m not going to use it here because it integrates with your Google account, so there are a lot of set up steps. But, it’s worth checking out when you have some time to play with it.

Instead, we’re going to install the Google Tag Manager for WordPress plugin. It does what we want it to do, and it’s a quick install and configuration.

Well, it mostly does what we want it to. There is a caveat.

As you know, there are two parts to the Tag Manager ID. One part goes into the , the other after the tag. The plugin can insert code into the head of your theme, but not the body.

But the second part of the Tag Manager ID, the part inside the body tag, is a fallback. It is only used if the visitor’s browser has Javascript disabled. A human visitor would rarely be using such a setup.

So if you want to install the Tag Manager ID strictly to Google’s instructions, you can use this plugin, but you’ll still have to add code to your page template(s).

If you use the plugin without editing any theme files, it will be sufficient for normal use.

Installing the Google Tag Manager for WordPress Plugin

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Plugins” link and click the “Add New” link.

In the “Search plugins…” box, enter, “Tag Manager.”

Once you have located the plugin, click the “Install Now” button.

Finally, click the “Activate” button.

You’ll be taken to your dashboard, and there will be a notice at the top of the page.

Click the “enter your GTM ID” link in the notice.

Enter your Tag Manager ID in the “Google Tag Manager ID” field.

Scroll down and click the “Save” button.

Now, if you view source on a page of your site, you’ll see the Tag Manager ID.

If you want to do the page template modifications we talked about, details are in the “Container code placement” selection.

What Happens if You Uninstall the Google Tag Manager for WordPress Plugin

If you uninstall the plugin, your Tag Manager ID will have to be added to your theme files manually.

“For Every Minute Spent in Organizing, an Hour Is Earned”

Benjamin Franklin said that, and he was a pretty smart guy. He didn’t have to manage website tracking tool tags, but he did invent the lightning rod and bifocals.

And he was right about organization saving time. The tools that are available to us now to observe and quantify website visitor behavior are remarkable.

If you could go back in time 25 years and tell webmasters (remember them?) that one day they would be able to see where visitors clicked on a page and how far they scrolled, they would have laughed.

But here we are. Of course, that technical progress has introduced complexity. It always does. So any time a tool like Tag Manager is created to help reduce complexity, we should take advantage of it.

The Google Tag Manager isn’t a simple tool that you can master in five minutes. But few truly useful tools are. The time you spend learning how to use it is a wise investment.

The post How to Set Up and Find Your Google Tag Manager ID appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Jetpack has a lot of useful elements. But if it’s only visitor statistics you’re after, installing the full Jetpack package is overkill. This is especially true for those who don’t want to sign up for a free account at WordPress.com.

So today we’re going to skip right past Jetpack and give the WP Statistics plugin a try.

Keep an Eye on Your Visitors

Depending on who you believe, WordPress powers anywhere from 20% to 50% of the world’s websites. That’s a wide range, but anyway you look at it, that’s a lot of websites.

With that kind of market dominance, you’d think WordPress visitor tracking would be state of the art. Jetpack stats are okay, but you may find that you get more from WP Statistics.

WP Statistics is a plugin that tracks visitors to your WordPress site. It comes with a long list of details that can provide insight into who reads your content.

Let’s take a look.

Installing WP Statistics

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.

In the left column navigation mouse over the “Plugins” link and click the “Add New” link.

In the “Search plugins…” box, enter “WP Statistics.”

Once you have located the plugin, click the “Install Now” button.

When the plugin has been installed, click the “Activate” button.

Configuring WP Statistics

There are a lot of configuration options in WP Statistics. For the most part, though, the default settings will work well for most of us. For a complete rundown of the available configuration settings, check the WP Statistics website.

There are a couple of settings we’ll change right off the bat to make this WordPress visitor counter plugin a little more useful.

In the left column navigation, mouse over “Statistics” and click the “Settings” link.

Click the “Externals” link/tab.

Click the “Enable” box for GeoIP collection and GeoIP City. This translates the visitor IP addresses to countries and cities.

Geo-location using IP addresses is not 100% accurate for any program. But in most cases, it will provide relevant and useful information.

Scroll down and click the “Update” button.

Reading the Statistics

There are several statistics pages available. The Overview page displays the top or most recent statistics for most of the stats below on a single page.

Hits

The “Hit Statistics” page is a graph displaying the total number of visitors to your site during an adjustable time frame.

Online

The “Online Users” page displays a list of users currently on the site. It also shows how long they have been on the site, their country and browser.

Referrers

The “Top Referring Sites” page shows a list of the referring sites that people visited before coming to your site. This works great for tracking things like backlinks and social engagement.

Search Words

The “Latest Search Words” page is a list of the search words that lead a visitor to your site.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide an example image of this feature. I was using a testing site that is not available in search engines. However, the feature is useful for knowing how people are finding your website.

Search Engines

The “Search Engine Referral Statistics” is a graph displaying incoming search engine traffic to your site. It will reflect traffic from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo!, and Yandex.

As before, the testing site isn’t available in search engines, so I cannot show an example of this in action.

Pages

The “Top Pages” page displays both a graph and a list of posts and pages on your site, ranked by the number of views.

Visitors

The “Recent Visitors” page is a list of visitor sessions on your site. Including the visitor’s IP addresses, browsers, referrers, and date of visit.

The visitor’s page numbers will be different from the hits or pages stats because one visitor can be responsible for multiple entries in hits and pages.

Categories

The “Category Statistics” page is useful if your posts are in multiple categories. If you don’t use categories, as our test site here does not, then these numbers are just visit totals.

Tags

The “Tag Statistics” page is similar to Categories in that it only provides useful data if you use tags on your posts. If you don’t, as our test site here does not, the graph and list in this section will be blank.

Authors

The “Author Statistics” page will display the statistics per author. If your site only has one author, then these numbers are just visit totals.

Browsers

The “Browser Statistics” page displays pie charts detailing the browsers being used to visit your site. This also includes the visitor’s operating systems.

Top Visitors Today

The “Top 100 Visitors Today” page displays information about the top visitors to your site for the date selected.

Displaying Stats on Your Site

WP Statistics provides a couple of ways to display certain stats on your website.

First is an easy to use widget called (surprise!) Statistics.”

To activate the widget, mouse over “Appearance,” click the “Widgets” link.

Click “Statistics,” click the “Add Widget” button.

Add a name and select which stats to display.

Click the “Save” button.

Now the stats you selected are displayed in the site footer.

WP Statistics also supports shortcodes that you can use in posts or pages. The details and shortcode formatting can be found on the WP Statistics site.

Statistics You Can Count On

That’s a working overview of this great traffic plugin for WordPress. We didn’t dive deep into the esoteric settings. For most of us, those settings won’t really improve what we get from the stats.

Even if you only use the basics of WP Statistics, you’re still getting much more than you can get from Jetpack. So, it’s a worthwhile plugin for anyone who is curious about who is visiting their site.

Do you use another plugin or Google Analytics to view your website statistics? Can you think of any ways the statistics data could be used to improve your website’s performance?

The post How to Get WordPress Visitor Tracking With WP Statistics appeared first on GreenGeeks.

What is Scroll Depth Tracking?

It is pretty simple. Basically, scroll depth tracking allows you to see exactly how far a user is scrolling down a post or page. This allows you to see if your longer posts are being read all the way through and keeping visitors engaged.

You can then take this information and edit or adjust content accordingly. Like other parts of Google Analytics, WordPress scroll depth tracking allows you to make site adjustments based on data you receive.

In turn, this will allow you to properly optimize pages and posts. If used and managed correctly, your website will gain higher conversion rates.

This is just another type of report you can use to your benefit to drive a strong marketing campaign.

Use Google Analytics to Add Scroll Depth Tracking

There are a couple of ways that you can use scroll depth tracking analytics. You can use a plugin or you can use Google Tag Manager.

Both work great.

Since Google implemented the tag manager, it gives you an option to track scroll depth without a plugin. However, using a plugin and combining it with Google Analytics is a fast and simple way to track scroll depth.

WP Scroll Depth

To track scroll depth tracking easily in WordPress, we are going to use the WP Scroll Depth plugin.

By default, Google Analytics does not capture scroll depth information. You have to use Google Tag Manager. However, the WP Scroll Depth plugin sends this information to Google Analytics for you and allows you to compile the data without Google Tag Manager.

This is a simple plugin and you will not need to make any modifications to your theme. It implements basic scrolling events (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%) with no additional configuration.

There is an admin panel to easily configure available options.

Install and Activate WP Scroll Depth

To initiate scroll depth tracking, install and activate the WP Scroll Depth plugin from the Plugins page in your WordPress admin dashboard.

Once the plugin has been installed and activated, click on Settings > Scroll Depth to access the options page for the tool. Then, you will be able to configure plugin settings.

Once you are on the Scroll Depth settings page, you can configure all the options to your liking. Things like minimum scroll height and elements to track will be right there.

The rest of the configuration options include:

• Timing Events
• Pixel Depth
• NoInteraction
• gtmOverride
• gaGlobal
• Event Handler

Set these up the way you want your reports to filter. Click on the “Save Changes” button to apply all your configuration changes and you are good to go.

Make Sure Google Analytics is On Your Site

That’s it! If Google Analytics has already been set up on your WordPress site, then you should be able to start WordPress scroll depth tracking.

To find your tracking numbers, do the following:

Log in to your Google Analytics account.

1. Click on the “Reporting” tab.
2. Click on Real-time and then click on Events.
3. Open your site on another window or browser.
4. Start scrolling on pages and posts.
5. You will see events with the category “Scroll Depth.”

Note: If you do not see these events, then make sure your Google Analytics is configured properly.

Other Scroll Depth Tracking Options

As stated above. You can also use Google Tag Manager to run scroll depth tracking. You simply log into your Google account and access the tag manager from there.

There is also the option of using a different scroll depth tracking plugin. Here are a couple of other ones to look at if for some reason you are not satisfied with WP Scroll Depth.

Scroll Depth

Scroll Depth is a Google Analytics plugin that allows you to measure how far users are scrolling down your posts and pages. It monitors the 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% scroll points.

It also sends a Google Analytics Event for each one. You can also track when specific elements on the page are scrolled into view.

Scroll Tracking Recipe for GTM

Scroll Tracking Recipe for GTM Adds automatic scroll tracking to every page on your site and sends events to Google Analytics. By default, it tracks user scroll depth at the 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% marks, but can be customized.

Note: This is a solid option for scroll depth tracking, but also a much more complicated setup process. You need to be more technical to use this method.

Final Thoughts

The use of Google Analytics on websites today and the importance of it can’t be overstated. Scroll depth tracking is just another aspect of analytics that you can use to better understand your audience and increase page and post conversions.

Which one of the above methods do you use to track your site page scroll depth? Do you prefer the plugin method or actually using GTM to accomplish the process?

The post How to Use Google Analytics to Add Scroll Depth Tracking in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.