Google Analytics: Baby-step tutorial

Google Analytics is one of the most important aspects of Marketing. Understanding where your traffic is coming from, understanding your audience and site analytics. Google offers free Analytics services, called "Google Analytics". Best part, its absolutely FREE.

Note: Google may or may not share your data, please read the Terms of Service before accepting to signup for Google Analytics. This website itself is fully powered by Google Analytics and nothing else. I love it! Have nothing to hide!

First..Let's have you create a Google Analytics account.

1. If you don't already have  a Google account (such as Gmail or anything related), then please signup. http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html
   Note: If you have a Google Adwords or Adsense account, you can enable Analytics within your account settings.
2. Once you have signed up, you will be presented with a dashboard.
3. Select  "+Add a new account" (click here to view screenshot) to create a new profile for your website so you can begin tracking.
4. Fill out the "New account signup" form.
5. Enter the URL of your website you would like to track. ie., "yourdomain.com" (without quotes of course)
6. Account name will be what you would like to see under your dashboard ie., "WebmasterPunk.com"
7. Fill out the general contact information (bah humbug, I know..)
8. Accept the Terms of Service.
9. Now you will be presented with two snippets of JavaScript Code. Copy this code; it will enable Google Analytics to pickup the statistics for your website and present them into the dashboard. Make sure you are copying the "New Tracking Code (ga.js)"
10. Select Finish, you are now done with the first part.

Ok, that was easy..right? Now that we have successfully signed you up with Google Analytics, the next step is to insert the code into your website.

1. Open up your "index" page, whether its an .asp .php .html page, it doesnt matter.
   Note: If you are running an include for your header and footer, be sure to put this into your footer before the </body> tag.
2. Locate your closing </body> tag, paste the code there before the </body> tag.
3. Save your page, publish and you are now done.

The most important thing is to have the code before the closing </body> tag so that when your page loads, it does not hang up on the .js code if any browser misreads it. I always tell users to put it by the footer if you are using an include. Woudn't you rather have the page load quickly without any rendering issues than to have your snippet of code? YEP!

Ok, now login back to your Google Analytics dashboard. (hope you didn't forget where this is already..sheez, hang in there, were almost done.)

1. After you have logged back into your Google Analytics dashboard, you should be presented with a few statistics.
2. Select "Edit" on the last column under "Actions"
3. You should now see your profile information (feel free to edit per your own settings and fill in the easy blanks)
4. You should have a yellow warning icon and a question mark with the words "Check Status"
5. Click the "Check Status" link.
6. It should say Google was able to retreive data from your website and/or is collecting data.
7. If for any reason you are not retreiving data or it is not verified, you probably pasted the code in an awkward location. Double check your code and make sure again its before the closing </body> tag.

Your complete, every 24-hours, Google parses yoru website data. Your data is not REAL TIME.. It takes anywhere from 16-24 hours for Google to sync your data from the previous day, so you're always 1 day behind.

Now you have complete analytics on your website; including geomapping, traffic sources, conversions (if e-commerce store) and plenty more goodies that Google offers you for FREE!