Blog Profit - Integrate Google Analytics Into Your WordPress Blog

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Before you can generate any income from your blog, you have to know who your readers are. In order to get an idea of who your readers are you must track your blog’s hits or web traffic. Google Analytics (http://analytics.google.com) is a free service that will get you website statistics and enable you to drill down and find much more than how many hits your blog received, but also how people are finding your blog, where they are coming from, what keywords they used and even what browser they are using.

This is the fifth article in a series of articles called Blog Profit. Integrating Google Analytics into any website is easy. Usually, I just get the Google Analytics JavaScript code and toss it in the footer template in whatever theme I use. This is very simple to do, but can get annoying if you keep switching themes. If you find yourself changing your your blog’s theme, having a plug-in that separates the Google Analytics JavaScript code from your theme may save you a few minutes.

I’ve since used a few WordPress Plug-ins to save the Google Analytics code once and for all so I don’t have to re-add it to the footer every time I changed themes.

Some of these Plug-ins promise to add more control over tracking your readers with a simple user interface via the WordPress Admin pages. Knowledge is power, and knowing who your readers are will enable you yo profit from your blog. Below is a list of the most promising Google Analytics Word Press plug-ins:

Local Analytics - Local Analytics is a Wordpress plugin for integrating Google Analytics, the free web analysis service by Google, into your blog. The plugin is highly configurable and also allows caching of the ga.js file locally, inorder to enable faster loading of pages.

The plugin is highly configurable, yet simple. A normal user only needs to specify his / her Analytics UID, while advanced users can completely configure the plugin.

Highly configurable
Compatible with latest Google Analytics Code Update
Includes support for local caching of ga.js
Includes support for tracking Adsense and YPN ad clicks
Includes support for tracking email links, external links and file downloads
Includes support for tracking subdomains and main domain in a single profile
Includes support for tracking visits to Admin Panels
Includes support for tracking logged in users

Google Analytics for WordPress - The Google Analytics for WordPress plugina automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, track image search queries and it will even work together with Urchin.

Google Analyticator - Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging.

Features

Google Analyticator Has the Following Features:

Full support for the latest version of Google Analytics tracking code (ga.js).
Inserts tracking code on all pages WordPress manages.
Automatically tracks outbound links.
Provides support for download link tracking.
Easy install: only need to know your tracking UID.
Expandable: can insert additional tracking code if needed, while maintaining ease of use.
Option to disable tracking of WordPress administrators.
Can include tracking code in the footer, speeding up load times.
Complete control over options; disable any feature if needed.

Googmonify - Googmonify lets you insert Google AdSense ad units into your posts with easy to use tag sets (requires a Google AdSense account).

Googmonify can also insert your Google Analytics tracking code in to every page on your blog help so you can keep accurate statistics (requires a Google Analytics account).

Ultimate Google Analytics - Plugin to add Google Analytics JavaScript to each page on your weblog without making any changes to your template. The plugin can also add tracking to outbound links, downloads from your own site and mailto: links.

The plugin is highly configurable. Read trough the list of features below to get a feeling of what this plugin can do. You can enable and disable all features individually, although the default configuration will suffice for 90% of the users.

Features

Start with a simple configuration screen and hide more advanced/complex configuration in an Advanced Configuration mode. Most users will suffice with the simple configuration screen. If you’re interested in tweaking and tuning this plugin, use the advanced settings.
Do not make any changes to feeds, as it is not wise to include JavaScript in those
Add the same JavaScript tracker code to the admin pages if you want to track those as well (switched off with the default settings)
When adding the JavaScript tracker code to a page, put it at the end of the body. There are quite a few WordPress plugins for Google Analytics out there. Most of them include the JavaScript in the head section. This can delay the loading of your page and is not advised by Google
When using a WordPress theme that does not invoke the wp_footer hook as it is supposed to do, the JavaScript tracker code will be added to the head section. This can delay the loading of your page. The only way to prevent this, is to have the theme author implement the correct plugin calls, fix the theme yourself or start using another theme
Automatic check-for-updates to warn you (on the UGA Options page) if your version of Ultimate Google Analytics is outdated
Does not add the tracker code to the pages when a logged on user of a configurable userlevel requests a page. This can be used to ignore your own page views and not skew your statistics. (Default configuration ignores page hits from users level 8 and up)
Add tracking to outgoing links. You can also specify hostnames which should be considered internal (e.g. www.example.com, example.com and example.org). Links to these hostnames will be considered internal and the tracking event will not be added to those links. You can also specify the prefix to append to the link when sending it to Google Analytics so your outbound links will be logged to a logical directory structure. This way, you will be able to easily identify what pages visitors clicked on to leave your site. (The default configuration is to check outgoing links in the /outgoing/ directory at Google Analytics)
Add tracking to download links. You can specify which file extensions should be considered downloads. Only internal links to these filetypes will be tracked. Internal links are either relative links (without a hostname) or links to the hostnames you defined as internal. You can also specify the prefix to append to the link when sending it to Google Analytics so your download links will be logged to a logical directory structure. This way, you will be able to easily identify what files your visitors downloaded. (The default configuration contains a list of common file extensions to be marked as downloads. These are tracked in the /downloads/ directory at Google Analytics by default)
Add tracking to mailto: links. You can also specify the prefix to append to the link when sending it to Google Analytics so your mailto: links will be logged to a logical directory structure. This way, you will be able to easily identify what mailto: links your visitors clicked. (The default configuration is to track mailto: links in the /mailto/ directory at Google Anaytics)
Specify if the outgoing, download and mailto: links should be tracked in the postings only, the comments, the comment author URL or any combination of these three.

WP_HeadNFoot - WP_HeadNFoot is a free WordPress plug-in that help you to simply and easily insert code into the header and footer of a page, useful for things such as Google Analytics. The changes are theme independent allowing y0u to update or change the theme without having to remake the changes.