How to add Google Analytics to Blogger

If you are a blogger it is very important that you are able to understand and analyse visitors to your blog. Google Analytics is a free tool which provides you with a large selection of data relating to users that visit your blog or website. If you wish to know the main keywords that users have searched for in order to find your blog, how long they stayed, pages they visited or which websites referred your visitors, Google Analytics can provide this information and much more besides. In this article we will quickly take you through the necessary steps in order to add Google Analytics to your Blogger account.

- To start you will need to create a Google Analytics Account. If you don't already have one visit - www.google.com/analytics and select "Create An Account" and follow the instructions.
- Once done, click on the "Add Website Profile" section and then enter your URL (eg www.yoursite.com or your-blog.blogspot.com).
- Enter your Timezone and Country information, followed by "continue".
- You should then see there is a piece of HTML code or "tracking code", displayed within the big box. Highlight this and "Copy" this data.
- Now you have this "tracking code", you have to enter this within your blog/blogger account. Sign into Blogger.com
- Next click on the "Template" tab followed by "Edit HTML".
- At this point I recommend taking a backup of your current HTML template which can be stored locally on your computer. Just incase you encounter any issues; it is always wise to backup your existing data. To do this, simply click on the "Download Full Template" option and save to your desired location.
- Next, within "Edit HTML" scroll down and look for the </BODY> tag or 'closing body' tag. You will need to paste in the code you copied from Google Analytics just before that </BODY> tag.
- Once you have done this press on the "Save Template" option in order to save your changes.
- Next, go back into Google Analytics and click on the "Verify Tracking Code" or "Check Status" option under the status column. You will note that the status will change to "Receiving Data" once your tracking code has been successfully verified.

You will be able to easily test this by visiting your blog and seeing if that data is displayed within Google Analytics. If you don't see this data immediately check back the next day as it can sometimes take up to 24 hours for the data to initially be shown, although this can vary.

So, as you can see adding Google Analytics to Blogger is very easy to do. Now you can enjoy all the benefits that Google Analytics can bring. If you have found this article helpful you may also be interested in a similar product, which also allows you to monitor visitors in real-time.