Web Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition
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A good, free web marketing tool which offers goal and e-commerce tracking is Google Analytics which is easily set up. To create your account, follow these steps:

  1. Go to www.google.com/analytics.

  2. Log in to your Google account or sign up for one.

    If you don’t already have a Google account, you need to create one.

    When you’re logged in, you see the Google Analytics setup screen.

  3. Click the Sign Up button.

    The next page lets you set up your account and create your first profile.

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  4. Enter a profile name you’ll remember and the domain you want to track and click the Create Profile button.

    Google Analytics divides each account into profiles. A profile is a grouping of reports for a particular domain or subdomain. Think of it as a folder: It’s just an easy way to keep things organized.

  5. Select the web protocol for your site.

    If your web address begins with http:// select http:// as your web protocol. If your web address begins with https://, select https://.

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  6. Choose whether you’d like to share your analytics data.

    If you choose yes, Google will use this data for anonymous benchmarking. Unless you have a strong objection, choose yes. It helps you and other businesses get comparison data without giving away any secrets.

  7. Agree to the terms and conditions and click the Sign Up button.

    On the next page, you can set up the tracking code you need to add to your website to enable tracking.

  8. Select the number of domains you’ll be tracking.

    Scroll down the page, and you’ll see options for the number of domains to track.

    • Single domain: Choose this if you’re tracking one domain.

    • One domain with multiple subdomains: If you want to track multiple subdomains (for example, mine.site.com and your.site.com) with the same Google Analytics report, select this option.

    • Multiple top-level domains: If you want to track multiple, unique top-domains with the same Google Analytics report (for example, www.mysite.com and www.yoursite.com), select this option.

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  9. If you’re going to track AdWords campaigns, check that box.

  10. Copy the code and paste it into a text editor so that you have it available for installation on your site.

  11. Click Save.

    It may look like nothing happened. You’ll see a small success callout at the top of the page.

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    You can set options around dynamic content, and custom tagging/tracking using the Advanced tab. Take a look at Web Analytics For Dummies if you want to set up advanced options.

    The code is slightly different for each site in your profile. Don’t reuse the same code among multiple sites.

  12. Click Property Settings.

  13. If you have Google webmaster Tools set up, choose webmaster Tools Settings→Edit. Select the webmaster Tools profile that matches your site.

    This is strictly a convenience: Google Analytics imports webmaster Tools search query data so that you can view it in a single report. This saves you from having to open Google webmaster Tools whenever you want to view this data.

  14. Click Apply again.

    Your account is added, and you have the tracking code.

If you look at the accounts list, you’ll see the profile you added. Click that, and you’ll see your website.

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About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book authors:

John Arnold is the author of E-Mail Marketing For Dummies and coauthor of Mobile Marketing For Dummies.

Ian Lurie is President of Portent, Inc.

Marty Dickinson is President of HereNextYear.

Elizabeth Marsten is Director of Search Marketing at Portent, Inc.

Michael Becker is the Managing Director of North America at the Mobile Marketing Association.

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