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You may have heard of Google Analytics and are considering using it for your website if you run a blog, an eCommerce site, or a WordPress website.
There are several limitations with Google Analytics, despite its widespread use leading one to believe it is the best tool available for website analytics. However, it can be challenging, particularly for newcomers. Using a plugin is a simpler method of integrating Google Analytics with WordPress.
Without the need for a plugin, installing this utility on a WordPress system is rather simple. Once you’ve integrated Google Analytics, you can monitor data and generate reports, charts, and other visual representations of the activity on your WordPress website.
What Makes a WordPress Analytics Plugin Necessary?
It would be as difficult to steer a ship without a compass as to run a WordPress website without a trustworthy analytics plugin.Important information on user behaviour, traffic to your website, and other metrics may be obtained using a WordPress analytics plugin.
These insights assist you in comprehending the origins of your website visitors, the information that most interests them, and their behaviour on your website.
You may use this information to improve your content strategy and support it with facts.Additionally, analytics tools help raise the SEO and search engine rating of your website. By utilising this information, you can more effectively target your audience with more relevant, SEO-friendly content by determining which keywords are bringing in the most visitors to your website.
Ways to Increase WordPress Performance Without Plugins
Please leave a comment below if you have any concerns or need any clarifications since some of the advice below is a little technical.
- Employ a Reputable Host
Everything you do online, including SEO, Facebook ads, Google Adwords, and the enquiries, calls, and emails your website receives, depends heavily on web hosting. Improved user experience leads to better hosting, and improved user experience raises conversion rates. Given this, it is evident that having dependable, quick hosting will pay off soon. For WordPress performance optimisation without plugins, one of the most important things is a good host. A solid-state drive (SSD), which functions far quicker than a normal hard disc (HDD) and enables for faster page loads and overall speed, is what a decent hosting service utilises.
- Utilise the Most Recent PHP Version Supported by the Site.
WordPress is based on the PHP programming language and infrastructure. Every PHP version release usually results in a 10–20% boost in overall load speed. The majority of themes and plugins won’t work with this version of PHP just yet, but it’s still worth finding out and using the version that works with your website; 7.4 is the version that came before v8 and should work with most websites.
A free plugin from WPEngine can check if your website is compatible with PHP on any server. Many times, a few plugins will not pass automated testing, but if you verify with the plugin vendor what PHP version their plugin supports, you will find that this is not the case in most cases.
- Activate Your Theme’s On-Site Speed Optimisations
Lazy loading, which delays the loading of pictures until the user reaches a certain section of the page, and integrating CSS and JavaScript, which reduces the amount of network requests a browser must make, are typical speed-optimization features found in WordPress themes. Modern optimisations, such as just-in-time preloading, which loads the page just before a user clicks on it, are also included in a lot of themes.As many theme features load extra javascript and CSS, it’s important to check to make sure these options are enabled and disabling any features you aren’t using.
- Turn off any tools and plugins that you aren’t using.
This advice is particularly crucial for older websites. Verify the list of tools and plugins that your website utilises, and be sure to disable or remove any that are no longer needed. Fewer plugins equate to higher performance in terms of speed. Plugins that load content from other websites should be avoided as they may slow down your website. Live chat, tracking, and remarketing code-implementing plugins are among the others that can significantly slow down a site. These tracking scripts may be significantly sped up by moving them to Google Tag Manager, utilising the Window Loaded trigger, OR stopping them with WP Rocket’s Delay JS function.
- Install Google Analytics by hand in WordPress
The last solution we’ll discuss here is the simplest, but it also requires the most work to put into practice: manually inserting the necessary tracking codes into your WordPress website. Using a WordPress child theme is mandatory if you choose this route. If not, each time you update your theme, the Google Analytics code will be rewritten.
Furthermore, it’s a good idea to back up your website before beginning any modifications, as you’ll be altering the essential data on your website.
- Resolve 404 Errors! The Worst Errors for Speed Are 404!
Broken links cause more than just irate clients. The performance and speed of the website also decline. You should concentrate on resolving this as the page may show up in search results, which would encourage search engines to keep attempting to crawl that fictitious URL rather than wasting time and resources on actual pages.
The Best 2 WordPress Plugins for Google Analytics
It might be difficult to select the ideal Google Analytics plugin for WordPress because there are so many of them in the WordPress plugin repository. We’ve done the hard work and gathered a list of the top 2 plugins that the WordPress community has come to love.
- Analytics cats
The Analytics Cat plugin is compact and very simple to use. If you want to avoid having the dashboard integration cause your WordPress website to load more slowly, you can easily add a tracking code for Google Analytics.Analytics Cat offers a simple way to stop your obsessive self-navigation from contaminating your data, by giving you the option to exclude logged-in users from your Google Analytics tracking.
- Site kit
The most downloaded free Google Analytics plugin is Site Kit. Many websites utilise it since it is the official Google plugin for WordPress. Furthermore, it may be difficult to comply with the GDPR while using Site Kit. There is no automated method for disabling tracking or anonymizing IP addresses, so you have to do it yourself.By utilising the plugin, you may obtain basic data on your visitors, their online behaviour, and how they found your website. Additionally, you may integrate several additional Google technologies with Site Kit without needing to modify the website’s source code.
Conclusion
In conclusion, making the right use of data is essential to comprehending your website’s users and successfully optimising your website. You may get that crucial information directly from your WordPress dashboard using Google Analytics plugins for WordPress web development. They provide you with insights to enhance user experience and increase conversions, enable you to make data-driven decisions, and assist you in determining the success of your marketing initiatives.
About Author –
Nouman Sabir is an insightful and creative content writer with over a year of experience. Upon completing his Bachelor’s degree, he embarked on a content writing career. In parallel to his writing pursuits, Nouman currently holds the position of Solution Architect – CTO at DigitilizeWeb, providing services like mobile app development, web design and development services UK, WordPress development, e-commerce solutions, etc. His distinct combination of creativity and technical expertise enables him to generate useful and compelling material that not only delivers knowledge but also motivates readers.
