Hey there and welcome to WordPress Wednesday!
Google’s suite of website tools is amazing. Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager and Optimize really allow website owners to see how people are using their website.
But connecting those tools with your website can be a challenge. A lot of the time you’re going to need to go into the code, which can be a pretty big challenge if you’re not comfortable with code.
But fortunately, if you have a WordPress website, things have gotten a little bit easier for you. You can now connect your website to those tools with just one plugin. And you don’t have to touch any lines of code. And you’re going to be able to see some of the key data right in your WordPress dashboard instead of having to go to those tools’ website.
So today we’re going to be talking about that plugin, the Google Site Kit plugin, and what it does and how it can help you and your website.
Before we start, if you want to see more videos about WordPress, Google tools, digital marketing and other website related topics, be sure to hit the submit button and to ring the bell for notifications.
Now let’s get started.
What is Google Site Kit?
Google Site Kit is the official plugin from Google that allows you to easily connect your WordPress website with Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager, Optimize, AdSense and PageSpeed Insights.
Instead of dealing with a bunch of code for all of those things, Site Kit does all of that for you.
In addition to that, it also shows you a lot of information you get from those services right in your dashboard. So you can see basic Analytics, Search Console and PageSpeed stats for your entire website in the dashboard. Or you can even see them in the admin toolbar for individual pages.
Simply put, if you use any one of those Google tools, you really should have Site Kit running on your WordPress website.
Easy Connecting to Google
So the biggest selling point for Site Kit is the easy integration with Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager and the other Google tools.
Before this, you would have to manually enter in the different bits of code you might need for the connection between your site and the tool. Or you would have to get another third-party plugin to help you make the connection. In short it was a hassle.
But with Site Kit, you can simply go through the setup process and connect those services to your website with just a few clicks of the mouse. It’s ridiculously easy now, and honestly that’s worth installing it on your site right now.
What you can see from your dashboard
Once you have Site Kit up and running and connected to your Google tools, we can start to see a lot of data right from our website rather than having to go to those tools.
For starters, on the main Site Kit dashboard, you get a breakdown of where your traffic is coming from, your most popular pages, both from Analytics and Search Console, top search queries, impressions and clicks from searches and PageSpeed Insights statistics.
Clicking “Analytics” or “Search Console” in the left-hand menu allows you to see more information from those tools.
Plus, you can see similar data for specific pages. You can access this by either using the search bar on the dashboard page or by navigating to that page on your website and by clicking the button in the top admin toolbar.
And there are plenty of links to go to those tools to see all of the information being collected.
Still improving every update
While the core functionality of Site Kit is complete, there’s still a lot of development going on with the plugin.
I first installed it when version 1.0 was released, and since then it has only gotten better. We’ve gone from not really seeing any stats to getting a whole lot without having to leave the website.
Development is occurring over on GitHub where you track different issues and features and even suggest new features or report bugs you find.
Either way, Site Kit continues to get better with each update, so I’m excited to see where it ends up.
Up Next
So what questions do you have about Google Site Kit? Have you used it before? What was your experience like? Be sure to leave your questions and answers down in the comments section below.
On Friday we’ll be taking a look at different tools that you can use to check your website’s accessibility. And next Wednesday we’ll discuss different ways that you can speed up your WordPress website.
To see those videos and more videos about WordPress, Google tools, digital marketing and other website related topics, be sure to hit the submit button and to ring the bell for notifications.
Until next time, happy WordPressing!
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