How to Setup and Use Google Analytics in Squarespace
Does Squarespace use Google Analytics?
The answer is yes! One of the things I love most about Squarespace is that Google Analytics can be found right inside the dashboard.
I mean, how cool is that?!
That means you don’t have to go directly to Google Analytics to see how people are behaving on your site.
However, the Google Analytics inside of Squarespace does not showcase the same depth of information that going to Google Analytics directly would.
But it’s still an amazing feature that gives you some valuable insight into your website.
In this post, I’m walking you step by step through how to set up and use Google Analytics in Squarespace. You can click below to watch the video instruction or keep reading to view the written directions.
What is Google Analytics and why is it important?
Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that compiles data about your website’s traffic and user behavior.
And best of all, it’s completely free.
It’s important because more than 90% of searches happen through Google, and Google Analytics contains extremely valuable data of your website.
How to set up Google Analytics
Setting up a new account
Click here to set up your account.
It’s going to walk you through 3 steps.
1. Account details
Enter an account name. This can just be your business name.
Edit the account data sharing settings (if you’d like)
2. What do you want to measure
It should automatically have web checked. Leave this as is.
3. Property setup
Here you will enter your website name, website URL, industry and time zone.
Click create. Once you sign up, you should see a key that starts with UA.
Already have a Google Analytics account?
Here’s how to find your Google Analytics account number
Under the main dashboard, click on Admin in the lower left hand corner.
Under Property, click Property Settings.
You should then see it under Tracking Id.
Adding your key to Squarespace
Once you have the key, go to Settings - Advanced - External API Keys.
Paste the key in the box and click Save.
Once you have Google Analytics set up, give it 3-4 weeks for it to collect data before you go in and start to analyze the information.
But you’ll now notice that every time you click on Analytics from the dashboard, you’ll see it auto populate here.
How to use Google Analytics inside Squarespace
I promise that navigating the backend of Google Analytics is not scary. And it’s something that you should feel empowered in understanding as a business owner since it contains important information about your website.
Traffic
This showcases:
Unique visitors
Visits
Pageviews
In terms of timeline, you can view the above information from different times. For longer timelines of data, you can also change the view between daily, weekly and monthly.
Then it breaks down even further with
Visits by Device Type (desktop, mobile, tablet)
Visits by Source (direct, Google, social media)
Visits by Browser (Chrome, Safari, social media apps)
Visits by Operating System (macOS, Windows, Android)
Why it’s helpful: This is most beneficial to Squarespace users that are blogging. You want to monitor your traffic to see how your content marketing efforts are working.
Viewing the device type data is helpful as well. If most of your traffic comes from mobile users, it would be a good idea to go back through your website on mobile view and analyze how to enhance the user experience.
Geography
This is where you can see where in the world your website visitors are. You’ll see a large map and then a breakdown of the countries below.
You can get even more granular by using the drop down icon to view state/province and city analytics.
Why it’s helpful: It’s nice to see where your biggest audience comes from. This information is especially handy for running Facebook or Instagram ads - if you have a lot of visitors coming from Europe, then you might be more likely to include Europe as a location for your ad placement.
Traffic Sources
This section shows how site visitors are finding you.
It’s broken up into
Direct (meaning they found you directly from a link)
Social (social media platforms)
Search (through Google or Bing)
Referral (email marketing, project management, and/or call scheduling programs; other sites that are linking to you)
Why it’s helpful: How people find your website is really insightful data. Maybe you need to switch up your marketing strategy. I found that Facebook was not driving much traffic and paired with the fact that I wasn’t enjoying Facebook groups, I decided to remove it from my marketing efforts. Pinterest was surprisingly getting more than twice the traffic of Facebook, so I’m going to give more focus and attention to that platform.
Google Search Keywords
This part is one of my favorite aspects of the analytics tab inside Squarespace.
However, this isn’t actually Google Analytics. This data is pulled from Google Search Console, and you’ll need to sign up for this separately.
You’ll see a button inside this window of your Squarespace analytics to sign up. You can either click that or go here to add your website.
Google Search Keywords shows what people have directly typed into the Google search bar to find you.
Below the graph inside Google Search Keywords, you’ll see a list of keywords with information next to it. These represent all the phrases or searches that your website is appearing for. The more you blog and add content to your website, the greater number of keywords your website will be ranking for.
The four columns show clicks, impressions, click rate, and average position.
Clicks - The top of the keywords list is organized in order of clicks. This represents the number of people that clicked through to your site from that Googel search.
Impressions - This is the number of people that saw your website link in the search results for that keyword.
Click rate - This is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
Average position - This is the average placement of your website for that keyword search. The goal is to be between 1 and 10 because that represents the first page of Google.
The farther down you are, the more difficult it is for people to find you. For example, if the average position is 59, that means your website is typically at the bottom of page 5.
Why it’s helpful: Google Search Keywords gives you the essential information you need to know to make strategic decisions about your SEO and blog content. With this information, you’ll learn how to improve the SEO on your Squarespace website.
If you’re not familiar with SEO, or search engine optimization, let me give you a quick rundown. In simple terms, SEO is about adjusting the content and technical pieces of your website to give it the best possible opportunity to rank high in search engines like Google.
If you plan on using your website as a marketing tool to establish yourself as an authority and expert in your field, having Google Search Console is essential for your content marketing strategy. You need to be aware of not only what keywords you want to rank for, but also the keywords that you are already ranking for.
Looking at what people are searching for to find you, how can you create more content around that topic? Can you expand off of the post that is ranking to refresh the content? Doing either will send positive signals to Google and help move you higher in the search results.
Form & Button Conversions
This information shows you the number of form submissions and button clicks on your website.
I use custom forms, so I don’t have any analytics for that.
Under button clicks, you view this data either by button or by page.
By button - see in order which buttons are most popular. This view only shows you what the destination URL is, meaning the page the button leads to when clicked on.
By page allows you to dive under each page or blog post of your website to see which ones performed the highest.
Both views showcase the clicks, unique views and conversion rate of each button.
Why it’s helpful: it allows you to see where people are clicking most and where they’re not. Is there a certain button you want more clicks on? How can you change the call to action on the button? Or can you make the button bigger and stand out more?
Popular Content
The graph up top breaks down the most popular pages and their view count. You can then scroll down to the pageviews of each individual page.
Why it’s helpful: In general, you want to know what pages site visitors are seeing most.
If you’re blogging, this is especially insightful. Take a look at what posts are doing the best and ask yourself:
How can this blog post be strengthened? Can I add more detail or more images to enhance the quality?
Is there a call to action at the bottom? How strong is the call to action?
Site Search Keywords
This shows you what searches site visitors are doing internally. This data is pulled from:
A search block
Template header search
Search page
Why it’s helpful: It provides details about what people are looking for on your site and provides insight as to whether or not what they’re searching ties into what you offer.
Clearly someone looking for “church” on my site doesn’t make any sense whatsoever haha but clearly “design process” does.
I hope you found this helpful!
Google Analytics is an incredible tool and it’s even more amazing that you can find it right in your Squarespace dashboard.
Have questions or comments about Google Analytics? Drop them below!
Are you struggling to figure out which keywords to use for your blog? Do you find that you’re blogging weekly or monthly but not seeing any movement in traffic? Or maybe you just find the topic of SEO super overwhelming…
No worries! I’ve got your back ;)
I’ve helped billion dollar global brands uplevel their online presence and now I’m passionate about helping coaches, creatives, and small biz owners stand out and get seen by the people that need them most.
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