What is Google Site Kit?

Google Site Kit is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to see results from several Google products right in your WordPress dashboard.

This means that instead of having to open Google Analytics or Google Search Console, you can just go to your dashboard to see how your blog is performing.

Note: If you prefer to watch a video, scroll down to the bottom of the page.

What Google Products are Included in Site Kit?

• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• Google Adsense
• Google Page Speed Insights
• Google Tag Manager
• Google Optimize

Google Search Console allows you to see how your blog is performing in Google search results. The information includes how many times your blog has been shown in search results, your blog's average position when it is shown, how many times someone clicked over to it, and your click through rate.

Google Analytics tells you how visitors are interacting with your site. You can see where they came from, how many and which pages they visited, how long they stayed on your site, and how many of them left after only visiting one page.

Related: What are the differences between Google Analytics and Google Search Console?

Google Adsense allows you to earn money with your site. In Site Kit, you can see how much your site is earning.

Google Page Speed Insights gives you information on how quickly your site is loading.

Google Tag Manager is a tool that allows you to manage all the tags for your site (such as Google Analytics, Facebook pixels, etc.). This is an advanced tool that is helpful for sites that are paying for ads.

Google Optimize makes it easy to test options on your website to see which perform better.

What if I Don't Use All of These?

It's simple–only connect the services that you use. For example, most of us don't use Tag Manager or Optimize on our blogs, so we don't have to connect them.

I was worried at first that we would see these options on the dashboard with a bunch of zeroes, and that would have been very distracting. But if you don't connect them, you don't see them.

How do I Install Google Site Kit?

Google Site Kit is a plugin, so the installation process is identical to installing any other plugin.

From your left menu, hover over Plugins and click Add New. If you're already on the plugins page, click the Add New button at the top left of the page.

Next, enter Google Site Kit in the search field–about half way down the screen on the right.

You should see Site Kit by Google. Click the Install Now button. After the installation is complete, click Activate.

Google Site Kit is now installed and active!

How do I Configure Google Site Kit?

After Site Kit is installed and activated, you need to set it up.

The first thing you'll do is click the blue Start Setup button which will take you to a sign in screen.

Sign in with your Google account that is listed as an admin for your Analytics account.

Next, hit Proceed to verify your ownership of the site. Then click Allow to give your site permission to access and display information from your Google account.

Click Add Site so that you can see Search Console data in Site Kit. If you don't have a Google Search Console account, Site Kit will create one for you.

Next, decide which other services you want to connect.

When you connect Google Analytics, you'll go through a similar process of having to allow Site Kit to access your account.

What Happens if I Don't Have a Google Analytics Account?

If you don't have an account already, it's not a problem! Google will create one for you.

It'll even pre-fill the required information for you.

Just give Google permission to create the account for you.

Allow it to have access to your data.

Agree with the terms of service.

And your Google Analytics account will be created, and the code will be added to your site.

Note: If you are logged in to your WordPress Dashboard, Site Kit will not count your visit.

Remove Existing Analytics Code

If you already had Google Analytics installed on your site, you need to delete that code. Otherwise, your traffic will be counted twice.

If you know where your code is and you're comfortable doing “tech-y” things, you can delete it yourself. Otherwise, reach out to your WordPress support person or to the person who installed the code for help.

I also offer a service to locate and remove duplicate Google Analytics code. Email me at sherry@painlessbloganalytics.com for a quote.

What Kind of Information Can I Find in Google Site Kit?

On the dashboard, the results are defaulted to the last 7 days, but you can also see the last 14, 28, or 90 days.

The first section, All Traffic, shows you where your traffic is coming from.

Search Funnel tells you how many times your site was shown to someone searching on Google (called impressions), how many times people clicked on your link from search results, and how many unique visitors you got from search.

Note: Site Kit is pulling two of those numbers from Search Console and one from Analytics. Because they calculate visits differently, these numbers most likely won't match. Don't worry about this, and definitely don't go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out why.

Popularity is the third section. You can see your top search queries and your top 10 most visited posts.

Next, you'll see a field that that allows you to enter the title or URL for a blog post so that you can see the results for that specific post.

The last section shows your page speed and gives you suggestions to improve it.

How do I Use Google Site Kit?

The information provided by Google Site Kit is not as detailed as you would get if you were to log into Google Analytics or Search Console, but it's a good way to get a high level overview without logging in.

There are, however, some actions you can take based on the available data that can improve your blog.

If you see that a blog post is doing well in search, share it on Facebook or Twitter or make some new Pinterest pins on Canva. Add it to your next email newsletter.

Review your list of popular posts. What do these posts have in common? Does anything stand out to you that you could replicate?

For example, do you have several list posts? Write more list posts.

Is there a particular topic that is trending? If you have several cake or pasta or keto or (fill in the blank) recipes showing up in those top 10, create more of those.

Check those top posts to ensure that they're optimized for monetization. Can you add more affiliate links? Can you add more images to help with ad income?

Go to all of the top 10 posts on mobile to see how they look. Is is easy to read the post on mobile? If it isn't, people are probably leaving without reading it.

Check your site speed on your top posts. Did you accidentally upload a huge image file instead of a smaller one?

Site Kit Information for Individual Posts

When you're logged in to your WordPress dashboard, you can go to any post, click Site Kit at the very top of the page, and you'll see data for that post.

This can be helpful to show you posts that might need to be optimized for search.

Will Google Site Kit Slow My Site Down?

If you're like me, you're very picky about which plugins you use because some of them can really slow your site down. When I added it to my sites, the page speed seemed to be unaffected.

Adam Beal over at Results Repeat share the results of an experiment he did to determine what impact the plugin had on his site.

You can run your own experiment like Adam by testing your page speed every day for a week before and a week after you install Site Kit.

I'm really impressed with Google Site Kit. It's an easy way to install Analytics or Search Console, it gives you actionable information right in your WordPress dashboard, and it doesn't slow your site down.

And it's my favorite price–FREE! So download it today!

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