How to Install Site Kit by Google

The good news is that anyone with a WordPress website can now easily Install Site Kit by Google. May it be for a small or large business site, or even from a newbie to an advanced webmaster, Site Kit can greatly help. And I am going to explain in detail how and why.

As an example, you can Install Site Kit by Google and then use it within a staging environment. You can try out Site Kit on your safe staging environment, while still pulling in real data from your production site. But, if you want to use Site Kit with your staging environment, you’ll need to activate it separately.

It’s also important to realize, there is even a complete guide on how to use Site Kit with a staging environment. But, it’s only for sites that have a staging environment and a production site. Whereby, the staging site displays the production site data.

What is Site Kit by Google?

Site Kit is the official WordPress plugin from Google for insights about how people find and use your site (learn more). It’s the one-stop solution to deploy, manage, and get insights from critical Google tools to make the site successful on the web.

It provides authoritative, up-to-date insights from multiple Google products directly on the WordPress dashboard for easy access, all for free. Site Kit includes powerful features that make using Google products seamless and flexible.

What are the Benefits of Site Kit by Google?

From page speed testing to analytics, Google tools play a pivotal role in the management, maintenance, and optimization of WordPress sites. However, one pitfall of using third-party services is that they cause minor delays in an otherwise efficient workflow.

Fortunately, Google just made integrating its products with WordPress easier. Its new Site Kit Plugin lets you access essential metrics and insights directly from your website’s back end. Below are some other benefits you’ll get as soon as you download the plugin to use on your WordPress site:

1. Site Owners

If you have a WordPress website and would like to see how users find and use your website, Site Kit is right for you. To help you build, maintain, and grow your online presence, Site Kit gives you easy-to-understand metrics. As well as actionable insights directly on your WordPress dashboard.

You’ll also easily understand stats directly on your WordPress dashboard. With official insights from multiple Google tools. And with a quick setup for multiple Google tools without having to edit the source code of your site.

Once you install and activate Google Site Kit, you can configure the settings as necessary. You will be able to control and customize which insights your clients are able to view.

2. Webmasters

If you work on a WordPress website for a client, Site Kit is the one-stop solution to deploy, manage, and get insights from critical Google tools to make the site successful on the web. You’ll get aggregated insights from Google products.

And all these are distilled in a dashboard that your clients or other teams can easily access. No need to copy data from multiple products to compile reports for clients. The site performance stats and improvement recommendations come directly from Google.

Therefore, your customers will be getting the latest best practices recommended by Google products. Site Kit provides roles and permissions to help you manage access to the site’s data and make sure only the relevant people can see stats.

3. Web Hosts

If you work on a plugin or hosting provider, Site Kit provides a scalable, easy way for your users to provision and access key Google tools and metrics. With easy connection to official Google tools.

Your customers don’t have to edit the source code to set up Google tools. And there are a more added value for your platform. Your customers get important information about how their site is performing right in your own dashboard.

With flexible UI, you can pull stats from the plugin dashboard and display stats natively in your platform’s UI.

4. Plugin Users

There’s a whole host of issues that can stem from having too many plugins on your WordPress sites, including an increased risk of security and compatibility issues as well as slow loading times. Therefore, the fewer you have, the better.

One of the benefits of using Site Kit as a developer is that it eliminates the need to use a separate plugin for each of the Google tools and products you rely on. By consolidating them, you don’t have to worry about an abundance of extensions slowing your clients’ websites down.

Since it’s developed by Google, it’s safe to assume that Site Kit is lightweight and optimized according to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. While you can use it with similar existing plugins, it’s not recommended.

For example, if you’re using MonsterInsights for Google Analytics, it’s not necessary to keep it activated alongside Site Kit. Doing so could cause compatibility issues.

5. Dashboard Workflow

As a web developer, Site Kit can increase your efficiency by streamlining your workflow in various ways. We just discussed how it eliminates the need for multiple plugins. In that sense, it saves you time by negating the issue of managing a greater number of updates.

Additionally, Google Site Kit eliminates the need to access multiple dashboards. The plugin displays all the stats you need to view directly in the WordPress back end. Gone are the days when you need to log into third-party external sources to view reports and stats for each platform.

The time you save can now be better spent on more pressing business matters, such as improving customer service and tending to essential client project tasks. It’s also worth noting that Google Site Kit lets you access multiple accounts from a single page in your dashboard.

With all this information available in WordPress, you won’t need to go digging for specific stats and reports. Everything you need is readily available in charts and summaries that are easy to locate and understand.

6. Website Users

On a clear note, the plugin helps improve your customer satisfaction. And as a WordPress developer, you’re likely no stranger to the importance of maintaining a healthy level of communication with your clients.

The more transparency you have, the more likely it is that your customers will trust you and appreciate the value of your services. Fortunately, the data and insight Site Kit provides makes establishing that level of transparency with your clients even easier.

It can do this through advanced reporting and by alerting WordPress admins anytime a milestone is reached. Google Site Kit can lead to quicker, more meaningful, and accurate reporting. Thanks to the ease of access it provides.

And by that I mean, you’re less likely to fall victim to human error. Particularly, when transferring and translating data and information from third-party dashboards. It also aggregates data for easy client data access. Rather than manually gathering information and compiling the reports yourself.

Which are the Key Report Metrics?

Google Site Kit includes all the essential metrics and analytics needed to monitor and maintain some of the most important WordPress tasks for your client sites. This includes SEO reports, page speed performance, and PPC campaigns.

Once you install and set it up, you can choose which services you want to integrate with WordPress. Let’s say you decide to add PageSpeed Insights, a popular and powerful tool that can help you enhance the performance of your client websites.

1. Web Traffic

It’s a very good idea to check who is linking to your site in Google Search Console at all times. So, when we talk of web traffic, we are talking about your site visibility.

To view this report, connect Google Analytics through Site Kit. And in general, this report helps you understand how people found your site, based on data from Analytics. To elaborate, this report covers the following metrics. The report metrics include:

Referral: About people who found your site from a backlink on another site (sites linking to yours).
Organic: This allows you to see people who found your site from a search engine.
Direct: Your most loyal readers who typed your site directly into their browser, or who bookmarked your site.
Email: For example, a custom newsletter parameter to track how many people came to your site.
N/A or None: At times, this is when Google Analytics doesn’t know where the traffic is coming from.

Having said that, I highly recommend that you periodically review this report. In order to check for any significant changes in how people are finding your site.

Other metrics to explore include your site bounce rate per traffic source. This provides you with an overview of the users who have left your website after a single visit. As well as the time that people spend on your site per traffic source.

For example, you can compare traffic coming from social channels versus search engines. And then, try to see if there are differences in how long people from each source spend on your site.

2. Search Funnel

Periodically, you should review and check for any unusual spikes or dips in clicks or impressions. A weekly rhythm of weekend dips, or dips or spikes over holidays, is normal. But, the big question is why did my site traffic drop? Learn more about your site impressions and clicks.

Well, you can find some answers here. The search funnel report shows you how many people saw and clicked your site in Google Search. Whereby, all this data comes from your Search Console and Google Analytics. The report metrics include:

Impressions: How many people saw your site in Google Search results?
Clicks: How many clicks were clicked to your site links in Google Search results?
Unique Visitors: People who found your site on Google Search during a session on your site.
Goals: The number of goals that people completed on your site in a defined timeframe, as previously defined by you.

As an addition for unique visitors, if a user visited your site more than once in a single session, it counts as the same user, which makes this data unique. Therefore, to view this metric, that’s why you need to connect your Google Analytics through Site Kit.

In the case of your site goals, for example, you can set up a goal in Analytics to track the number of people who clicked an “add to cart” button on your site. And as soon as they complete their process in the checkout, it’s, therefore, a goal achievement. Learn more about how to set up a goal in Analytics.

3. Site Popularity

Why is the site popularity included here? This report helps you understand what people search for when they find your most popular pages. Based on data from Search Console and Analytics. The report metrics include:

Top Search Queries: What people searched for when they saw your site in Google Search results as ranked by impressions.
Most Popular Content: Your pages with the most views, including the top search query associated with the page.

However, there are some questions you’ll need to ask first. Like, do the queries that showed your site match what you expected? Or rather, are the most popular pages the ones you expected?

More so, do the search queries match what you’d expect people to search for when looking for your content? Consider using the search queries for inspiration for your future content creation.

4. Site Speed

By the same token, you’ll need to consider your website speed as one of the key factors to Install Site Kit by Google. And just like all your web traffic, it’s even more related to your site visibility too.

So, in order to view this report, you’ll need to Connect PageSpeed Insights through Site Kit. And if you have a developer or agency working on your site, you can share this report with them. To help them understand and plan the next steps to improve your speed score.

Not to mention, this report tells you how fast your homepage is, based on data from PageSpeed Insights. As you also check for any critical issues affecting the speed of your homepage. And if you’ll find any, just open the report to troubleshoot.

Your site score can range from slow, average, and fast. Above all, I recommend you try to focus on improving your slow issues to score higher. Let’s say, from a low score of 10 to a high score of 50.

Then again, last but not definitely least, you need to consider Google AdSense among your site solutions. And when it comes to your site visibility under this option, you can also view the report metrics too.

All you’ll need is to connect your AdSense through the Site Kit by Google. Bearing in mind, if you decide to earn money from your content with Google AdSense, this report shows you your site’s AdSense performance. The report metrics include:

RPM: Your general site earnings per thousand page views.
Ad Impressions: The number of ads shown on your site.
Estimated Earnings: Close estimates of your recent account activities.
Top Earning Pages: The web pages of your site that earned the most money for a given period.

On the other hand, as for AdSense, to view metrics in the AdSense module, you’ll need to complete additional steps. Check out the AdSense documentation for more information on how to do that.

You should connect your AdSense account to your Google Analytics account to get the most out of Site Kit reports.

Currently, only users with admin-level access in WordPress can set up and use the Site Kit plugin. In that case, there’s this guide that explains the permission levels for Google tools when used with Site Kit. Such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Tag Manager, or even AdSense.

To Install Site Kit By Google, firstly, you’ll need to log in to your WordPress website. And then secondly, make sure your site meets the following requirements. Such as your site is publicly accessible (meaning your site isn’t in maintenance mode or only accessible through a password).

Final Thoughts,

Finally, after you install the Site Kit, you can activate other Google tools. To do so: Go to the main Site Kit dashboard, which already displays key metrics from the Search Console. Under Site Kit > Settings, connect additional Google tools.

In other words, the Google Site Kit promises to make it easier for website owners to access and manage key services of their site. As they also conduct analytics to increase the success of their online properties. So, this plugin can be particularly useful when you’re a WordPress developer.

How to Install Site Kit by Google | 6 Key Setup Features