Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link to MonsterInsights. If you decide to purchase this product, I will receive a small commish at no cost to you.
If you have authors who regularly contributes blog posts to your website, are you tracking how well their blog posts are being received by your audience?
The thing is there isn’t a setting in Google Analytics to track authors who guest post on your blog. You would have to customize the settings to do so. And if you’re squeamish about messing with the GA settings, forget it!
So I’m going to show you how you can set up author tracking using the MonsterInsights Pro* plugin.
Knowing how your author’s posts are performing is important if you want to continue driving people to your blog. When you enable tracking with the MonsterInsights Pro plugin, you’ll get detailed page view and bounce rate reports. And, you can see who your most popular author is. You can also create custom reports to track other scopes.
Set Up Author Tracking Using MonsterInsights
Follow along with the tutorial below to set up author tracking on your WordPress website and how to create custom reports in Google Analytics.
Before you begin, make sure your WordPress website is connected to your Google Analytics account. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to begin!
First, install and activate the MonsterInsights Pro* plugin. Then, from your WordPress dashboard, click on Insights then click on Settings.
Now copy and paste the license key in the License Key Field (you should have received this after purchasing the pro plugin).
Next, click on the Tracking tab.
Scroll down to Custom Dimensions from the menu on the left-hand side.
Now click on Add New Custom Dimensions link to display the dropdown menu. From there, select Author as the custom dimension.
Next, click on Save Changes when you’re done.
Now you have to add the custom dimensions for author tracking in Google Analytics.
Follow These Steps In Google Analytics
Log in to GA and open your website link.
Then go to the Admin section and under the Custom Definitions column, click on Custom Dimensions.
Now click on New Customer Dimension. When you do this, it will open a form to create a new custom dimension.
Add Author in the name field then click on Create.
Finally, you need to do is match the index number of Google Analytics to the Custom Dimension ID in WordPress.
Now let’s head back to your WordPress website.
One More Step
Go to Insights the Settings, select the Tracking tab and go to Custom Dimensions on the left.
If the Custom Dimension ID is same as the index number in Google Analytics, then you don’t need to do anything. But if it’s different, make sure to enter the same number from Google Analytics’ index column for the Author dimension. Click on the Save Changes button when you’re done.
Now Let’s Create Custom Reports
In Google Analytics, go to Customization then Custom Reports located on the left. Define the metric group such as page views and bounce rate.
Scroll down and under the Dimension Drilldowns, select Author from the dropdown. Click the Save button when you’re done.
Now you’ll get a traffic report for the Author dimension and you can monitor each author’s page views and bounce rate.
Create Other Custom Author Reports
Not only that, MonsterInsights Pro plugin also lets you create custom author reports.
From Google Analytics, select Author as a secondary dimension.
Next, click Behavior then Site Content then All Pages. From here choose any primary dimension like Page Title. Next, go to the Secondary Dimension dropdown below it.
Now under the Custom Dimensions, click Author to view the custom reports with other primary dimensions you selected.
Finally, a new author column will be displayed and you’ll be able to see the author name next to the blog post title.
Pretty cool, right?
Wrapping It Up
Well, I hope you found this tutorial helpful. To get the MonsterInsights Pro plugin, click here* to visit the website.
So, how are you tracking your author’s guest posts?
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