To add Google Analytics to your Wordpress Blog, follow these steps:

1. If you haven’t already done so… Register an account with Google. Go to Google.com or Google.co.uk and click on “sign in” at the top right hand corner of the screen. If you don’t have a Google account then click on the “Create Account Now” link.

2. Go to the Google Analytics Page: www.google.com/analytics site and click on “Access Analytics“, then enter your Google account login details.

3. Click on “Add Website Profile”

4. Enter your website URL and your Timezone and click “Finish”

5. Copy the Tracking Code Script, ie. the bit that looks like this:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-*********-25″);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

6. Goto your Wordpress Back office Administration area (www.yourdomain/WP-ADMIN) and click on:

• Design
• Theme Editor
• Footer - Paste the Google Script into the Template Footer, just above the </body> tag. Save the Template change.

7. On the Google Analytics Page, click on “FINISH“. If you click on “Check Status” link alongside your domain, it should now state “Waiting for Data -Analytics has been successfully installed and data is being gathered now.”

Congratulations You have successfully installed Google Analytics on your Wordpress blog.

See my separate post on Viewing Statistics with Google Analytics for some hints and tips on how the statistics information that I find useful from Google Analytics.