Want to track the performance of your Google Ads campaigns in Google Analytics and WordPress? By enabling Google Ads conversion tracking in Google Analytics and connecting it with your WordPress website, you can see what happens after people interact with your ads.
For example, you’ll be able to track whether they made a purchase after they clicked your ad link, or signed up for your newsletter, or completed another type of conversion.
In this article, we’ll show you how to use Google Analytics to track conversions from ad campaigns you run on the Google Ads (formerly knows an AdWords) platform.
What Is Google Ads Conversion Tracking?
Google Ads conversion tracking tells you what visitors do on your site after clicking your online ads. It tells you whether people completed an action that you’ve defined as valuable.
Conversion tracking for your ads is important because it tells you whether your ad campaigns are paying off, or if they’re wasting your advertising budget.
A few benefits of Google Ads conversion tracking are:
- Identify which keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns are profitable in terms of driving conversions.
- Make informed decisions on your ad spend for optimizing your ad campaigns.
- Gain insights into how to optimize your ads for boosting return on investment (ROI).
- Find weak points in your site checkout process and content that you can work to improve
By setting up conversion tracking on your WordPress site, you can identify how effectively your ad clicks lead to the desired customer activity on your websites, such as product purchases, form submissions, and more.
That said, let’s see how to track Google Ads conversions in Google Analytics and WordPress.
How to Add Google Ads Tracking to Your WordPress Site
Just follow these steps to add Google Ads conversion tracking to WordPress.
Step 1: Create a Conversion Action
To start, sign in to your Google Ads account. In the upper right corner, click the wrench icon, and then, click Conversions under Measurement.
Then, click the + New conversion action button.
Next, click Website.
Now, Google will scan your website to see if it’s configured for conversion tracking. Enter your site domain and click Scan.
Then, Google Ads will ask whether you want to create a conversion action Automatically or Manually. You need to select the manual option by clicking + Add a conversion action manually:
Now, you’ll select a Goal, enter a Conversion name, and specify a Value for that conversion.
We’re going to use the same conversion value for each conversion, and set our Count to One so that a subscriber is only counted as a conversion once. For purchase conversions you’ll normally want to set this to Every in order to count each purchase as a conversion.
Then, click Done. Now, we’ve created a new conversion in Google Ads named Newsletter Sign-up. This should track everyone who signs up for our newsletter and assign a value of $5 to each of these sign-ups.
At this point, click the Save and continue button to get instructions to add the tracking tag for this conversion to your website. Then you’ll click on the Use Google Tag Manager option.
You will now see the Conversion ID and Conversion Label that you’ll need to finish setting up tracking. Copy and save these, or just leave this window open and move onto the next step.
Step 2: Install and Activate MonsterInsights
You can use MonsterInsights to add Google Ads to your WordPress site without the need to edit code. It’s the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and offers advanced tracking features, including ad conversion tracking.
Start by installing MonsterInsights at the Pro level on your website. After you get the license, you can download the plugin from your Account area, under the Downloads tab.
Next, go to your WordPress website and upload the plugin by going to Plugins » Add New » Upload Plugin.
Once that’s done, install and activate MonsterInsights on your website.
Step 3: Connect Google Analytics using MonsterInsights
Next, connect Google Analytics with your WordPress website. MonsterInsights helps set up analytics without the need to hire a developer or write code.
Simply use its setup wizard and follow the steps to add Google Analytics tracking code.
Step 4: Install MonsterInsights Ads Addon
After that, you’ll need to install and activate the Ads addon. Make sure you’re on MonsterInsights Plus or higher plan to use the addon.
To install the addon, go to Insights » Addons » Ads and click the Install button. Now wait for a few seconds and it will automatically activate.
Step 5: Add Your Google Ads Conversion ID and Conversion Label
The next step is to add your Google Ads Conversion ID (and Conversion Label if required) in MonsterInsights.
Go back to your open Google Ads tab and copy your Conversion ID. It will be a 9-digit code with the format AW-123456789 or 123456789.
After copying the ID, go to Insights » Settings » Publisher in MonsterInsights and navigate to Ads Tracking. Paste your Conversion ID into the field.
Now, if you’re using WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, or MemberPress, you need to also copy and paste your Conversion Label from Google Ads into the Conversion Label field in MonsterInsights.
Step 6: Add the Event Snippet to the Conversion Page
NOTE: You can skip this step if you’re using WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads or MemberPress and you’ve pasted your Conversion Label into MonsterInsights.
Head back to your Ads tab and click the Back button. Now, click on the Install the tag yourself option:
Scroll down to the Event snippet:
If your conversion is on a destination page, such as yoursite.com/thank-you, you’ll add the snippet to that page. If your conversion is a click, like on a “download now” button, you’ll add your snippet to the page that the button is on.
While Google Ads suggests putting the code in the header, it can also work to put it at the top of the HTML of the page in your WordPress page editor. You could also use a plugin to insert the code in the header on a specific page.
Congrats! You’ve successfully set up Google Ads conversion tracking on your WordPress site.
Why Should You Link Google Analytics With Google Ads?
If you’ve set up Google Analytics on your WordPress site, your Analytics account will already have an abundance of customers’ interaction data. If you want to make use of your Analytics data to better track the interaction of your customers you acquired through the ads campaign, you need to link your Analytics account with Google Ads.
Some more benefits of linking Google Analytics with Google Ads are:
- See your ad performance report in Google Analytics along with other site data.
- Import Google Analytics metrics, goals, and eCommerce transactions into your Google Ads account.
- Get richer data in the Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels report.
How to Link Google Ads with Google Analytics
We’ll start by showing you how to link Google Ads with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), the most recent version of Google’s analytics platform. If you need instructions for Universal Analytics, click here.
How to Connect Google Ads and Google Analytics 4
First, log in to GA4 and select the property that you want to link to your Google Ads account. Then click the Admin icon in the left menu.
Now, click on Google Ads Links item in the right-hand column. Then, on the next screen you’ll click the Choose Google Ads accounts button.
Now, you should see a screen that shows a list of Google Ads accounts that you are authorized to connect with. Place a check in the box next to the account where you manage ads for the selected website, then click Confirm.
You’ll return to the previous window, where you now see the Google Ads account you selected for tracking conversions. At this point, you can click the Next button.
In the next step, you can leave all default settings as is and click Next again.
On the next step, simply check your settings and then click Submit.
That’s it! Now your GA4 account is connected to Google Ads and can begin collecting more valuable data about your site traffic and ad conversions.
How to Connect Google Ads with Google Universal Analytics
Follow the instructions below to link your Google Ads account with a Google Universal Analytics property.
Start by signing in to your Google Analytics account and selecting the website you want to connect from your list.
Click Admin in the left taskbar.
In the middle column, click Google Ads Linking.
Select the right Google Ads account and click Continue.
Specify an appropriate title for the link group and toggle On the link for the right view. Once that’s done, click the Link accounts button.
Congrats! Your Google Ads and Universal Analytics accounts are now linked.
That’s it!
We hope this guide helped you to find out how to use Google Analytics for Google Ads conversion tracking on your WordPress website. If you’re running remarketing campaigns, you might want to learn how to collect WordPress visitor demographics data in Google Analytics.
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