MonsterInsights Review: Is It the Best Google Analytics Plugin?

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MonsterInsights is a popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It is easy to configure and provides real-time statistics on your website visitors, popular posts, most selling eCommerce products, and more.

Google Analytics is our favorite and powerful tool to analyze traffic. It monitors your visitors and provides reports relating to your target audience, top referral channels, and many other things.

Whether you are running a business website or blog, getting accurate traffic data helps you to develop more relevant pages and boost income. Find exactly where your traffic is coming from, where visitors land in, and how long they spend on your pages. Add more related keywords on your high-performing contents and link them to other internal pages to encourage readers to spend a long time on your site.

As a webmaster, you can install Google Analytics code easily through theme settings. But an advanced WordPress tool is essential to uncover hidden Analytics features and save your time.

Today, we’re going to review MonsterInsights, the all-in-one Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

What is MonsterInsights?

MonsterInsights is a great Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It was previously owned by Yoast SEO under the name Google Analytics for WordPress. In 2011, Syed Balkhi, founder of WPBeginner, acquired the plugin and given the new name- MonsterInsights.

Trusted by more than 2 million websites, it automatically inserts Analytics tracking code and start tracking visitors from the very first moment of activation. It will also collect your traffic data from Google Analytics and display them in the WordPress dashboard. So there is no need to visit your Analytics account each time to monitor page visits, bounce rate, and others.

MonsterInsights can track many things on your site such as top countries from where you are getting most of the traffic, top referral channels, top affiliate links, and so on. If you would like to find popular categories or authors on your site, it is also possible with the plugin. eCommerce tracking is another advantage of MonsterInsights. It is useful to track your most selling products, digital downloads, and calculate total income for a particular period.

These are the main features of MonsterInsights,

Pricing: $199/yr

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Pricing

MonsterInsights has three subscription plans- Plus, Pro, and Agency.

Plus

• $199/year
• 1 website
• Unlimited users
• Standard features & support

Pro

• $399/year
• 5 websites
• Unlimited users
• Advanced features & priority support

Agency

• $799/year
• 25 websites
• Unlimited users
• WordPress multisite support
• Client management
• Premium support

How to Set Up MonsterInsights?

Follow these steps to activate and set up MonsterInsights on your WordPress website,

1. Sign in to MonsterInsights and head to the Downloads tab to download the plugin. On the left side, you will see the license key. Collect it. We need it in the next step to activate the plugin.

Visit WordPress and upload MonsterInsights as a new plugin. After activation, a new screen will appear with a welcome message.

Click Launch the wizard to setting up the plugin.

2. On the next page, it will show step-by-step instructions to configure MonsterInsights for Google Analytics.

Choose your website category first. It will automatically apply recommended settings according to your choice. Click Save and Continue to proceed.

Enter your license key to verify your purchase and enable automatic plugin updates. Click the Connect MonsterInsights button to connect to your Google Analytics account. A box will appear to sign in with your Google account and allow MonsterInsights to access your website profile.

Choose a profile to connect. Click Complete Connection to save changes.

3. Configure tracking settings as next.

MonsterInsights automatically tracks all your external links including affiliate links, download links, mail links, etc. It will also help Google to determine unique links on your site and direct search engine bots to the exact location where your pages are located.

By default, it tracks downloads of all popular file types such as doc, pdf, zip, etc. Add more file types if needed. Scroll-down to set up Affiliate link tracking and monitor sales you referred from the unique cloaked links.

Enter your affiliate link path and assign a label to it. Click Save and Continue again.

4. Install recommended addons. On the next screen, it will suggest you to install various MonsterInsights addons to track individual posts, forms, ad clicks and others. Alternatively, you can install them at a later moment through plugin settings. Save settings.

Finally, you will get a screen like this.

You’ve successfully configured MonsterInsights for Google Analytics. Exit wizard to go back to the WordPress dashboard.

MonsterInsights Review: Top Reasons to Use MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is an essential WordPress plugin for businesses to discover new growth opportunities and boost revenue. Let us check the main reasons for using it on your money-making website,

1. Easy to use

MonsterInsights is developed with a single motive, help beginners to use Google Analytics. From the plugin set up to report generation, it works simply and you don’t need to enter even a single piece of code in any stage.

After activation, launch the set up wizard to configure tracking and the plugin will do the rest. MonsterInsights collects important data from Google Analytics and display them in WordPress. No need to go out of your admin panel to monitor daily traffic and analyze visitors.

2. Monitor and optimize individual posts

Find out how many page views you got, how many user sessions covered, and what is your bounce rate. MonsterInsights provides all these metrics and many others in detail. Individual post tracking is it’s another advantage.

It displays top landing pages on your website along with the number of visits, average duration, and bounce rate.

If readers are leaving any page in quick moments, it may be because of slow speed issues. Check it using a page speed test tool like GTMetrix and optimize the content to encourage readers to spend more time on it. Add more information and keywords to make your post up-to-date. These strategies help you to improve page performance and reduce the bounce rate.

3. Discover most selling products

As an eCommerce shop owner, you should know which products are most selling and generating most of your profit.

Visit Insights > Reports > eCommerce and on the top, it will show overall conversion rate, number of transactions, total revenue, and average order value for a selected period to gives you a brief idea about store’s performance.

Scroll-down to view your top products, number of units ordered, its percentage to the total sales, and total revenue. Sometimes, customers add products to the cart and remove them later with any unknown reason. MonsterInsights will track all such user activities and display statistics on the same page.

4. Track authors, categories, and tags

MonsterInsights is a powerful tool to track almost anything on your WordPress website. It helps you to track popular authors, categories, published time, SEO score, focus keyword, and more using custom dimensions.

If you run a multi-author website, this information will help you measure the popularity of each author and reward them accordingly. Creating new content according to the categories and tags most visited by visitors is useful to improve your internal traffic and reduce the bounce rate. You can also track focus keywords and optimize content based on the traffic receive to get more visitors.

5. Track outbound links

Outbound link tracking is another advantage of MonsterInsights. It includes affiliate links, phone links, mail links, anchor links, etc.

Link tracking is a very useful feature for marketers. It enables them to understand how many visitors have been referred to third party websites and get better deals accordingly.Finding the most popular affiliate links will help you make the necessary changes in content creation strategies and boost commissions.

6. Find and display popular posts

You may have seen the most popular products displayed in a widget form on the sidebar or main screen on many websites including Amazon. It encourages visitors to click on the links to view trending products or content.

MonsterInsights collects your individual page metrics and lets you display titles as either inline or sidebar widget. Choose from 14 beautiful themes, customize styles and sort posts by comments, sharing counts or random.

It can automatically add new posts to the widget based on your traffic for the past 30 days.

7. Google AdSense tracking

Do you want to track Google AdSense banner clicks and earnings with MonsterInsights? Yes, it too possible.

Link your Google AdSense account with Analytics and activate MonsterInsights add-on (Ads) to start tracking ad impressions, clicks, and total income. Analyze reports to determine your best ad slots and change ad types if needed to improve earnings.

8. Detect top traffic sources

MonsterInsights is the right place to discover top countries and top referral sources that divert most visitors to your pages.

It will also tell you what device type visitors are using to access your site and what Google search terms are popular for your site. For each keyword, it will display your ranking position in Google search results. Unlike other position tracking tools, it directly collects data from Google Search Console. So this data will be more accurate than others.

Customize your  marketing campaigns to bring more traffic from countries and social sites mentioned on the list. Schedule and publish content at peak times for each of them to increase user engagements and page visits.

9. Forms tracking

Forms allows you to collect user data and convert a casual visitor to your regular client. For the smooth functioning of the business, you may need to add different forms to the site. Once you understand which of them reaches the most people, you can make changes in promotional plans to increase conversions.

MonsterInsights can track and display form statistics along with their impressions, conversions, referral sources, etc.

10. Real-time statistics

Monitor your website traffic in real-time without going to the Google Analytics account. View how many visitors are on your live site, from where they are coming and on what pages they are in.

MonsterInsights collects and displays all this information along with referral sources, audience cities, individual page views, etc. It will automatically refresh data in every 60 seconds so you will get exact details about live visitors.

11. Performance metrics

A fast loading website can rank higher in SERPs and get more page visits. Scan your website and individual posts at regular intervals through online speed test tools to make sure that they load smoothly. If there are any slow speed issues, fix them at the earliest to avoid losing visitors.

MonsterInsights audit your website and provides reports by covering server response time, first contentful paint, total blocking time, and time to interactive. It will also show recommended time for each stats with improvement suggestions so you can optimize pages easily to enhance performance.

12. Integrations

MonsterInsights is integrated with popular tools and WordPress plugins you use to extend functionalities. It includes WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, ThirstyAffiliates, LifterLMS, various WordPress form plugins, and so on.

Hence, you can easily track eCommerce transactions, monitor the activities of MemberPress users and find out which files are being downloaded the most, etc using Google Analytics.

13. Fast customer support

MonsterInsights has a priority customer support to answer your queries and fix complaints without any delay. Ask questions, raise a feature request and even share your interest to write a guest post for them. Their friendly support staff respond to your messages in a few hours.

I am using MonsterInsights for more than a year and never faced any issues with them till this writing. So I did not contact them to complain except for some inquiries. It was a nice experience. They answered my queries quickly and in a polite manner.

Final thoughts

MonsterInsights is the #1 Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It lets you track anything including page views, file downloads, user scrolling, videos, and many others mentioned in this post.

The plugin is developed and maintained by the same team behind WPBeginner, OptinMonster, and WPForms. They have a deep knowledge of the industry so they will never lag behind others and you can expect the best service from them.

MonsterInsights adds more value to your marketing efforts through powerful statistics and integrations. It helps you to detect new content creation or product development opportunities and skyrocket your earnings.

Whether you are a business owner, content marketer or ecommerce merchant, MonsterInsights is a great choice to get accurate information about visitors and increase your organic page visits.

Click here to buy MonsterInsights with up to 50% discount and monitor your traffic like experts do (Limited period offer + 14-days money-back guarantee)

FAQ

Q. Which is the best Google Analytics plugin?

MonsterInsights is the #1 Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It can track anything on your website using Analytics code including audience location, categories, most popular posts, most selling products, and much more.

This plugin can automatically insert your tracking code and display traffic statistics through a WordPress dashboard widget. It is beginner-friendly and light-weight. MonsterInsights is best for all business types like companies, online stores, blogs, and others.

Q. Can I add Google Analytics to my website?

Yes, you can add Google Analytics to your website either manually or using a WordPress plugin.

Create an Analytics property for your site first. Collect your tracking code and insert it in your theme’s header to start tracking your visitors. You can do it through theme settings or installing a header & footer plugin for doing this job.

Installing a Google Analytics plugin is the easiest method to add Analytics to your website. Eg, MonsterInsights. After activation, connect to your Analytics account and property to collect entire data about your audience.

Q. Should I use MonsterInsights?

MonsterInsights simplifies Google Analytics integration and usage. It displays all important traffic metrics in WordPress and saves your time.

It also allows you to track categories, focus keyword, external links and many others without inserting any code. This plugin is essential to dig into traffic analytics and grow your business.

Q. Can I analyze any website with Google Analytics?

No. Google Analytics can monitor your own websites only. You should insert a tracking code on the site header to analyze traffic and audience data.

Q. Is MonsterInsights free?

MonsterInsights has a free version. But it is limited to getting basic overview stats only. A premium subscription is required to view real-time traffic and monitor various things on your site.

Q. How much does it cost to add Google Analytics to a website?

Google Analytics is free. All you have to do is insert a tracking code on your site, and it will track data such as visitor’s location, pages they visited, how much time they spend on each page, referral channels, and so on.

Q. Is MonsterInsights safe?

Yes, it is safe. You can use it on any website type to get accurate data about your page performance and traffic.

Q. How do I use Google Analytics for SEO?

Google Analytics helps you to do the following,
1. Find your popular posts and most selling products. This way, you can learn what type of content and products your audience love.
2. Discover new keyword opportunities and prepare related posts to drive more traffic.
3. Identify your top referral channels and optimize your marketing strategies accordingly.
4. Find traffic declining pages and optimize them with new keywords to improve search rankings.
5. Detect your target audience, their location, age group, etc.

Q. Can MonsterInsights track file downloads?

Yes, MonsterInsights allows you to track file extensions like doc, PDF, XLS, ppt, zip, and more. You can add more file types through plugin settings.

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