httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTVQ7L4EIK0

30 Day Blog Challenge | Day #1
In this video, Kevin Davis from Social Traffic Lab shows some of the reasons for using Google Analytics versus AWStats to track your traffic on your blog.

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He also walks through some of the settings of the Google Analytics For WordPress plugin from http://yoast.com, the plugin he recommends for integrating your WordPress blog with Google Analytics.

Over the next 30 days, participants of the challenge will be blogging each day, developing the habit of creating content on a daily basis to attract more visitors to their blogs.

Of all the Google Analytics plugins we have tested, we find this one to be the best.

Here is a list of all the features it provides from the plugin repository on WordPress.org:

Full list of features:

• Simple installation through integration with Google Analytics API: authenticate, select the site you want to track and you’re done.
• This plugin uses the asynchronous Google Analytics tracking code, the fastest and most reliable tracking code Google Analytics offers.
• Option to manually place the tracking code in another location.
• Automatic Google Analytics site speed tracking.
• Outbound link & downloads tracking.
  • Configurable options to track outbound links either as pageviews.
  • Option to track just downloads as pageviews in Google Analytics.
• Allows usage of custom variables in Google Analytics to track meta data on pages. Support for the following custom variables:
  • Author
  • Single category and / or multiple categories
  • Post type (especially useful if you use custom post types)
  • Logged in users
  • Publication Year
  • Tags
• Possibility to ignore any user level and up, so all editors and higher for instance.
• Easily connect your Google AdSense and Google Analytics accounts.
• Option to tag links with Google Analytics campaign tracking, with the option to use hashes (#).
• Option anonymize IP’s, for use in countries like Germany.
• Full debug mode, including Firebug lite and ga_debug.js for debugging Google Analytics issues.
• Allow local hosting of ga.js file.
• Tracking of search engines not included in Google Analytics default tracking.
• Tracking of login and registration forms.