Google Site Kit is definitely one of my favorite plugins for WordPress. Installing this plugin is routine for every website I create. This plugin does the boring work of registering the website with the various Google services.
Version 1.78.0 is now available and can be downloaded free from wordpress.org. Google Site Kit for WordPress now has over two million downloads and is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress websites. If you already use Site Kit, you should quickly check whether you already have the latest version installed.
My conclusion: Still a cool plugin and a real asset for everyone who owns a WordPress website. Interested in Google’s Site Kit? Then you should invest 3-5 minutes and read this article.
A number of users can already look forward to the advantages of the integrated Google solution – a plugin for Search Console, Analytics, AdSense, and the popular PageSpeed Insights.
Google Site Kit – a real win for many
Alternatively, you can of course wait for a few more versions until most of the incompatibilities have been eliminated. But if you choose the safe route of staging + backup, you won’t go wrong – it can be worth it.
Because the official Google plugin for WordPress can be a great asset, especially for beginners. With Google’s Site Kit, you no longer need to switch between different platforms – which costs time in day-to-day business or makes the learning process more difficult – but you can also get daily insights into your visitor numbers, loading times, Google ranks, or the performance of your Google ads (of course including Youtube). receive. When working in WordPress, you take a quick look at the dashboard and become a real analytics or search console professional step by step.
Google Site Kit – The official WordPress plugin from Google
The time has come. On October 31, 2019, the first official version of Google Site Kit was released. After the beta version started at the end of 2018, the beta phase has now been completed after about a year. Since then, Site Kit 1.0.0 has been available for free download and, thanks to intelligent user management, can be used by ordinary site operators through to agencies to view professional Google Stats and receive recommendations.
Site Kit is a free open source plugin for the popular CMS WordPress, which currently powers around 60% of all websites. And because WordPress is so popular, there is of course great interest in conveniently integrating the various Google services into the WordPress dashboard.
On the one hand, there is no need to mess around with code at all, which should please many users. After the simple wizard installation, only the desired accounts have to be connected. And on the other hand, you have a central plugin for the services Google Analytics, Search Console, AdSense, and PageSpeed Insights.
Site Kit – one-year beta successfully completed
According to a Google statement, since the release of the developer beta in June 2019, many more bugs have been fixed, the installation process simplified and the overall user experience rounded off. It is also interesting that Google is promising the WordPress integration of other Google services with this plugin. This could be a practical YouTube or Google Drive interface, for example. However, Google is not yet letting you look at the cards. We think: Site Kit is already an asset to the WordPress community and will certainly continue to be of interest.
Google Analytics & Co practically in the WordPress dashboard
Google Analytics has become a daily tool for many WordPress users. It is used regularly to find out where visitors come from, where they stay or convert – extensive traffic analysis can be individually designed. So now many users can look forward to this easy way to view data from Google Analytics directly from WordPress. How many visitors does your site get in a certain period of time? Where do these come from? What did you find particularly interesting?
In addition to Google Analytics, other services can also be integrated. For example, AdSense allows site operators to monetize their traffic by making their site available for Google Display Ads. The Google Search Console provides information about how you rank organically on the Google results pages or which search terms users used to get to your own page. How often and for which search terms were your own content displayed and what percentage of these impressions led to a visit.
With Site Kit, there is no longer a need to go to different services and pages to generate reports or get insights, all this data can be viewed centrally in the WordPress dashboard. On top of that, there are direct recommendations for action and interpretation approaches from Google via the aggregated data. With Google PageSpeed Insights, tips for optimizing the performance of the page can also be obtained.
With this push, Google is finally creating a centralized and user-friendly solution for WordPress users. In the next section, we will show you again how the plugin is interesting and also give some additional information.
Google Site Kit – final overview
Who is Google’s Site Kit for?
In general, Site Kit is interesting for every operator of a success-oriented website. Entirely new possibilities arise, especially for agencies and administrators of customer sites. In this way, they can also give the actual site operators insights into the aggregated Google data. Site Kit can, thanks to the possibility of customization, both the
- Dashboard in WordPress, as well as the
- Selection of linked services, as well as the
- granularly adjustable user management
from less experienced users to professionals in an individual framework. The best thing about it: With this central Google plugin for WordPress, there is only one point of contact for aggregating different data sources.
A few official Google tips for using Site Kit:
- Google recommends evaluating the insights at least once a week. This gives you a good link to the numbers and allows you to react quickly to inconsistencies.
- Keep an eye on the performance of recent posts via the relevant page reports.
- Compare the top-performing posts and how visitors found them. For example, are there certain topics or products that attract more visitors from social media?
- The integrated use of various Google services is particularly interesting. For example, by using Page Speed Insights and Google Analytics together, you can find out to what extent higher loading times on your own website lead to higher bounce rates.