How to install and use the Google Sitekit WordPress Plugin

This is pretty exciting stuff, because it means less time setting custom Google products up and more time working on your business. This plugin is called “Google Sitekit”

https://sitekit.withgoogle.com/

As of the date of this blog post, the “Google Sitekit” wordpress plugin is still in BETA mode (Developer), but it’s still available to download and install and as far as I can see, it works fine.

What does the Google Sitekit plugin do?

So you’re probably thinking what does this plugin do and how does it benefit me? 

Well the main purpose of this plugin is to allow you to quickly and easily connect to Google services by reducing the amount of steps that you have to take to submit your Website to Google and setup services such as analytics, Google tag manager and adsense.

This makes it a lot easier for non technical people to setup Google services, and access relevant analytics data without getting confused.

What Google services does the sitekit plugin connect me to?

Google Search Console – Google search console is a portal that allows you to submit your website to the Google search engine, monitor the health of your website such as uptime, broken links and your search position for relevant keywords. The sitekit plugin connects this portal and configures it with a few clicks. 

Google Analytics – Google Analytics shows you a massive data set of where your website traffic is coming from. This can be confusing for non technical people, as the standard analytics is built for creating technical reports, but the sitekit version makes this data accessible and usable to your average small business owner.

Page Speed insights – This shows you the loading speed of your web pages across both mobile and desktop versions of your site, and allows you to drill down into what’s slowing your website down.

On top of this is has the option to connect more integrations such as Adsense, Optimize and Tag Manager, and I’m sure there will be more to follow.

What are the benefits of using this plugin?

The main benefit of this plugin is it reduces the amount of steps you have to take to setup Google services. It’s literally a case of clicking a series of buttons to connect your website to Google and Setup an Analytics account.

It also reduces the requirements for multiple 3rd party plugins, and the less plugins you have, the less maintenance and the better the performance of your website. 

How do I set it up?

It’s a relatively simple step by step procedure. 

You’ll need a Google account / gmail, so make sure you set one up first. Then once the plugin is installed you are walked through the process step by step. As long as you have that Google account setup and your logged in, it’s just a case of pressing a series of buttons to authorise your API keys.

My thoughts on the Google Sitekit plugin

My first impression is that this is a great plugin, and will help a lot of non technical people get integrated with Google service and start taking advantage of their data.

Even though this plugin is still in Beta mode and the production version will have even more features, I see no reason not to get it installed today. 

https://youtu.be/A5dcb0joJ6w