In this short article we will be learning how to add Google call tracking to WordPress.
If you are running a Google Ads campaign, it is extremely important that you are fully tracking conversions.
This includes all form submits and sales that happen on site and calls that are generated from of Google ads.
Calls that should be recorded include, calls directly from ads and calls on your website.
Calls on your ads are very simple to track. To learn more about setting up call extensions check our Google ads call tracking article here.
This article will focus specifically on adding call tracking to your WordPress website using a simple plugin.
How to add Google Call Tracking To WordPress With A Plugin
To be able to add Google call tracking to WordPress, first we need to add a simple plugin to to our website.
There is a Google Ads call tracking plugin, however it doesn’t have great feedback, so we use a different plugin.
To get started login to your WordPress site and click plugins and add new.
The plugin we are looking for is “Insert header and footer”. This plugin allows you to insert scripts in your WordPress site header and footer. With no need to edit your theme files.
It also has over 600,000 installs and great feedback from existing users.
Once installed you will be able to access the plugin via settings > insert headers and footers in the left-hand menu in WordPress.
Once you open the plugin, you will see it is extremely simple. There are just two boxes, “scripts in header” and “scripts in footer”.
Setting Up Google Website Call Tracking
After you have the header, footer plugin installed, there is only one more thing we need to do, to get Google call tracking fully set up in WordPress.
Login to your Google Ads account and click on the tool’s icon in the top right of your dashboard and click conversions.
To add a new conversion, click the blue + button. On the next page. Select the phone call option and check the box for calls to a phone number on your site.
On the next page you will need to configure the settings for this call conversion. After naming the conversion, there are two main sections I personally like to edit.
They are the value and the call length. Both of these will be personal to your business. You need to decide how long a call should last to be a conversion and what a call is worth to you. Also if you would prefer, you can assign no value.
Adding Google call tracking Code Snippets to WordPress
Once you have named the conversion and filled in the simple settings, it is time to generate some code and add Google call tracking to WordPress.
For tag setup select “install the tag yourself” and on the next page you will see the code that needs adding.
There are two pieces of code we need to add in this section, the first is your Google ads global site tag.
As you can see, just above the code snippet it tells us “Copy the tag below and paste it in between the <head></head> tags of every page of your website. You only need to install the global site tag once per account, even if you are tracking multiple actions.”
We need to take this code and add into the WordPress plugin we installed earlier. Simply paste the code into the “script in header” section.
Next, we need to add a phone snippet. The phone snippet replaces a phone number on your website with a Google forwarding number. This is how we will be able to track phone calls from the website.
To generate the phone snippet, you will need to add your phone number exactly as it appears on you WordPress site. This is extremely important, you need to format the number in the same way, or it won’t work.
Once you have added the number and created the snippet, it can also be added to the plugin. Again we want to add this piece of code in the head section and it should be placed just below the global site tag.
Once you have added both pieces of code, it should look something like this.
Finally scroll to the bottom and hit save and your tracking is fully installed and ready to start tracking calls.
So there you go. That’s how you can add google call tracking to WordPress.
As you have seen this is an extremely simple set up process. However if you have any questions, please reach out to the team here at CPS Media, and we will be happy to help.