Do you know that you can boost site speed by hosting Gtag.js locally?
Check out this post and learn about the easy way to improve your website speed by hosting the Google Analytics Global site tag locally.
What is Global Site Tag?
The Global Site Tag (gtag.js) is a JavaScript tagging framework and API that allows users to send data from their websites to Google Analytics, Google Ads, Campaign Manager, Search Ads 360, and Display & Video 360.
Why Should You Consider Hosting Your Gtag.js Script on Your Own Local Server?
Google has committed to making Core Web Vitals the most important ranking factor from May 2021. Those sites which are fastest will appear first in Google’s search results.
Speed is affected by a variety of factors, such as images, scripts, etc. If you are unaware, the Google Analytics and Adsense scripts both slow down website speed.
Even though Analytics is a Google product, this script or code may negatively affect the speed of your site.
A possible solution to this problem is to host or install the gtag.js script locally on your local server or host. Whether you believe it or not, this will greatly improve the performance of your website.
What is MonsterInsights?
MonsterInsights is the best popular Google Analytics plugin. It is also one of the essential plugins for WordPress sites.
Using it, you can connect your website to your Google Analytics account so that you can get detailed and exact data about your website.
This plugin is very helpful to optimize your website and increase traffic and conversions. MonsterInsights has both free and premium versions. To reap the total benefits of the plugin, you need to use the premium version of the plugin.
In my recent article, I discussed how to install Google Analytics Global Site Tag in WordPress (Gtag.Js). We used the MonsterInsights plugin for WordPress.
How To Boost Site Speed By Hosting Gtag.Js Locally?
We will see how MonsterInsights can help the Gtag.Js script load faster by hosting it locally.
Install and activate the Plugin
Purchase the MonsterInsights Pro version.
After purchasing the plugin, download the latest version of the plugin.
Upload the plugin on your site. Install and activate the plugin.
Copy the license key of MonsterInsights from the account page and paste it into the Settings > General tab of the plugin.
Connect MonsterInsights to Google Analytics
Connect the MonsterInsights plugin to your Google Analytics account.
Follow the steps given below:
- From the dashboard of your WordPress site, click on Insights.
- Click Settings and choose the General tab.
- Click on “Connect MonsterInsights” and click Allow.
- Choose the correct website and complete the authentication.
Enable Add Gtag.Js locally
With Core Web Vitals in mind, MonsterInsights focused on reducing the loading speed of the Gtag.Js script. You can now host the Gtag.Js script locally on your own server with the Performance Addon. Your website will load quickly and you will reduce external calls.
The default Google cache time is two hours, but if you host the script locally you can fully control the file caching and this will reduce the loading time of the website.
Gtag.Js is automatically pulled from Google every 24 hours by MonsterInsights.
Conclusion
That’s all about how to boost site speed by hosting Gtag.Js locally using the MonsterInsights plugin.
MonsterInsights is more than just an analytics plugin. It includes features like scroll depth tracking, author tracking, WooCommerce analytics, and file download tracking.
The latest release of the tool allows you to monitor your website speed and also boost it.
For a business that wants all the functionality of analytics in one package, you need to go with MosnterInsights.
