When engaging in a digital marketing service such as SEO or Google Ads, one of the first things you’ll be asked for is access to your Google Analytics account.
If you already have an account and unsure how to add users, or what permissions you should be giving them, here’s a step by step guide below.
Step 1: Logging Into Google Analytics
First, you need to be logged into the Google account that is connected with your Google Analytics account.
Either log in first and go to: https://analytics.google.com
Or go to https://analytics.google.com and log in from there.
Once you’re logged into the right account, you should see a dashboard that looks similar to this:
Step 2: Go To The Admin Panel
In the bottom left of your screen, there is a little cog icon with and the words “Admin”.
Click on that to go to the Admin Panel.
Once you’ve clicked on the Admin tab, you should see your Admin panel like so:
Step 3: Click User Management
You will see three different panels from left to right.
Account, Property and View.
Typically you will want to give access to the Property level at the bare minimum if you want a digital marketing provider to be able to do things such as link up your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account.
In this example, we’re going to provide access to the Account level (which is the highest level of access to the account).
If you wish to provide access at the Property or View level, just click “User Management” under the Property panel or the View panel, respectively.
The steps going forward are exactly the same, regardless of which level you’re providing access to.
Step 4: Click Add Users
Once you’ve clicked on User Management (regardless of whether it was under Account, Property or View), you will be greeted with this screen:
Now, there is a small blue circle in the top left with a white + on the middle.
We’re going to click on that:
And on the little drop down box, we’ll click on “Add Users”
Step 5: Choose Permissions
Once you’ve clicked Add Users, you will be greeted with this screen:
This is where we need to pay attention a little bit to ensure we’re giving the right level of access here.
In most cases, you want to tick the “Edit” and “Collaborate” boxes which will allow your digital marketing provider to perform all the tasks that they need to.
Warning: If you click on the “Manage Users” box, you are giving this new user the ability to add any other users that they like and allows them to remove users, including yourself.
“Manage Users” at the Account level should only really be provided to people within your own organisation and not to external providers as a security measure.
Some SEO companies may demand full admin access. They don’t need it.
If an SEO claims that they need to have full admin access to access Google Search Console, there are other methods that they can use to claim it.
Step 6: Add E-Mail Address
Once you have selected which permissions you would like to provide, go ahead and enter their e-mail address in the line towards the top.
Once you have entered the e-mail address, you just need to click the “Add” button to finalise everything.
The “Add” button is at the top right of your screen.
Providing that there is a Google account associated with that e-mail address, that’s everything that you need to do to provide access to Google Analytics!
Error: This E-Mail Doesn’t Match A User Account
If you have entered an e-mail address and the e-mail address is surrounded in a red box, it can mean either one of two things.
- The e-mail address you entered may have been wrong or have typos
- The e-mail address doesn’t have a Google account associated with it
If there is no Google account associated with the e-mail address, the user will have to sign up to Google using that e-mail address.
You don’t have to create a Gmail address to sign up to Google.
Even if you have a Hotmail or business e-mail account, you can still sign up to Google’s services with that e-mail address.
To sign up to a Google account with your existing e-mail address, follow the prompts to Sign In, Create An Account and then click here on the sign up page:
