Written by Admin on 2025-05-06

Tracking Downloads in WordPress with HTML Code

If your website regularly offers downloads like PDFs, MP3s, or other files, it's essential to track how many people are downloading them. By doing so, you can gather insights into which content is resonating with your audience and make data-driven decisions about improving your website and content strategy. In this article, we'll show you how to track downloads in WordPress using HTML code.

Step-by-Step Guide to Tracking Downloads

Before you start, you need to have access to Google Analytics. If you don't, sign up for a free account and add the tracking code to your WordPress site. Once you've done that, follow these steps to track downloads:

1. Identify which files you want to track, and make sure they're hosted on your WordPress site.

2. Open a new file in a text editor or code editor, and add the following HTML code:

html <a href="http://yourdomain.com/path-to-your-file.pdf" onclick="ga('send', 'event', 'Download', 'PDF', 'File Name');">Download PDF</a>

Replace the URL with the actual URL of the file you want to track, and replace "File Name" with the name of the file you want to track.

3. Copy the entire HTML code.

4. In your WordPress dashboard, go to the page or post where you want to add the download link.

5. In the Visual editor, highlight the text you want to turn into a download link.

6. Click on the "Link" button in the toolbar.

7. Paste the HTML code into the "URL" field.

8. Click the blue "Add Link" button.

9. Switch to the Text editor to check that the HTML code has been added correctly.

10. Save or publish the page or post.

How It Works

When users click on the download link you added, the HTML code sends an event to Google Analytics, which tracks the download. The event information includes the download type (PDF, MP3, etc.), the name of the file, and the location of the page where the download link was clicked.

You can view the download data in Google Analytics under Behavior > Events > Top Events. To view download data for a specific file, click on the "Download" event and then click on the file name under "Event Label."

Tracking downloads in WordPress is an easy and effective way to gather insights and improve your content strategy. By following the steps above, you can start tracking downloads on your website today.