New web sites are normally provided with Yowsie's On-Site Statistics package which offers simple on-site recording of the countries where visitors live, whether they came to the site via a search engine and how many times each page was viewed. Keywords and a site description are placed in "meta tags" to inform the search engines. Careful consideration is given to how these will optimise the attention you get and raise your on-line profile. At the same time, a "sitemap" is submitted to Google which will be used to scan your site regularly.

Yowsie's On-Site Staistics package is not designed to substitute deep analysis of the server logs or to match resources like Google Analytics. It provides a fast and easy glimpse into how the site is performing.

While anyone can master it, understanding the information you get from Google Analytics requires some effort and learning how to apply it effectively is no light task. In some situations, adding Google Analytics can slow down the delivery of your website to vistors. You should only add such enhancements if you have the knoweldge and the time to benefit from them.

The introduction to Google Analytics says (October 2009) "With Google Analytics, you're more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites." Quite rightly, that places what you do with Google's data firmly in the context of your overall marketing strategy and prioritises the use of other media over making changes to your site.

Google, in particular, seeks to assess how other people rate your website and to defeat any attempt to construct pages which manipulate the response of search engines. Specifically, Google's webmaster guidelines say (October 2009) "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.", "Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings."

Be wise to Google telling you that these principles underlie how they write software to analyse your website and that not following their advice will penalise you.

How to promote your Website

Some website owners become obsessed with making minor adjustments to their pages in an attempt to get a better Google ranking. While any improvement has some value, the gains are miniscule compared with the benefits which result from putting the same effort into promotion of your website.

Google takes note of other people mentioning you on line. So you need to have them writing about you in their blogs, forums, newsgroups and websites. If you attempt to advertise in any of these you will get a furious reaction but most people will distinguish and accept a genuinely helpful mention of what you do in the context of a relevant discussion.

Reciprocal links can be very helpful to guide visitors to websites of real interest. Google attempts to recognise and credit that benefit, but only for links of genuine value so, as Google say, "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking."

In short, if you want good search engine listings, forget about seach engines! - focus on providing website content to wow your visitors and get them Tweeting and Blogging about you and linking to your site. If the geeks at Google have achieved their aim, then a site that people enjoy and talk about is the one that gets good rankings.

For more advice about promoting your website please check out this short course on marketing on line.