Earlier this week, I bought a book about webspace marketing called Google Best Practices by Jerry West of Web Marketing Now. In it, he discusses how to best position your webspace to take advantage of the tremendous power of Google. He discusses how to select search terms that you should target and what you need to do to get your webspace listed high on Google's search results page.

One of the things Jerry said is that in order to get and maintain a good ranking, you need to constantly create new content and update old content. He suggests that you should write 200-550 words per day. That's definitely a lot of writing, but certainly doable.

Another key concept is that you need to make your webspace easy for Google's robots to scan. You need to make sure that your webspace follows all of the construction guidelines that Google asks for. These include using valid HTML, not doing things designed to trick your users, only having one title, not copying large blocks of text that can be found elsewhere on the web, and several other common sense guidelines. It also helps if you tell Google how your webspace is structured. It isn't always obvious to Google's robots where all of the pages in your webspace are located, so you may need to tell it where to go. Another benefit of doing this is that your webspace will be added to Google faster.

Another important point that Jerry makes is that even when you get your webspace to the top of Google's list, you still need to get the user to click on your link. The key to doing this is writing a good title for your page. When Google lists search results, your page title is the most prominent text that is displayed. It makes sense that you spend a little extra time writing a title that appeals to your potential customers.

There really is no black magic to getting a good position in Google's search results. Many of the SEO companies tell you that it's voodoo, but it really boils down to a handful of common sense practices and a dedication to getting it done. Build a site that is easy for Google to read, write quality content and write titles that attract users and Google will treat you well. In a nutshell, if you build webspace that people want to go to, Google will realize it and reward you.

For more information on Jerry's fabulous guide, visit his website at http://www.webmarketingnow.com.

¶ 2:45 PM