Modern Webspace, Inc. | Helpful Tips for Webspace Owners

Four Hour Work Week

2007-06-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. In it, Ferriss tells his story of going from successful businessman, fed up with 12 hour work days to more successful businessman with lots of free time. In a nutshell, he did this through outsourcing. Now he fills his time with tango lessons in Argentina and bending the rules in martial arts competitions in China.

I can't say that I'm terribly impressed with Tim*, but he is doing one thing right: He lives the life that he wants to live with passion. That IS inspiring! In 4 Hour Work Week he outlines how he accomplished his mobile lifestyle and lays out several strategies you can use to do the same. The best thing about this book is that it forces you to do two things: 1) Challenge your assumptions about what you can and can't do, and 2) refine your goals.

Anyone who is an entrepreneur or aspires to be one will benefit from this book. Even if the specifics don't apply to you, it will help get the creative juices flowing.

* Tim actually seems like a nice guy. I saw him interviewed by Scobel and he is an enthusiastic and pleasant person. I get the impression that he sincerely believes that life is more than a 9-5 job and that people CAN live the lives they want right now.

Browser OS

2007-06-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

The desktop is moving to the browser. I don't mean applications delivered over the internet: Your computer's desktop will be the browser one day soon.

There is a shift in the model of how the web is built and used. The web is becoming more like the computer desktop every day. This shift is being driven by these trends:

applications that traditionally ran on the local host are being developed for to run remotely through the web (like Google Docs and spreadsheets),
Unifying 'desktop' sites like iGoogle, Ripl, Facebook Platform (also see my personal home page to see a desktop-like website) that provide APIs to hook web based applications into the desktop environment,
mashup sites like Yahoo Pipes and Microsoft's mashup engine (the name escapes me at the moment), and
mashable sites like Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr, Google Maps, and any site with an RSS feed.

Sites will are becoming less site-like and tend to have one or more of the above characteristics. There are some types of sites that don't neatly fit into one of the above categories (e-commerce, tech support, wikis), but these can be thought of as applications.

If this analysis is correct, there are deep implications to the internet as we know it. Figuring out the implications will be left as an exercise to the reader...it could lead to your first (or next) $1.6 billion dollar company.

Vista as a video editing platform? Forget about it!

2007-06-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm working on my first online video project. My laptop couldn't handle the humougous files. The right tools just don't exist for my beefy linux box. So I decided to load Microsoft Vista on the linux box. I wasn't really using it for anything that required linux anyways. And besides, Microsoft recently issued an plea to the computer users of the world to upgrade to Vista already. Poor Microsoft.

Vista stopped me cold. It is not ready for prime time. If you need your computer to work, rely not on Vista! Granted, some of the problems I faced were related to the software I was trying to run (QuickTime Pro and Adobe Premiere Elements), but really, by Microsoft's own logic, the applications can't be separated from the operating system. When I'm trying to export a large MOV file and the computer issues a cryptic error message and reboots, who cares whether the OS or the application caused the problem?

My advice: Avoid Vista unless you only are running applications that come on the Vista disk. You will struggle using any serious application that demand the operating to perform. Vista will improve. Vista applications will improve. But for now, they are not ready to be used as reliable tools for getting real work done.

I'll try Vista again when service pack 1 is released toward the end of the year

---END OF RANT---

Protect Your Site From Abuse and Help Digitize Books

2007-05-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

We've all seen CAPTCHAs. They are those little images that pop-up with some distorted text. You have to type the text to set up a new account, see an e-mail address, etc. They're designed to differentiate a real human from a computer 'bot'. Computers can't interpret the distorted images as well as humans, so they will fail a CAPTCHA test.

Carnegie-Mellon University has a project relating to CAPTCHAs called reCAPTCHA. Their website explains:

About 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into "reading" books.

To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then, to make them searchable, transformed into text using "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.

Through a simple process, the reCAPTCHA website generates code that you can insert into a webpage that will hide your e-mail address with a reCAPTCHA. Here's an example I built for my e-mail address. Try it out. As a reward, you will get my e-mail address and help the Internet Archive build it's library.

They've also build plug-ins for Wordpress, MediaWiki and phpBB. There's also a fully defined api and a php library. For more details on reCAPTCHA, visit http://recaptcha.net

Sizzle without Flash

2007-05-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

I ran across a blog entry from Jeff Atwood at Coding Horrors this morning talking about my favorite programming language, javascript. Traditionally, javascript has the reputation of being a 'toy' language. But that has changed:

Regardless of your original feelings towards the language, JavaScript has come a long way since the bad old days of 1995. We've got CPU power to burn on the client; so much power, in fact, that even an interpreted, dynamic language like JavaScript can be a credible client-side development environment. The language has been standardized...so there's now a reasonable expectation of compatibility across browsers.

Jeff goes on to call MS Silverlight, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex and Sun JavaFX "pretenders to the throne". He says (emphasis from the orginal article):

JavaScript is the lingua franca of the web. Ignore it at your peril.

Microsoft threw down the gantlet last month by first declaring the browser wars over, then a few days later, announcing that they were challenging Flash for the crown of plug-in king. The browser wars have morphed into the plug-in wars. And it's a war certain to heat up when Microsoft releases the next version of Internet Explorer.

Do you remember the days of websites announcing "This site best viewed on <browser>"? And if you did want to be a conscience website builder, you had to go to great lengths to support (or avoid) all of the different proprietary HTML extensions. We're heading down that road again. But this time it's going to be the great plug-in war.

The nature of web has shifted. Content is more dynamic everyday. It is tempting to grab onto Flash as the best was to make the web experience more dynamic. But if you want to avoid the same kind of painful experiences of the browser wars, avoid relying on plug-ins to provide dynamic content. Javascript has evolved into a powerful and ubiquitous programming language. Every major browser installs with javascript running and ready to go.

So make your site immune to the coming plug-in wars. Don't forget that javascript remains a powerful choice for building a rich-content web site.

Ken Heutmaker recently started a site called sizzleWithoutFlash. It provides links to resources and libraries to help web developers build rich sites using Javascript.

Social Networking...140 Characters at a Time

2007-05-21T09:47:00.001-07:00

Have you heard about twitter yet? It is the latest social networking site that lets you send out short messages to anyone who chooses to listen to you. It is a fabulous way of connecting with people, getting news and keeping in touch. Dave Kawalec wrote a blog entry about the power of twitter, to which I added a comment (My heart is all a-Twitter). When you sign up, send me a 'tweet'.

Controlling your SERP Listing

2007-05-19T15:25:00.000-07:00

When you building a web page, it makes sense to think about how the search engines will show it in their listings. A well crafted listing can make a big difference in how many clicks your listing gets. For example, if you were presented with these listings, would you automatically pick the first listing or would you pick one of the other two?

The sad thing is that the owner of the top listing has control of what Google shows shows in their listing. The top line of the comes from the <title> tag. This is the tag that sets the text that shows in the title bar at the top of the browser and in the tabs of a browser that has tabs. In the case of the first listing, the page title wasn't set by the web programmer, so Google refers to their site as "Untitled Document".

Another mistake some sites make in the <title> tag is loading it with keyword...only. Having good keywords in your title is important, but it is more important to set the title of the page to something that looks good in the SERPS (Search engine results pages). At minimum, it should be the name of your company. Ideally, it should be something that people want to click on.

Google only shows the first 65 characters, so make sure that it fits. I think the most compelling titles have a tag line and the name of the company. Google lists my blog as "Modern Webspace, Inc. | Helpful Tips for Webspace Owners" and my corporate site as "Modern Webspace, Inc. - Sensible Internet Solutions".

The rest of your listing comes from one of two places. If you have a meta description tag, sometimes the search engine will use that for the body of your listing in the SERPs. When it doesn't use the meta description tag, it uses the first few lines of content. It is important to have a well written meta description tag and to place a good description of your business at the beginning of your content.

As for meta keywords, most search engines ignore them. Keywords come from the contents of website and the text in links to your site. It doesn't hurt to use meta keywords, but it doesn't really do anything for your listing.

When you are designing your website, one of the first things you want to do is decide what you want your Google listing to look like. A top 10 position with a well designed Google listing can be more effective than a #1 placement that is not well designed.

Claim your Technorati Link

2007-05-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

If you have a blog or use one of the many social networking sites, you can use Technorati to consolidate links to all of them in one place. When you create a profile in Technorati, it will track all of the services blog-like services linked to it. For example, I've linked my Technorati Profile to my blog and my Twitter status. That way, anyone who finds my blog can also easily find me on Twitter and any other social networking site that I've linked Technorati to.

How to Save Money on SEO & SMO

2007-02-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

Thinking about hiring a search engine optimization (SEO) guru? I've said it here before, SEO is voodoo. SMO (Social Media Optimization) is worse. Well designed sites with good content or inherent authority get the top positions in the search engine results. Every time. Period. End of paragraph.

Don't pay for SEO. Instead, pay for a good site design (or redesign) or hire a writer to produce quality content.

Why people hate SEO... (and why SMO is bulls$%t) - The Jason Calacanis Weblog: "There are some whitehat SEO firms out there I know, but frankly the whitehat SEO companies are simply doing solid web design so I don't consider them SEO at all. SEO is a tainted term and it means 'gaming the system' to 90% of us. Now, if you make great content, keep your page design clean, and stick with it you're gonna do just fine in the rankings. Don't smoke the SEO-crack... you'll just wind up chasing your tail as digg and Google close the tiny SEO loopholes and put your domain on the black list."

Gaining Publicity Through Good Deeds

2007-02-15T10:02:00.000-08:00

Celebrities and corporations have known for years that supporting charities makes good business sense. It is good PR for them, helps promote a cause they believe in and makes the world a better place.

If you have a cause that you want to give something back to, Kevin Bacon (the actor) and Network for Good have teamed up to create a website called "6 Degrees". Through them, you can create a badge like the one to right that promotes your favorite causes.

Here a quote from Kevin Bacon:

"You've probably heard of the Six Degrees concept. Any one person (including me, Kevin Bacon) is connected to any other person through six or fewer relationships, because it's a small world.

"www.SixDegrees.org is about using this idea to accomplish something good. It's social networking with a social conscience. Through this web site, you can learn about and support the charities of celebrities and your friends, as well as fundraise for the causes close to your heart.

"I started www.SixDegrees.org in partnership with the nonprofit Network for Good in January 2007, more than 10 years after the game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” made the rounds of college campuses and lived on to be a shorthand term for the small world phenomenon. It is my hope that Six Degrees will soon be something more than a game or a gimmick. It will also be a force for good."

So take this chance to get yourself a little publicity and give something back to your favorite cause.

'Helpful Tips' has a New Home

2007-02-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

Sexy Kenny's Tips for Webspace Owners has a new home and a new name. You can now find it at http://modernwebtips.com. http://sexykenny.com still works for now, but that may change in the future.

This change reflects that this isn't really a personal blog any more. It is being written conjunction with my internet consulting business and so needs to be a bit more formal.

Using Postmaster Services of Major ISPs

2007-02-14T17:39:00.000-08:00

Having your server blacklisted by a major ISP can seriously disrupt service for your business. Many people use free email accounts at AOL, Microsoft Live, Google and Yahoo. If one of them identified you as a spammer and began blocking your email, you would have a tough time doing business with many of your customers.

To reduce the chance of getting blacklisted, it is important to be familiar with their spam feedback services and follow their bulk sending guidelines closely. Though they do not publish their blacklists, many major ISPs provide guidelines for senders of large newsletters to monitor their email. Even if your newsletters are opt-in, you must follow the ISP's bulk sender guidelines to assure delivery of your email.

Each major provider handles these issues a little differently. Fortunately, they all have websites that describe their policies and the tools they have available. To get a list of the tools at some of the major email providers, check out this great article at rackTIPs:

Playing Nice - Using the Postmaster Services of Major ISPs

Don't Let Spammers Hijack your E-mail Addresses

2007-02-09T13:35:00.001-08:00

Did you know that anyone in the world can send e-mail that looks like it came from you? All they have to do is type a few simple commands on a unix computer or download a spam utility from the internet and, viola, they can send e-mail as anyone they want. As a business owner, you need to protect yourself against this. You don't want to be accused of sending spam, or worse, viruses. All of this can be prevented by setting up an SPF (Send Policy Framework) record on the DNS server for your domain. If you are so inclined, you can get the hairy details at the Open SPF website. In a nutshell, SPF tells other mail servers the addresses computers that are allowed to send e-mail from your domain. If someone tries to send e-mail from an address that's not listed, the e-mail should be considered unauthorized. SPF records are highly recommended, especially if you send out a newsletter. In October, 2004, some large e-mail providers, like hotmail started quietly dropping e-mail that violated the SPF record. Even so, most webhosts still don't add them by default. How do you know whether you are vulnerable? You can go to you command prompt (on just about any computer that can access the internet) and type "nslookup -q=TXT your-domain.com". Look for a line that starts with "v=spf...". If it doesn't show one, then your domain name isn't protected. If you need assistance configuring an SPF record, contact Modern Webspace about our website checkup service. We will check over 200 settings that could affect your ability to do business on the internet.

Research Your Domain Name

2007-02-08T16:16:00.000-08:00

Whether you already have a domain name or you are thinking about registering one, Domain Tools can provide you with a lot of great information. When you type in a domain name, it gives you a page with over 25 pieces of information about it. It tells you how many times it's been registered, who owns it, where it's hosted and a brief history of the domain name. The tools is free and easy to use, so give it a try.

Getting Your Newletter to your Subscribers

2007-02-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

If you plan to do e-mail marketing, it is very important that your e-mail server is not on any blacklists. The blacklists are lists of servers used by known spammers. Often, a spammer will use an IP address for a while, then abandon it when it gets blacklisted. If that address gets reused, any e-mail sent from there will be ignored by any e-mail servers that check the blacklists. If you have an opt-in e-mail newsletter (or any business that uses e-mail, for that matter), it is important that you check the blacklists occasionally. Sometimes, legitimate opt-in newsletters will get blacklisted, even when they shouldn't. If your e-mail server does get blacklisted, you need to know it right away so that you can take steps to resolve it. Some blacklists have a way of getting your server removed from their list, but sometimes, you may need to start sending your newletter from a different server (or the same server with a new IP address). Fortunately, there is a website where you can easily check your server against 710 known blacklists. It is called dr. Jørgen Mash's DNS database list checker. The page isn't pretty to look at, but it is a very effective tool. The information that it gives you is pretty straightforward and easy to understand. It's hard enough to get you subscribers to read your newsletter, but you're doomed if it doesn't even get delivered. Be sure that your not being stopped by the blacklists.

Keyword Research Guide

2007-02-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

Here's another great link at Wordtracker. They publish a free ebook about how keyword research is done and how it can be used to increase traffic to your site. It includes expert advice from 9 SEO professionals. This is a great resource for anyone interested in increasing the amount of traffic they get from the search engines.

Topics include:

Convert more traffic using Wordtracker
Understand your customers' real motivations
Combine thousands of phrases for an effective PPC campaign
Use Wordtracker to find the size of the market
Discover the most important sites in your marketplace
Find inspiration in Wordtracker's Top 1,000 Words report
Learn how an ad agency uses keyword research to position a client
Use Wordtracker to identify niche opportunities
Incorporate keywords into your content and copy

Read it

Wordtracker Launches Free Keyword Suggestion Tool

2007-02-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

Wordtracker has launched a free keyword suggestion tool to help website owners and managers optimize their websites so that they appear higher in search engine results. The free keyword suggestion tool and gives webmasters up to 100 keywords a time. It's not a nearly as good as their paid keyword research product, but it's a great place to start.
try it

PHPlist: One of the best newletter managers

2007-02-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

PHPlist is an open-source newsletter manager. It has a huge feature set including double opt-in signup, scheduling, RSS feed generation, click tracking, attachments, bounce management and much more. Best of all, PHPlist is free to download, install and use, and is easy to integrate with any website. If you've been thinking about starting a newsletter for your business or group, take a look at PHPlist. It's a great tool!

Get Rounded Corners on Your Website Without Images

2007-02-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

A lot of Web 2.0 sites have rounded corners on everything. This is can be done with background images, but this leads to bulky webpages and areas on your web page that can be difficult to resize or change the colors.

This website demonstrates how to get rounded corners with only CSS and a downloadable javascript file. Pretty cool stuff! This is a great way to jazz up your website with only a little effort.

2/2/07 Update - I spent a couple of hours working with this code yesterday. It does some cool things, but it's not a magic bullet. It doesn't always knew what color to use as a replacement. And, if you have two rounded corners that are too close together, it does some funky things. I tried to round the corners of a div closely next within another div to create a rounded border effect and this is what I got:

Update #2 - The "fixed-height" parameter helped. The corners are smooth, now but still not the right color.

Create Presentation Slide Shows in XHTML

2007-01-31T20:11:00.000-08:00

A slide show from W3C that describes how to create a business presentation slide show on the web. The presentation can live on a web server and you don't have to download any software to view it.

read more | digg story

Seven Ways to Be Mistaken for a Spammer

2007-01-31T11:31:00.000-08:00

The "This is Spam" button popping up on many service providers' email services can be empowering for a user or potential spam victim. But it can also be the kiss of death for a legitimate business that, with a click of that button, gets falsely (or perhaps legitimately) labeled as a spammer. This article on Dark Readings gives you seven tips to avoiding this fate.

Remember, spammers are as spammers do. If you are not following these guidelines and start ending up in the spam folder, it's because you probably ARE spamming.

read the article

10 Tips for Designing Effective Banner Ads

2006-11-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

Here's an oldie, but goodie. Banner ads work if you design them right. This article by Berry Zegler has 10 great tips:

Banner bashing: It's hip; it's now; it's the rallying cry of pundits, ad-agency clients, and traditional copywriters who have always had their suspicions about the efficacy of Web advertising and now believe they have the facts to back up their bluster.

'Banners don't work!' yelp the bashers. 'They're a waste of money, and they don't generate results! Internet advertising -- bad! Internet dissing -- fun!'

But despite all the we-told-you-so histrionics, one has to question whether the issue isn't banner ads as a flawed configuration but, rather, banner ads with flawed messaging.

Read the article

How to turn your website into your 24/7 sales force

2006-11-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

Your website has the potential to be the most reliable salesperson in your business. It never takes coffee breaks, gets sick or goes home early. It always responds to your customer's inquiries instantly. In fact, using a few simple strategies, you can build a website that has a continuous and predictable positive effect on your business.

Let's say that you sell newspaper subscriptions. You use telemarketing as the primary way to contact your potential customers. Would you ever start a call with "Hi. My name is Joe. I want to sell you a newspaper subscription"?

I guarantee that you would have to make a lot of calls to sell a handful of subscriptions if this were your approach.

Instead, wouldn't it be better to try to get them to agree to listen to you before you try to close the sale? You might have better luck with, "Hi. My name is Joe. I'm calling to tell you how you can save hundreds of dollars every week by subscribing to the newspaper. You like to save money, don't you?" If their answer is yes, they have agreed to listen to what you have to say.

This approach would certainly sell more newspapers.

The copy on your website needs to be set up the same way. The first thing your website should do is get your prospective customer to agree to read the first paragraph of your sales copy. In the first paragraph, they should be convinced to continue reading the next few paragraphs...

...where you talk about the benefits of your product or service. Notice that I said benefits, not features. With few exceptions, most buying decisions are made based on perceived benefits, not a fact-filled feature list.

After they've read about the benefits, you might want to consider adding a few testimonials. If you have a yoga studio, get some of your long time customers to talk about the health benefits they've received from your classes. If you are an auto repair shop, have them talk to you about how you gave them honest service at a fair price.

Whatever your business is, you have customers that are happy that they did business with you. Talk to them. Ask them permission to use a quote and a picture of them on your website. If most of your customers are other businesses, offer to place a link back to their website after the testimonial.

Finally, always remember to ask for the customer to take the next step. If you sell directly from your website, ask for the order. Give them the opportunity to sign up for your newsletter. Ask them to call you to set up an demonstration. Whatever the next step in your sales process is, always ask your prospective customers to take that step.

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Modern Webspace provides services and coaching to local small- and medium-sized businesses that want to energize their Internet marketing efforts. We focus on finding solutions that are both sensible and affordable to your business. Call or e-mail for a FREE, no obligation consultation.

Discover how to start or grow your successful Internet business

2006-11-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I bought an Internet Marketing course. At the time, I was winding down my eBay business, so even though I knew this course was packed full of great ideas, I never really applied them.

Then, about a month ago, I got an e-mail from the company that produced the course inviting me to a free (yes, FREE) seminar. I was skeptical. I thought it would be one of those seminars where they only give you a small taste of the information, then try to sell you the rest.

Well, I was surprised! Yes, they had the sales pitches, but they touched on EVERY BIT of the information that was in the course I bought a few years ago...and then some! These guys are constantly updating their materials to keep up with the state-of-the-art in web marketing.

If you are serious about marketing your website, I HIGHLY recommend that you check these guys out. If you sign-up for their e-mail list, you will probably get an invitation to their next event in your area. When you do, reserve a spot right away. You won't regret it.

Here's a little more information about the course that I bought way back when. It has a little hype in it (ok, a lot of hype), but I assure you, this book is worth every penny.

"Discover how to start or grow your successful Internet business...and earn an extra $75,000...$100,000... $500,000... or MORE!"

Product Review:

"The Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business on The Internet" By Derek Gehl and The Internet Marketing Center

I've just finished working my way through Derek Gehl's newly revised and updated "bible" for profiting on the Internet, "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet - Version 2006," and I'm blown away by the sheer volume of money-making information he's managed to pack in!

I'm talking over 1,300 pages of the *exact* test results, case studies, and strategies that Derek used to grow a $25 investment to over $54,700,000 in online sales!

And after testing out a handful of the strategies, I was blown away by how effective -- and profitable -- each one was!

In "Insider Secrets," you'll discover...

Step-by-step advice for starting your own Internet business in as little as 48 hours!
Where to find FREE tools and resources that you can use to create a web site -- in less than a few hours!
How to rank at the top of the search engines and directories (like Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, ODP, AllTheWeb, AskJeeves).
And much, MUCH more!

But here's the most important thing you should know about "Insider Secrets"...

These strategies will work for ANYONE, no matter WHAT stage you're at with your Internet business -- or even if you haven't started one yet at all!

Derek's system is perfect for YOU if...

You want to start your own profit generating Internet business -- from scratch -- in as little as 48 hours and see profits in your first week.
You want to take your offline business online, and tap into the massive profit generating potential of the global market, then put your business on autopilot.
You want to explode your existing Internet business by 100%... 500%... or MORE, with tested and proven strategies that nobody has ever revealed before.

So I can recommend it to literally everyone!

It comes complete with two 8" x 11" full-color three ring binders containing 8 steps, broken down into 70 lessons with step-by-step instructions included for every promotion and strategy...

... Plus five resource CDs and one audio CD with additional lessons, examples, audio interviews, and articles, as well as timesaving software and invaluable resource files.

I give "Insider Secrets" a perfect 10! It contains the exact step-by-step blueprint you need to follow to get a profitable Internet business online, or turn an existing web business into a profit-making machine!

I suggest you click here to check it our right away!

Google ranking voodoo? Just use common sense!

2006-11-09T14:45:00.000-08:00

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.