All right. Beautiful website: check. Nice clips linked on it: check. Prominent, impressive resume: check. Contact info: check. Now how is anybody going to find this?

Google seems to be a strange and mythical beast from time to time, especially if you have a rather common name (unlike, say, Zulkey.) However, there are some ways to get it to work for you and your own site and clips.

The first question is: have you registered your site with Google? They have to know it exists in order to list it. Don't feel stupid if you haven't. It seems to me that the Internet should magically know everything but I guess that's not always the case. Get your site set up with Google registration here.

Now, how Google ranks pages is better explained by Google than by moi. But I did find some tips from the horse's mouth on how you can make your site rise to the top when you are searched. First and foremost, Google's own advice is helpful to you and your readers. Keep it clean and relevant. I know from experience that if you post anything related to Paris Hilton on your site, the majority of your hits are going to come from people looking for Paris Hiton, not your fabulous travel piece about the British Virgin Islands.

Some things you need NOT do: advertise. Weird link exchanges. These may clutter up your site or open you up to spam and won't help your ranking.

It was difficult to find advice on how to improve your Google standing and separate the good from the schemey but fortunately I found it all in one place, thanks to Gina Trapani at LifeHacker: "I wrote an article about this on my personal site awhile back, which is a bit dated but still totally applies (and I'm a little embarrassed to so totally self-promote but I know it isn't bull)." Hey, "not bull" is very high on my protocol list. So check out Gina's tips. In a nutshell, name each of your pages, make sure each page has its own discrete address and put your page's name (which should be named after YOU if YOU'RE the one who's being googled, not "Cali Writer Gal" or something like that) high up there, right up top in your HTML code.