• Using .htaccess Effectively

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    The .htaccess file is an ASCII text document that can be placed in any directory on your site. It can be used to control access to files and directories, and customize some server operation in your site. A .htaccess file can be created in any word processor but must be saved as text only. You must use FTP software in ASCII mode to upload or edit your .htaccess file. For the examples provided here, place the .htaccess file in your root directory.

    There are a variety of functions that you can control using .htaccess some of the more useful of these are explained below:

    Custom Error Messages.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file::

    ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

    After “ErrorDocument” specify the error code, followed by a space, and then the path and filename of the .html file you would like to be displayed when the specified error is generated, each specific error code is detailed below with the recommended codes to be used in the .htaccess file in bold :

    200 OK
    206 Partial content
    301 Document moved permanently
    302 Document found elsewhere
    304 Not modified since last retrieval
    400 Bad request
    403 Access forbidden
    404 Document not found
    408 Request timeout
    500 Internal server error
    501 Request type not supported

    Using the codes above your error section of the .htaccess file should look like this:

    ErrorDocument 301 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 400 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 403 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 500 /notfound.html
    ErrorDocument 501 /notfound.html

    Redirect to a Different Folder.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^/oldfolder(.*)$ /newfolder/$1 [R]

    This redirects the user from /oldfolder/anyfile.html to /newfolder/anyfile.html, when the .htaccess file is uploaded to the otherwise empty “/oldfolder” directory.

    Denying User Access.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    <Limit GET>
    order allow,deny
    deny from 000.00.00.
    deny from 000.000.000.000
    allow from all
    </Limit>

    This is an example of a .htaccess file that will block access to your site to anyone who is coming from any IP address beginning with 000.00.00 and from the specific IP address 000.000.000.000 . By specifying only part of an IP address, and ending the partial IP address with a period, all sub-addresses coming from the specified IP address block will be blocked. You must use the IP addresses to block access, use of domain names is not supported

    Redirect a Machine Name.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    RewriteEngine On
    Options +FollowSymlinks
    RewriteBase /
    # Rewrite Rule for machine.domain-name.net
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} machine.domain-name.net $
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !machine/
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ machine/$1

    This will redirect requests for the machine name machine.domain-name.net to the directory machine on the site domain-name.net.

    Different Default Home Page.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    DirectoryIndex filename.html

    Then a request for http://domain-name.net/ would return http://domain-name.net/filename.html if it exists, or would list the directory if it did not exist.

    To automatically run a cgi script, add the following to the .htaccess file:

    DirectoryIndex /cgi-local/index.pl

    This would cause the CGI script /cgi-bin/index.pl to be executed.

    If you place your .htaccess file containing the DirectoryIndex specification in the root directory of your site, it will apply for all sub-directories at your site.

    Preventing Hot Linking.

    Add the following to the .htaccess file:

    # Rewrite Rule for images
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} <URL of page accessing your domain>
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://<same as above URL>

    You would replace the <URL of page accessing your domain> above with the domain name and path of the page that is referring to your domain. For example: www.theirdomain.com/users/mypage/

    The RewriteCond directive states that if the {HTTP_REFERER} matches the URL that follows, then use the RewriteRule directive. The RewriteRule directive will redirect any reference back to the referring web page.

    Using the above you should, safely be able to publish your sites on the internet knowing that you will not be privy to bandwidth thieves via hotlinking and also, that you will not lose any traffic through pages that are ‘not found’.

    Article Written By Lee

  • Online Adult Laws – Privacy Policies

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: General | Response: 0

    To many webmasters and companies working online the fundamental basics of their business is to turn a profit through effective online marketing campaigns and promotions however, within all of this profit making there is a side of business that is so often overlooked or, forgotten entirely, what is this business practice? The law.

    In this brief article we will take a look at one such law that comes into effect in California on the 1st July 2004 namely, that all ‘web sites that collect any personal information from consumers to post a privacy policy’. Whilst this in itself is the first law of its kind in the United States it is worth mentioning that this is only a State law that affects California however, that said, where one state starts, others are sure to follow especially considering the huge potential left for the growth of the internet.

    Privacy Policies – How Does This Effect You?

    The main factor that you must take into consideration with this new law from California is that, because the Internet is truly global, you have no way of telling where one of your surfers are coming from thus, a surfer entering your site from California, may be making you break the law by not displaying a privacy policy should you collect their information. Incidentally, this new privacy policy law does not state what ‘collected’ information requires you to post a policy however, it would seem that personal information such as addresses, phone numbers and email addresses would be the primary target of this new Californian online law.

    Privacy Policies – The Basics.

    So what is a privacy policy, in essence, it is a document informing your site visitors / customers that any information you collect from them, including user submitted information will be used in a specific way, this might be a case of solely being used by yourself or, specifically if you rent out this information you need to tell your surfers / customers exactly who you are renting this information to.

    Privacy Policies – Overview.

    Whether you collect personal information from you site visitors or not the one thing that makes sense is to have a page created ready for the 1st July 2004 so that you can have it online for when you need it, perhaps storing this page on a central domain and linking to that page from all of your other web sites would be the best method to go as far as ensuring you are covered from prosecution or, perhaps creating a keyword rich privacy policy which you can get listed in the search engines is the way to go after all, just because this will become a legal requirement for you it does not mean that you cant profit from the potential traffic going to that page.

    Article written by Lee

  • Moving To A New Hosting Company

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Hosting | Response: 0

    Moving to a new hosting provider does not have to be a frustrating task if done properly.

    Adult webmasters usually have to upgrade their hosting services once their respective Web sites become popular, usually because their current host cannot provide an effective level of scalability or technical support or, perhaps even the cost of bandwidth becomes to high.

    In order to transfer service efficiently, in the event that it becomes necessary, webmasters should ensure that all their content, including Web pages, databases and scripts, are properly archived.

    You should always back up your data at regular intervals in case of unexpected data loss or hardware failure. Ensure that all data is archived recursively. This will ensure that all your data is archived and compressed in its original directories, which is very important if you want to retain the full working integrity of your Web sites.
    You may also find that your new hosting company may be able to transfer the files directly from your old server to the new one you are getting with them, ask before hand if this is something that they can do for you as it is generally a lot quicker for them to do it than for you to upload the files yourself for instance, Web Air will do this work for you.

    Once you have recursively archived your site, make arrangements to purchase your new hosting services. Make sure that any new solution you select includes basic services that approximate and excel the service that you where obtaining with your previous hosting provider. It makes no sense to replace your present hosting service with another Web hosting solution that equally cannot fulfill your technical or financial requirements.

    The best resource to use to find a better hosting firm specific to the adult hosting industry is Adult Hosting Companies, the largest adult Web hosting resource directory with currently over 250 hosts listed.

    Once your new solution is activated, upload your archived Web pages, database and scripts to the new host. You will be allocated an IP number from the new hosting company. Take time to debug and test the new site from the individual IP number, not forgetting things like your cgi scripts may need altering.

    Once your site is entirely debugged and you verify that all site functionality is operative, then transfer your domain name service (DNS) servers over from your old server to your new server.

    During this DNS transition period, which is referred to as the “propagation period,” your Web site will be resolved by both your new and old host, as the new DNS information about your Web site filters through the Internet globally. It typically takes about 10 days for the transfer to fully propagate around the Internet; so keep your old site running in case you get visitors whose ISP’s have cached your site on the old server.

    It is important however that you retain both your old and new hosting services during your propagation period of 10 days. You will need to check your e-mail from both hosting providers since different regions of the Internet will remit e-mail to your original host while other regions will remit mail to the new server during this time.

    Once a week or two have elapsed, cancel the account with the previous hosting company. Only cancel your old account when e-mail stops arriving from your old hosting provider.

    If you follow these steps carefully, then your host change should be easy and stress free.

    Article written by Lee

  • JavaScript – Redirecting Foreign Surfers

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Scripts, WebDesign | Response: 0

    At some point or another we are no doubt going to have the need to redirect some or all of our surfers based on the language they speak, this snippet of JavaScript when placed on your page will enable you to do just that without the need for .php or other more complex scripting.

    Here is the coding that you need to place between your <head> and </head> tags:

    <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=”JavaScript1.2″>
    <!– Begin
    if (navigator.appName == ‘Netscape’)
    var language = navigator.language;
    else
    var language = navigator.browserLanguage;

    if (language.indexOf(‘en’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘nl’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘dutch.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘fr’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘french.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘de’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘german.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘ja’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘japanese.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘it’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘italian.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘pt’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘portuguese.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘es’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘Spanish.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘sv’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘swedish.shtml';
    else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';
    else
    document.location.href = ‘english.shtml';
    // End –>
    </script>

    To add additional language redirects to this JavaScript all you need to do is duplicate the:

    else if (language.indexOf(‘zh’) > -1) document.location.href = ‘chinese.shtml';

    Section of the coding changing the (‘zh’) language code to that of the language you wish to redirect.

    Article written by Lee

  • Doorway Pages

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Traffic, WebDesign | Response: 0

    A doorway page is built to rank high for a particular keyword or search phrase. When your doorway page is visited by the searcher it simply has a “click me” button which links to your web site. The major search engines accept these pages as long as the end result does provide what the searcher is looking for. If you are discovered to be using doorway pages for irrelevant keywords you can expect to have your entire domain unlisted. For instance, one of our doorway pages is built to rank high for the search term -Adult Content—which is quite acceptable because when the searcher gets here he can find links to adult content providers from our site. If however, he couldn’t find links to adult content then we would risk the wrath of the all powerful search engines.

    Once you have selected your keywords and phrases (about 50 would be the normal) you need to build a doorway page for each keyword and ideally, for each major search engine. All the major engines look for different keyword density in the text, title and description so you need to do some research by doing a search using your chosen phrase or keyword and studying the top 10 results at each engine (if you can spot them, study high ranking doorway pages).

    Make notes of how many times the phrase or keyword is used in the title, description and body text. Is it used in header text etc? Once you have built a picture of what your doorway page should look like you can build it using your favorite html editor. Once you have done one for a particular engine the other 50 or so pages can be done by simply replacing keywords for keywords. After you have done a page for each keyword move on to the next search engine. Remember that your body text is not important but make each page unique or it may be considered spamming. It is your keyword or phrase density that you are attempting to get right. The page, when visited by a person, will be recognized for what it is, simply a link to the real content so don’t worry too much about what it looks like. When a search engine spider visits the page it is only interested in counting the keyword density in your body text.

    As you have probably worked out there is quite a lot of work involved. 50 phrases or keywords=50 pages X the top 8 search engines= 400 pages. In reality though, you are only creating 8 doorways, 1 page for each search engine. For all the other pages you simply have to substitute the keyword for the next and alter the text around so as not to finish with 50 identical pages. OK, nearly finished but the next step is crucial if your doorways are to work.

    Put all your pages in a folder on your server e.g. Mydomain/doorways/. Then create 2 more pages that have a link and a small description to each of your doorways (200 on each) and to each other. These are called corridor pages because the spider travels down them, visiting each page linked off them. Call these 2 pages index and home and place them in the folder with your doorway pages. Then place links to these two pages from your main index page so that a spider will be able to find them and list all your doorways. Submit only your index page and your 2 corridor pages. Do not submit your doorways to the engines.

    Ideally, and if you can afford it, you should set up a new domain and host for your doorways. This isn’t essential but it does have benefits. These are: If you do get over zealous with your doorways and an engine does ban you for spamdexing at least your real site will be safe. Engines rank sites higher if they have lots of links to them from other domains. You can put your most important keywords in your new domain name, which will increase the ranking of the doorway pages containing those keywords.

    Now all you have to do is wait for the engines to update their databases. We have had the best results with Google.

    Article written by Lee

  • How To Become A Gay Porn Star

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Employment, General | Response: 0

    A quick look across the gay side of the adult industry will show it is lacking in one thing that its straight counterpart has in an abundance, amateur male models with their own adult porn sites. With that said, if you wanted to tap into this market how could you go about doing so and, more importantly, could you make money from working on the other side of the camera for a change? This is what we will look at in this article.

    Becoming A Porn Star – The Basics.

    Any web cam model will tell you, to have your own porn site will take a lot of persistence, time and, more importantly, personality, not least from the webmaster side of the industry however, in my opinion I think the pressure that a webmaster may face breaking into the gay male porn side of the adult industry might just be a bit harsher than what the bubbly web cam girls have to contend with, not only because as a male you will be appearing in content but, because your primary traffic base, whether you like it or not, will be a mixture of women and gay males.

    Male Amateur Sites – Getting Ready.

    Before you start to even put your first ideas down on paper you need to do one thing, spend some time to research what is needed in order to start your own amateur porn site. In doing so, you will see that not only is everything in the two paragraphs above true but, you will also learn a little about yourself and, more importantly, about other webmasters and your surfers. Now you have the fundamental questions you need to ask yourself these are, What equipment do you need to run a male amateur site? What amount of investment in both time and money do you need to put into building your site? How much will you charge your surfers for access to your site? and, Is this going to be a long term commitment from yourself that could be possibly better spent elsewhere? Answer those questions as honestly as you can before proceeding and furthermore, think long and hard about the answers.

    Gay Amateur Web Sites – The Alternatives.

    So lets stop for a moment and consider that you have realized you do not want to build and maintain your own male amateur site but, you would still like to be male porn material, where do you go from here? Well there are companies who can put you on their books and give you work from time to time such as http://www.redbagproductions.com a male modeling agency for the adult industry, this will in all likelihood be the place for you to start your search, find out how many places there are that can get you talent work and, what type of modeling work you will be required to do.

    Becoming A Gay Porn Star – An Overview.

    With sites online such as Every Stag and the slew of other male modeling agencies finding a medium to start your modeling career wont be hard but, with this career comes uncertain hours, hard work (in more ways than one) and, to some extent, fame amongst the gay adult porn surfer. If this is something that you feel you can devote the time and energy towards and, are able to cope with the voyeuristic side of your personality then go for it, if however, you are still unsure after reading this brief article, perhaps becoming a gay pornstar isn’t for you?

    Article written by Lee

  • The Adult Internet – More Than Just Porn

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

    So you have several adult websites up and running and, if you are one of the lucky few in this day and age you have already started to make money from your adult sponsor programs however, there are so many other ways that webmasters can make money in the adult industry in addition to their regular ‘porn site’ sponsors yet, many webmasters do not realize there are vast opportunities awaiting them.

    Lets spend a few moments to look at the alternative sources of income that we can use in the adult industry and also take a look at the basics of each type of affiliate system.

    Email Collection.

    Opt in email is big business, there is no denying this fact so why not jump on the opt in email collecting bandwagon? Most email collection sponsors will offer you anywhere from $0.50 per email collected to $2.00 per email collected and, better still, to start making money from your existing traffic base all you need to do is include a small email collection box.

    Software Programs.

    Many of the larger adult affiliate programs now offer their webmasters a range of software products to generate additional income, many of these products are good for use not only in adult but, also in mainstream. For instance, Anonymous browsing software, history deletion software, IE Toolbars and even submission programs are all good ways to generate additional income either on a per download or, per sale basis. Best of all, you only need to add a new banner to the sites you currently have in order to get a share of this lucrative market.

    Herbal Products.

    Penis Pills, Breast Enlargement, Vitamin Supplements, you name it you can sell it on adult traffic. Whether you run a TGP, Link List or your own collection of free sites, these herbal products can often sell much better than ‘porn sites’ and, for the most part, the payout levels are the same, if not higher than what your regular ‘porn site’ trial will make you. Again to get started with this type of sales all you need to do is add a text link or banner to your existing sites.

    Casino Sites.

    Gambling makes BIG money, just look at Vegas for the example, millions of people a year visit Nevada to gamble and millions more simply can’t get there for a range of reasons however, almost every home in the United States has a computer and internet connection so why not start using this to your advantage? Many of the larger casino affiliate programs will pay based on the amount of funds credited to a new users account and, to get started making money from casino sites it is quite literally as easy as adding a banner or text link to your existing sites again.

    Pre Paid Services.

    Such as Credit Cards and the likes, selling these types of products to your adult surfers not only offers then ‘anonymity’ on the web when they do make online purchases but at the same time when your surfers sign up or one of these pre-paid credit cards you will be making some money in the process. Often however you will find that these types of affiliate program do not payout as much ‘long term’ as they are pretty much a first time deal as far as, once the surfer spends money to initially ‘charge’ their pre paid card with funds, that is when you will make money and not again. Still, even if you can make $50 by selling one of these cards, its still an additional $50 you wouldn’t have made otherwise.

    Adding To Your Profits.

    As you can see from the above, there are a wide range of products and services you can offer your surfers and, as we all know, the more things we can offer our ‘customers’ the more chance we have at one of them buying something. Of course, as with anything, the more effort we put into marketing these products and services the more chance e have at making a sale however, unless we try to sell the surfer something other than porn, how will we know whether they will buy or not?

    Article written by Lee

  • Everybody’s Going Gay

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: General | Response: 0

    The past few months in the online adult industry have seen some rather dramatic changes happen from Visa charging additional fees to accept their credit cards online, Paypal no longer processing adult and, several large companies going out of business. However, one thing that also seems to be changing for the better is the amount of webmasters looking at new niches to promote. Surprisingly, the one niche that many webmasters are looking at is that of the gay niche.

    Where The Money’s At.

    For years, the adult webmaster community has been split amongst themselves, those that are only focused on straight niches and, those that focus on gay niches however. As of late, more and more of those webmasters from the first group are looking to make additional income from the gay niche. With this inevitable surge in gay adult sites coming online, there are bound to be some knock-on effects, and those webmasters just starting to look at the gay niche, will return to what they know. However, for most, i think this is going to be a fruitful encounter with one of the industry less socially accepted markets. Many of the webmasters who have been concentrating solely on the straight market for their income are going to realize just how much money they have been losing out on for all these years. And with this realization, comes its own set of problems for the industry as a whole.

    The Gay Market.

    Whether you are a straight webmaster or a gay webmaster the one thing that will become apparent is that your sites are going to reflect you in both, how they look and, the marketing techniques you use. More importantly, the attitude you have towards your gay surfers will in fact show through. Many of the straight webmasters whom, perhaps are not as tolerant towards this niche will, almost certainly fail before they can really get going. Marketing gay adult sites is far different than marketing straight adult sites. You have to know the surfer, understand what they want and, more importantly, know the terminology in the gay market. Many times a post can be seen on various message boards belittling those webmasters who are openly gay – often accompanied by terms such as ‘fag’, ‘queer’, ‘homo’, etc along with with images being posted that, quite frankly, would turn most people’s stomach.

    The gay niche is much more than just a single online market, it is a whole lifestyle unto itself. While this lifestyle is affluent (having an abundance of readily available money to spend) it will take a lot of work and perseverance to ensure you get your share of this market.

    Starting Points.

    As I mentioned above, the main thing many webmasters are going to have to learn are the terms of the gay market, what is a twink? A bear? A cub? What products work well on gay sites? Despite what most people think, you cant just throw up some banners with naked men on them and turn a profit. Match your content to a niche and then, match your advertising to your content, what use is it having bears on a site if, the paysite you are promoting features Teens ‘n’ Twinks?

    Similarly, your text links, ‘Click Here For Hot Gay Action’ might get you a few clicks but, by targeting your surfers even more, you will see how some of the gay niches can really turn a profit. The trick is this, get the surfer to your site and actually give them something that you think will suit their desires. This may mean making a 10% commission on a sex toy sale as oppose to a $35 commission on a pay site membership. And so be it. Those 10%’ers start to add up after a few sales.

    In Summary.

    To summarize, the gay niche will make you money however, to make money you will need to invest something that, perhaps isn’t for everyone – a lot of time and understanding. Marketing the gay niche isn’t for everyone, we have seen this too many times. However for those who are, spending time adding a gay market portfolio to there straight, with a little time increase your overall income significantly.

    Article written by Le

  • Quick Loading Pages Plus Saving Bandwidth

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    Have you noticed how many of the sites out there are trying to make themselves look better than they actually are by using heavy graphics and media files? The fact of the matter is this, most surfers who visit your we pages are viewing them on a screen that is between 15 and 19 inches wide, can only see 216 colors and, are on a connection of 33.6 kb per second (If they are lucky).

    What Does All This Mean?

    What does this mean to you as a webmaster? Simple, try this test.

    Connect to the internet on a 33.6 connection, type in your url and, hold your breath. Does the page load before you need to start gasping for air? If so then you are designing your sites correctly, if not, your pages are far to big in file size.

    I’m pretty sure that some of you can hold your breath for a long period of time so, here is a basic rule of web design. Your pages should, be no larger in file size than 50k in fact, I would even go so far as to say try getting your pages under 30k in size.

    How Can I Get It Under 50K? 30K?

    First, all your graphic images should be as small as possible. Try to get them smaller than 4k. Going up to 6k is reasonable. When designing a graphic for the web site keep in mind the number of colors being used.

    I know, from designing banners myself, it was hard for me to go from millions of color to only 216. Yes, 216 is the number of colors you have on a web safe color pallet.

    Use solid colors when designing your image. PhotoShop has made the gradient such a popular tool. It looks good to fade things in and out. I always see a background border made up of this gradient. I always right click on that image to see the size. The 8k-12k is not worth the space. The problem with the gradient is it uses many colors and dithering. Both take up big time K. The more color you have in an image the bigger it’s going to be.

    Use design more, graphics less. For a web page to be successful it needs to download quickly and look good.

    Here is the dilemma download quick or look good? Instead of designing graphics and taking pictures and turning them into jpgs to make your web page look good, try using color schemes. Use cell colors to make borders. Use the negative space on your web site. What is not there is just as important as what is there.

    Remember sometimes less is more. When in doubt think of a typical visitor coming to your web page. Would that extra graphic sell them or keep them coming back again and again. If the answer is yes, by all means keep it. If the answer is “well maybe” or “it just looks good there”, yank it.

    Your surfers will appreciate not waiting more then they have to. The web is here to make our life easier not to sit in front of a screen waiting for heavy web pages to download.

    Article written by Lee

  • Straight From The Horses Mouth – Get Googlized

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    Many webmasters wonder how to ensure their sites will be included in Google’s index of web sites. Although Google crawls more than a billion pages, it’s inevitable some sites will be missed. When Google does miss a site, it’s frequently for one of these reasons:

    * The site is not well connected through multiple links to others on the web.
    * The site launched after Google’s last crawl was completed.
    * The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl its content (excessive frames, tables, etc).

    Google’s intent is to represent the content of the Internet fairly and accurately. To help make that goal a reality, we offer this guide to building a “crawler-friendly” site. There are no guarantees a site will be found by our crawler, but following these guidelines should increase the probability that your site will show up in Google search results.

    Do…
    Provide high-quality content on your page – especially your home page.
    If you follow only one tip from this page, this should be it. Our crawler indexes web pages by analyzing the content of the pages themselves. Google will index your site better if your pages contain useful information. Plus, your site has a better chance of becoming a favorite among web surfers and being linked to by others if the information it contains is relevant and useful.

    Submit your site to the appropriate category in a web directory.
    Listing your site in the Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org/ or Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/ increases the likelihood it will be seen by robot crawlers and web surfers.

    Pay attention to HTML conventions.

    Make sure that your <TITLE> and <ALT> tags are accurate and descriptive. Also, check your <A HREF> tags for errors since broken or improperly formatted links can prevent Google from indexing your page.

    Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server.
    This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block our crawler. Visit: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html for a FAQ answering questions regarding robots and how to control them once they visit your site.

    Ensure that your site is accessible through HTML hyperlinks.
    Generally, your site is crawlable if the pages are connected to each other with ordinary HTML links. If certain areas are not linked, you may be excluding older browsers, differently-abled users, and Google. Google can crawl content from a database or other dynamically generated content as long as it can be found by following links. If you have many unlinked pages, you may want to create a jump page from which the crawler can find all of your pages.

    Build your site with a logical link structure.
    A hierarchical link structure is not only beneficial to you, but also to Google. More of your site can be crawled if it is laid out in with a clear architecture.

    Don’t…
    Fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to “cloak” pages, or put up “crawler only” pages.
    If your site contains pages, links or text that you do not intend visitors to see, Google considers them deceptive and may ignore your site.

    Feel obligated to purchase a search optimization service.
    Some companies “guarantee” your site a place near the top of a results page. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site’s flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics to try and fool search engines. Be careful – if your domain is affiliated with one of these services, it could be permanently banned from our index, we have found search engine optimization software like Web Position Gold works best but, again use it in moderation.

    Use images to display important names, content or links.
    Our crawler does not recognize text contained in graphics.
    Use ALT tags if the main content and key words on your page cannot be formatted in regular HTML.

    Provide multiple copies of a page under different URLs
    Many sites offer text-only or printer-friendly versions of pages that contain the same content as the graphic-enriched version of the page. While Google crawls these pages, duplicates are removed from our index. In order to ensure that we have the desired version of your page, place the other versions in separate directories and use the robots.txt file to block our crawler.

    Article written by a Google employee

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