What is Robots. txt and How it works?

Robots.txt file is a very important file if you want to have a good ranking on search engines, many websites don't offer this file. ARobots.txt file is helpful to keep out unwanted search engine spiders like email retrievers, image strippers, etc. It defines which paths are off limits for spiders to visit. This is useful if you want to hide some personal information or some secret files.

What is Robots.txt

Robots.txt file is a special text file that is always located in your Web server's root directory. Robots.txt file contains restrictions for Web Spiders, telling them where they have permission to search. A Robots.txt is like defining rules for search engine spiders (robots) what to follow and what not to. It should be noted that Web Robots are not required to respect Robots.txtfiles, but most well written Web Spiders follow the rules you define.

How to Create Robots.txt

The format for the robots.txt file is special. It consists of records. Each record consists of two fields : a User-agent line and one or more Disallow: lines. The format is:
<Field> ":" <value>

The robots.txt file should be created in Unix line ender mode! Most good text editors will have a Unix mode or your FTP client *should* do the conversion for you. Do not attempt to use an HTML editor that does not specifically have a text mode to create a robots.txt file.

User-agent

The User-agent line specifies the robot. For example:
User-agent: googlebot

You may also use the wildcard character "*" to specify all robots:
User-agent: *

You can find user agent names in your own logs by checking for requests to robots.txt. Most major search engines have short names for their spiders.

Disallow

The second part of a record consists of Disallow: directive lines. These lines specify files and/or directories. For example, the following line instructs spiders that it can not download contactinfo.htm:
Disallow: contactinfo.htm
You may also specify directories:
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Which would block spiders from your cgi-bin directory.

There is a wildcard nature to the Disallow directive. The standard dictates that /bob would disallow /bob.html and /bob/indes.html (both the file bob and files in the bob directory will not be indexed).

If you leave the Disallow line blank, it indicates that ALL files may be retrieved. At least one disallow line must be present for each User-agent directive to be correct. A completely empty Robots.txt file is the same as if it were not present.

White Space & Comments

Any line in the robots.txt that begins with # is considered to be a comment only. The standard allows for comments at the end of directive lines, but this is really bad style:
Disallow: bob #comment

Some spider will not interpret the above line correctly and instead will attempt to disallow "bob#comment". The moral is to place comments on lines by themselves.
White space at the beginning of a line is allowed, but not recommended.
Disallow: bob #comment

Examples

The following allows all robots to visit all files because the wildcard "*" specifies all robots.
User-agent: *
Disallow:

This one keeps all robots out.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

The next one bars all robots from the cgi-bin and images directories:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/

This one bans Roverdog from all files on the server:
User-agent: Roverdog
Disallow: /

This one bans keeps googlebot from getting at the personal.htm file:
User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: personal.htm

For More Information , Please visit Us : http://www.seomaterial.com/seo_articles/importance_of_robots_txt.html

Wordpress CMS - The Features & Benefits of Using a Customizable Platform

In this highly competitive world everyone wants to design their website which will look different from others and will be cost efficient and easy to use. It should also be quick to download with simple instruction on how to use. If you are looking for such a platform then Wordpress is the right place to look for.  It is web development free open source software of content management system. It was developed by Matt Mullenweg on May 27, 2003. This is used for creating blog and website using plug-in architecture and template system available in its core package. It is one of the best CMS software with over 60 million users using this for customizing their website in their own way.

The WordPress allows the user to some basic features:-

1. Themes installation - The themes allow the user to install themes from its directory and bring in fresh look to your sites. Themes that are available are- Coraline, Suffusion etc.
2. Plug-in installation - It is an important feature of WordPress, through plug-in architecture a user can change the functionality of the basic structure provided in this open source software in a more sophisticated form and also allows WordPress customizing. Some of the plug-in that are available are-Tumblr Importer, WP Super Cache etc.
3. Widgets - Widgets are usually used for adding functions to the site such as slideshow and it can also be used as small blocks on screen such as clocks, event countdowns, daily weather etc.
4. Comments – your visitors like to connect with you and leave their comments on the blogs and other services the liked or did not like. The owner of the site has the control in his hand to enable or disable the comment posts.
5.  Full User Registration - WordPress has a built-in user registration system allowing people to register themselves with the particular site also write posts and comments. The site owner can block this comment page for non registered users.
6. Multiple Authors – WordPress has an advanced user system allowing multiple users to edit and publish content.
7. Easy Installation and Upgrades- Installing WordPress is extremely easy and hardly takes any time. Now even upgrading it to the next version is also equally easy. 

WordPress has an effective e-store feature too which are as below:-

1.          Automatic instant digital product delivery.
2.          Encrypted Product download link.
3.          Variation control for digital product.
4.          Automatic Link Expiration.
5.          Ability to offer multiple file downloads per product.
6.          Customers can use Multiple Payment Gateways. can pay via PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net or a manual process.
7.          MySQL Database driven.
8.          The WordPress e-Store Admin can see the Customer Database (When a Customer purchases an Item his/her details are stored in the database).

Another benefit for opting Wordpress is its online community and forums which can solve your queries and issues. Wordpress is not complicated like other CMS.  Wordpress today is used by business houses, entrepreneurs, internet marketers, direct sales professionals and others. It also helps in creating an ecommerce site with shopping cart and payment gateways.

Today WordPress Open Source CMS is one of the fastest and user friendly development tools which can be easily installed and for being an open source CMS it is easily available to anyone.  WordPress blog and websites can be used as a commercial platform for internet marketing and can also be very valuable for the development of your company.

The installation of this software is free and takes just few minutes to install. As new versions of WordPress are being upgraded therefore the software has been designed keeping scope for future up gradation.  The latest Wordpress version is 3.3.1 released on January 3, 2012.

10 Link Building Tools for Tracking Inbound Links

Quality inbound links are an essential element of web site marketing and search engine optimization programs to increase traffic and online sales. The greater the number of relevant and authoritative links to a web page, the greater the potential for higher search engine rankings and qualified traffic.

A recent survey from SEOmoz illustrates just how important inbound links are to rankings. An impressive 4 of the top 5 ranking factors involve inbound links:

• Keyword focused anchor text from external links: 73% very high importance
• External link popularity: 71% very high importance
• Diversity of link sources: 67% very high importance
• Trustworthiness of the domain based on link distance from trusted domains: 66% very high importance

Conversely, the No. 2 negative ranking factor was link acquisition from known link brokers or sellers (56% high importance).  Incidentally, TopRank has never engaged in link acquisitions in this manner, focusing instead on earning links through creative content promotions, social media and online public relations.

Tracking links to your web pages — and those of your competitors — is a major part of any SEO strategy. Fortunately, a host of free and paid tools exist to provide a comprehensive looks at where your web pages stand.

Since link building is so important, Lee and I have collected these 10 tools for tracking inbound links for you to test:

1. Majestic-SEO

Majestic-SEO allows users to track link information for any domain – their own sites or those of competitors. Illustrated in the image below, users can access the number of:

• Sub domains
• Pages
• Links
• Referring domains
• Images
• NoFollow links
• Redirects

By verifying ownership of a domain, users can obtain a more detailed report that includes unique links and their anchor text. With registration, the service for your own site is free. Users can buy credits to obtain that same information about other web sites such as competitors. Downloadable data is given on top anchor text, top referring domains and top pages. Plus, the tool offers a “daily update” feature that provides a daily journal of new inbound links.

Majestic SEO

2. BuzzStream Link Building

BuzzStream Link Building focuses on providing tools that help automate redundant tasks in relationship building. It’s a CRM system for link building with applications for SEO as well as online PR.

• Find Contact Info
• Track Email & Twitter
• Manage Link Prospects
• Monitor Backlinks for anchor text, nofollows, outbound links, banned words
• Track activities and conversion rate
• Delegate contacts, split prospecting from outreach

BuzzStream Link Building tools are very robust for link detection, suggestions, relationship management and link management. The BuzzMarker bookmarklet allows easy addition of new link opportunities via the browser. Many other tools focus on link detection, acquisition and the technical site of management. The CRM aspect of BuzzStream and the conversion tracking reports make it unique.

There is a free trial for BuzzStream and monthly costs range from $29/mo to $249/mo. There are also options for Agencies and Enterprise use.

BuzzStream Link Building

3. SEOmoz Linkscape

This inbound link tracking tool offers both a free basic version and an advanced version with a subscription to SEOmoz PRO.

The basic search (illustrated in the image below) allows users to determine the number of inbound links to a page and the number of different domains linking to a page. The tool also gives a ranking of the page based on number and quality of inbound links, as well as a ranking of the domain overall.

In the full version, users can not only judge the quality and quantity of links to their own web pages, but to their competitors as well. Users can compare number of links, number of domains and domain ranking side-by-side against competitor sites.

Users can also determine the keywords competitor sites are targeting in their anchor text and identify competitors’ most powerful links.

SEOMoz Linkscape

4. Raven SEO Tools
Raven is a suite of SEO tools including a Links Manager that allows you to easily manage the link status, contacts and tasks related to each link.

Raven will automatically alert if any changes have occurred on an active link, if the nofollow attribute was added, the anchor text changed, the PageRank changed, or the link was removed. There is team link building management functionality as well as the ability to import, export in CSV format or generate reports online.

A standalone linking too is not available for purchase. The cost for the suite of Raven SEO Tools starts at $79 per month.

Raven SEO Link Builder

5. SoloSEO Link Building Tools
SoloSEO is a collection of SEO campaign management and implementation tools which includes “Links Manager” and “Link Build It!” modules for building and tracking inbound links to your web site.

The Links Manager module helps discover links, assess the strength and quality and track progress. It also includes ongoing link detection and automatic notification if a link is deleted. Link Build It! is a bookmarklet that shows backlink count, PageRank, and Alexa rank for the site, DMOZ listing, .edu or.gov links and the ability to easily add the URL of the page being viewed to the Links Manager.

There is a free trial and the cost for SoloSEO is $29 per month for 5 domains and $4 per domain after.

SoloSEO Links Manager

6. Yahoo! Site Explorer
Yahoo! Site Explorer is a popular, free tool for analyzing and tracking inbound links for users’ own and their competitors’ sites. Users can:

• Determine the number pages within a domain indexed by SLURP, Yahoo’s search engine crawler
• Explore each page to determine inbound links for each
• Exclude inbound links from the domain
• Exclude inbound links from the subdomain
• Export results into a TSV file

Yahoo! Site Explorer

7. Page Inlink Analyzer
Page Inlink Analyzer is a tool created by Eric Miraglia that leverages the Yahoo Site Explorer tool mentioned above in a more useful interface that combines a left side column listing of indexed pages for the site being researched and the inbound links to the focus URL in the right column. This allows the user to quickly research the inbound links to each page of a particular site.

For each inbound link the page level and domain level inlink counts are reported as well as the number of Delicious bookmarks (with a link to view them) for each link and the associated keyword tags.

The Page Inlink Analyzer tool is free.

Page Inlink Analyzer

8. pluginSEO Beta Linking Tools
pluginSEO is a service in Beta that works to simplify SEO and linking tasks by having users input keywords and competitor URLs to generate advice including link building suggestions.

Link features include:

• The Reactor:Links page makes suggestions
• My Links shows inbound links to your own site
• Competitor links documents inbound links to the competing sites entered
• Link suggestions provides a visual listing of new linking opportunities displayed below

pluginSEO is in Beta and is now offering free trials.

pluginSEO

9. Sheer SEO Backlinks Watchdog
Sheer SEO is a set of SEO project management tools, one of which, monitors “guarded” inbound links. The Backlinks Watchdog tool monitors the following link characteristics:

• Anchor text
• Page rank
• Number of outbound links in the referring page
• Availability of the page
• Presence of meta tags “nofollow” and “noindex”
• Existance of the link to your site
• Presense of “nofollow” attribute on the backlink (rel=”nofollow” causes the link not to pass rank)

There is a 90 day free trial for Sheer SEO with paid options ranging from $7 to $40 per month.

Backlink Watchdog

10. HubSpot Website Grader
This free SEO tool provides an overall SEO score for websites based on inbound links, website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other factors. Users submit their website URL, along with competing site URLs, and are then emailed a detailed report that includes:

• Google PageRank and number of Google indexed pages
• Number of inbound links, with the option to analyze links through HubSpot
• Competitive analysis with website grade, Google PageRank, number of inbound links and number of del.icio.us bookmarks

A sample report is shown below.

There are many other link building and tracking tools ranging from the SEOBook toolbarand Backlink Harvester to SEO Spyglass Link Assistant. These 10 should be a good start.

What web based or desktop software tools have you found to be useful for tracking inbound links?

 For More Information , Please Visit Us : http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/11/1-seo-tools-for-tracking-inbound-links/

Importance of Portfolio for Any Organization

Web Design Portfolio

A website is the identification of your work which brings in business to your company. For example if you provide any type of services then it flashes on the first page of your website. This allows the other organizations to choose the services they need. A well designed and properly laid portfolio display your work to the audience who want to know more about your company. Your beautifully laid web design portfolio can replace the words by showcase of your work.

Whenever an organizer comes to a website in search of services he goes to the portfolio page first instead of reading about the company. A well set web design portfolio gives a better idea of the services provided by your company. It also helps to give the organizers the idea on whether the company will be able to meet their requirement and also how good are they at their job.

It is important for any individual or company to focus on their portfolio. Portfolio is like a booklet which informs about your profession in image format usually one after another. Not only your website should look attractive but also the portfolio should look attractive in a professional manner.  Each work done should be displayed clearly so that your new clients are able to judge you by the beauty of work you have done before. Your portfolio can be set as slide show or by click. It is nice to keep the presentation of your premium customers on the top. This can make the new clients feel safe and find the company trustworthy.

In today’s world visual appeal plays more important role than the skill shown in form of words. The clients who would like to hire your company’s service will judge your skills and ability through the portfolio i.e. work done for your previous clients instead of services written on your homepage.   Most of the time you will find clients who have come through the references of your previous clients.

In order to get more business it is important to design the portfolio in such a manner that it is easily available with easy navigation pages so that the client can have a good look on the different services catered by them. The link of the portfolio should either be on the header or footer of your website so that the visitors are able to reach your portfolio in one click. Showcasing the portfolio is also a part of promoting your business and also creating awareness among people about your work and services that you offer.

Looking for web Design Companies which can help you design a unique portfolio so that you can attract new clients?  Contact Red Chilli Media, an impressive web design company which can help you organize your work in a creative manner. The layout and showcasing tools used by the experts can definitely accelerate the growth of your company or profession.

Why Google Banned Websites?

It's a simple question... Are you asking Google to penalize your website?

I'm sure you're probably thinking; Well, of course not! Yet daily I see new people complaining in search engine optimization forums that their websites have been banned by Google and they "have no idea why".

These people claim they've done nothing wrong and are absolutely clueless as to why their site is no longer in Google. The purpose of this article is to teach you one VERY important thing.

What NOT to do when optimizing your website, to make sure you don't get banned.

How do you know if you've been banned?

First let me show you how to see if you're clearly banned by Google. Often times people think they've been banned, when in reality they've just dropped in ranking and can't find their website.

There are a couple of things you can do.

• Check Google's search results.
• View the Google toolbar.

Check Google's search results

Go to Google and enter your entire URL into Google's search box. In this example we'll use a made up domain name. (www.jkhljkhkjh.com). On a side note, I tried www.somerandomdomain.com and www.fakedomainname.com and both were already taken. Apparently we've got some creative people out there... :-)

Anyway, we'll go to Google and enter our entire URL and click "search"
http://www.jkhljkhkjh.com

Notice that Google says there is no information available for this URL? This means that the URL is no longer in Google's database (a.k.a. index)

If you enter a brand new website into Google, you'll always get this message until the website has been indexed. But, in this case, the website we entered has been banned by Google for some reason is either banned or is brand new. If we know our website was once in Google and do the search I just showed you above, and Google says "Sorry, no information is available for URL [whatever your URL is]", then chances are... you're banned.

Another way you can quickly see if your website has been banned is by:

Viewing the Google Toolbar

Download the Google Toolbar here: http://toolbar.google.com

Once it's installed, simply visit your website. If the Google toolbar is completely gray, this may meen that you have been banned by Google.

Banned:

Not Banned:

Ok, so now we know how to tell if our website has been banned.

Why your website banned?

There are many onpage ranking factors AND offpage ranking factors that can cause Google to ban your website. Before I begin, I want you to know that many websites still get away with doing some of these things. They DO NOT help your rankings and are simply a waste of time, so don't try them. Sooner or later Google will catch up to these websites and will remove them.

It's just not worth the risk when doing them no longer helps your ranking to begin with.

Hidden Text

Hidden Text is simply text that users can't see when they visit your webpage. Some webmasters will do this so that they can add keywords throughout their webpage without it interferring with what the visitors actually see. Yet, the search engines can still see hidden text.

For example, let's say you have a white background on your website. If you wanted to hide text, you would simply make the color of your text white (#FFFFFF) and users couldn't see it.

I did a quick search in Google and quickly found an example of a website using hidden text. Have a look below:

At first glance, you're probably wondering where the hidden text is...

Let me show you. I went to the website and clicked "ctrl + a" on my keyboard. This will highlight the entire webpage as shown below:

Now we can clearly see the hidden text at the very top left side of their website that says "fat loss body fat abs weight loss diets bodybuilding dieting tips abdominal".

These are keywords that they want to rank well for and want the search engines to see when they first visit their website. Yet, they don't want their visitors to see this text. So, they've made the text white, to blend in with the background.

Alt image tag spamming

This is another way that people will try to cram keywords into their website, allowing search engines to see their keywords, but not allowing visitors to notice any difference in their website.

The following is a website that wanted to rank well for "cabbage soup diet". What they've done is inserted a graphic of a cabbage. They've then added an alt image tag to the graphic. When a visitors visits the website, and hovers their mouse over the cabbage soup graphic, a little popup will appear.

Notice how many times they've repeated the word "cabbage soup" and "cabbage"? Way too many! It serves no purpose other than to cram as many keywords as possible into their webpage.

The real purpose of an alt image tag is if a user visits your website and the graphic will not load, or is disabled by their web browser, text will appear instead of the graphic. This is often used for blind people.

Alt image spamming is something you want to stay clear of. Using alt image tags are good, but you can overdo it, as you can see above. A good alt image tag in this case would simply be: cabbage soup diet graphic

Meta Tag Stuffing

What I'm referring to here is when people throw in thousands of the same exact keyword into their meta tags.

For example, the following website is trying to rank well for the keyword "tents".

<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents">

This is obviously ridiculous. Google, and other search engines no longer use Meta Tags to rank websites.

Google WILL penalize it, and it WILL NOT help you... so, why would anyone do something like this?

Stay away from it.

Title Tag Stuffing

The title is what appears in the top left hand corner of your webpage. Below is an example of Title Tag Stuffing.

Don't do it... You only need to include your keyword(s) one time in your title tag.

Anymore than 1 time will only dilute the effect, and if you overdo it as shown above, you may get severely penalized and drop in the rankings.

Those are just a few of the things that people are continuing to do online. These things WILL eventually get your website banned or penalized and WILL NOT help you rank well. It's just a waste of time and effort, plus it's just plain ignorant to waste your time on something that doesn't work and will get your website banned from the search engines anyway.

For More Information Please Visit Us : http://www.seomaterial.com/seo_articles/google_banned_websites.html.