The same way you clean up your house before your guests arrive, the same way you should get your website ready for Google’s crawler, as this is one of the most important guests you will ever have. According to that, here are 10 things you should double check before submitting your website to the index. If you want, you can view this article as the correction of the top 10 mistakes made by webmasters.

1. If you have a splash page on your website, make sure you have a text link that allows you to pass it.
I’ve seen many websites with a fancy flash introduction on the index and no other way to navigate around it. Well, Google can’t read into your flash page, and therefore it cannot bypass it. All you have to do is put a text link to your website’s second index, and the deed is done.

2. Make sure you have no broken links
I know this is kind of obvious, but you’ll be surprised to find out how many errors is the Google crawler experiencing daily due broken links. Therefore, you’d better check and double check every internal link of your webpage before submission. Don’t forget that your links are also your visitor’s paths to your content. It’s not all about Google, you know Smile

3. Check the TITLE tags
Since you are able to search in title tags on Google and since the title tags is displayed in the top of your browser window, I’d say this is an important aspect you need to check. This doesn’t mean you have to compile a >20 keywords list there. Instead, make it a readable sentence since it’s viewable by both crawlers and surfers.

4. Check the META tags
Rumors about Google not caring about META tags are not 100% correct. Google relies on these tags to describe a site when there’s a lot of navigation code that wouldn’t make sense to a human searcher, so why not make sure you’re all in order and set up some valid KEYWORDS and a valid DESCRIPTION. You never know.
5. Check your ALT tags
The ALT tags are probably the most neglected aspect of a website since no one bothers to put them in order. It’s definitely a plus if you do, so Google spider can get a clue about all of your graphics. However, don’t go extreme and start explaining in an ALT tag that a list bullet is a list bullet.

6. Check your frames
If you use frames on your website, you might not be indexed 100%. Google actually recommends that you read an article of Danny Sullivan on Search Engines and Frames. You have to make sure that either Google can read from your frames, either that it has an alternative, defined via the NOFRAMES tag.

7. Do you have dynamically generated pages?
I know the web evolved so much in the last period of time, and more and more websites based on dynamic scripting languages (PHP, ASP, etc) are coming out every second, but Google said they are limiting the amount of dynamic webpages they’re indexing. It’s not too late to consider a compromise and include some static content in your pages. It helps.

8. Update your content regularly
This is an important aspect that you should consider, since Google indexes more quickly pages that get updated on a regular basis. You will notice that the number of pages indexed by the search engine will increase day by day if you update, but will stagnate or decrease if you don’t bring something new. I suggest setting up a META option in the header that will tell Google how frequently should it come back for a reindexing.

9. The robots.txt
This file is a powerful resource if used properly. You have the chance to filter out the bots that crawl your website, and you have the chance of restricting access to certain URL’s that should not be indexed (login pages, admin backends, etc).

10. To cache or not to cache?
Google caches some webpages for quick access, but some webmasters do not like that. The procedure is quite simple. All you have to do is write a line of code between your HEAD tags.

RSS is technology - a simple software program - that allows you to access web and blog content automatically…. Once your browser or computer has an RSS reader on board, you can subscribe to any number of RSS “feeds.” A feed is simply a way in which a reader may subscribe to website content - most commonly blogs or news sites. A news site, for example, may list their latest headlines or entire articles in their feed every time a new article is published.

…Feeds are published by millions of publishers, from small individuals to large organizations like Newsweek. The value of a feed is that it brings the most current site content to you in a format that is easily scanned; further, you are spared the task of visiting each source site each day. This is typically done through the use of what is called an ‘aggregator’ or ‘feed reader’.

Feed readers or RSS readers are software programs that run on your computer (or PDA or phone); let you easily subscribe to feeds, and allow you to read through them efficiently…. The fancier ones often work with (or in) your browser to make viewing the material look much like the source page. Once you have a reader on your computer, subscribing to a feed with is an easy click or drag from your browser.

…There are several RSS feed formats as well as one with an entirely different methodology called Atom. Atom has become popular with some bloggers and blogging tools…. The other acronyms you will see in “feedspeak” are XML, which stands for ‘extensible markup language’ and is the code standard for these simple text feeds…. If you dive into this web habit in a big way, your aggregator or reader may keep your subscription list in an OPML file.

An RSS feed is a great method for staying abreast of issues and topics that interest you. There are a number of feed “libraries,” so to speak, from which you can learn what’s out there in your areas of interest. Google has a built-in reader that makes the subscription process easy, as does Yahoo. Firefox has a downloadable extension for the purpose of aggregating RSS feeds, as well as a default ability to save RSS feeds as “live bookmarks” that update via the RSS feed. You can download a number of stand-alone readers and aggregators; you can find them through a simple web search.

…The trick is to avoid overloading your email inbox with daily reports that you end up ignoring most of the time. For that purpose, there are sites like Feedster that will search millions of RSS feeds for articles that are relevant to your interests…. They are still working off keywords and sometimes what they find is relevant, sometimes not. But if you want daily news broken into categories, it’s great technology once you learn how to make it work for you. We recommend www.americas-web.com.

With the advent of widespread broadband Internet connections, consumers are discovering what businesses have known for a while. Voice over IP telephony, or VoIP as it is known, can be a viable and cost effective alternative to the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS).

Such features as caller ID, call forwarding, automatic redial, and even 3-way calling are standard on most VoIP packages, whereas many phone companies consider them add-ons and will charge you extra. But the real kicker is, if it is right for you and you pick the right Voice over IP solution, you should be able to reduce your phone bill by half or more.

…IP Telephony is a packet switching technology, as opposed to circuit switching as used by the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). The PSTN method uses copper wires to physically connect one caller to another through a series of circuit switches, as illustrated by the switchboard operators of old.

In voice over IP, the analog voice is converted into digital packets that are routed through the internet, and in the case of one of the parties being on a PSTN connection, the packets are routed to the nearest local switching station and placed back on the PSTN. If both persons are using VoIP, then there is no reason to use the PSTN, and the entire conversation takes place over the Internet.

Needless to say, this is much more cost effective than using landlines for the entire distance. If a caller in New York uses VoIP to call a PSTN number in Seattle, the call doesn’t leave the internet until it reaches the switching station in Seattle, making it for all practical purposes, a local call.

There are some points that one should seriously consider when thinking about dumping the POTS. VoIP generally requires a Broadband Internet connection, which in turn requires power…. Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) also have a tendency to go down occasionally, though they are getting better all the time. Calls can be forwarded to your cell phone if your power is out, but in real disaster situation, even cell phones are not a perfect backup, as seen by Hurricane Katrina…. Fax machines scan a document and convert the data into sounds, which don’t travel well over the internet. In IP telephony, much progress has been made on a standard called T.38, whose mission is to convert the fax sound into sendable data. Another option is iFax, the T.37 standard that sends faxes as an email attachment or a remote printout using the Internet Printing Protocol. Today, separate Fax lines can be added by most VoIP providers for an extra charge.

…It is the nature of the Internet that tying a particular node to a geographic location is quite difficult, and street addresses are not easily routed to a nearby call center. In the U.S., the FCC has mandated that VoIP providers implement Enhanced 911 (E911). Providers are making progress by encouraging their customers to register a street address to their phone number, enabling them to route emergency calls to a nearby call center.

While a broadband connection is not absolutely necessary, it is what makes VoIP shine. Many households are turning to DSL or cable modems for their internet connections, and wireless broadband WiFi hotspots are popping up everywhere.

The problem with DSL is that it is provided by telephone companies, which for the most part require you to have a landline, pretty much defeating the purpose. Some regional Telco’s are starting to unbundle their DSL services by offering “naked DSL”, an Internet connection without the analog line on the local loop. When you think about it, there really doesn’t seem to be much motivation for the Telco’s to promote VoIP, as it would effectively be like cutting their revenues in half.

If your household has cable television, you more than likely can get broadband access through a cable modem. Most cable providers charge around $50 a month for broadband internet access, and for those who utilize the Internet often, a high speed internet connection is well worth the price. Some cable IPS’s offer residential Voice over IP for $40-$50 a month. Through the pure play VoIP companies like Vonage or Packet8, you can get VoIP for around $15-$25 a month, potentially eliminating the need for a land line at all.

Wireless networks also work great for VoIP, and are especially convenient if you travel a lot. Hotspots all over the world allow you to call anywhere using a WiFi VoIP phone. Internet phones come in all shapes and sizes with all kinds of bells and whistles. From a full business desk phone from Cisco, to phones indistinguishable from cell phones, even regular cell phones that are VoIP capable – new products and technologies are coming out every day to get you better connected for less.

Voice over IP telephony has come of age. If you have access to a broadband Internet connection, you could conceivably cut your phone bill by half or more, never pay long distance charges in the U.S. and Canada, and pay way less for International calls – as low as 3 cents per minute.

It is really amazing how over the course of only a few decades how the world has changed. One of the things that stick out in my mind as a kid growing up in a small town in eastern Canada is how far we have come in such a short time. I lived in a house that didn’t have any indoor plumbing we had one TV and we had just gotten that and there was only 3 channels on it anyway…. These items were not much for real entertainment that I have grown accustom to over the years.

The biggest impact on the world today, as we know it, has to be the PC (Personal Computer). It was introduced to the world 25 years ago and has forever changed how we communicate, get news and do business. I don’t know if they really knew the impact that it would have on our lives, but could you ever imagine getting anything done today without one. Computers have become the ultimate tool for the whole family to use and enjoy weather it is for work, school or just entertainment.

…With the introduction of the internet and computers becoming more and more accessible for people to own, came the exploits to damage these personal computers. Computers are being used for many things from storing personal data and conduct financial transactions online. The risks have grown even more when using the internet to do these things.

Internet exploits and crime has become a billion dollar industry for internet criminals. There are still people who are either not using the proper internet security products or none at all to protect themselves and families online. Not taking the proper action to make sure your computer, children and identity is safe when using the internet is just not smart today. Don’t become a statistic just another person who has become a victim of internet crime. With the price of software these days it just doesn’t make sense not be protecting you and love ones from the threats and exploits that are present all over the internet these days. They say that an unprotected computer on the internet will last only about 20 min before if will become compromised by some sort of malware or exploit on the internet.

How many stories have we heard about children getting exploited or becoming subjected to some kind of inappropriate material? The internet is a great tool for kids to use for research for school; it’s like having a library right in your home. Not taking the proper steps to make sure your kids are protected while on the internet falls all on the parents. If you want to control your kids access to the internet and what the can view you have to have some kind of parental control installed on your computer.

I know most parents think my child would never do anything like that or they know what they are allowed to do on the computer. The problem I think is with the parents, you would like to trust your kids and believe that they wouldn’t do anything like that but they are kids and will explore the unknown. If the parents had some kind of parental control on their computer in the first place none of it would have happened. My daughter has a computer and it has parental control on it not because I don’t trust her but because I have to protect her from the unknown.

With computers you can’t wait until you have a virus that has to be fixed or your identity and personal information has been stolen or your kids get themselves in trouble that is going to bring harm to them. You have to protect your computer and your family before any of this can happen by getting yourself some internet security and information on how to protect yourself while on the net.

If you’re not using video on your website yet, then you’re missing out on a great opportunity to increase customer responsiveness to your website.

With the ever growing population of broadband users in the United States, video has become mainstream. You only need to look at the most popular sites on the Internet and see that http://Youtube.com is the 8th most popular website in the world. Youtube is a site that shows videos, so broadband is essential to using and enjoying the site. It is estimated that 65% of Internet users in the United States have broadband access, and that number is expected to grow to 80% by 2010.

However, putting video on a website can seem quite intimidating if you’ve never done it before…. When I first started learning about putting videos on the Internet I didn’t even own a video camera or know how to use one.

Fortunately, technology has made putting your videos on the Internet far easier than in the past. Now you can relatively quickly film a video, add professional looking effects, upload it, and post it on your website.

Those are actually the only essential tools. Now there are a lot of extra tools you can add to really add professionalism to your videos, but those are for another time. I just want to focus on helping you get your first video up.

Go ahead and put your video camera on the tripod. Setup your laptop next to the video camera. Now go ahead and plug in the firewire cable to the video camera and then to the firewire port on your computer. Your computer should automatically recognize the camera and ask you what you want to do. Click on the capture video icon. This will open up Windows Movie Maker on your computer – a free program installed on all Windows XP computers (I’m assuming your using a PC and not a Mac since Macs are a bit more intuitive for making videos, and you probably won’t need this guide) Make sure you’re area is well lit. You will want it to seem really bright in order for it to look good on video.

All you need to do is click on capture video in Windows Movie Maker and you can record your video. When you’re done, just push stop.

Once you’ve finished recording your video, you’ll see your clip showing in the collections section of Windows Movie Maker. Click on the clip and drag the clip to the timeline at the bottom of the application. Once it shows in the timeline, you’re able to edit the length, and cut out parts. You can also add music or add a title screen and credits.

Once you’ve finished editing your video, you’re ready to save it. Just click save, and tell windows to save it in the best quality for playback on your computer format. This will keep the file from becoming huge and will make it much faster to upload.

Go to http://Youtube.com and sign up for a free account. Once you’re signed up, click on my videos and then on upload a video. Find the file you saved on your computer and upload it to Youtube.

Once you’re done uploading your video…. To the right of the video you’ll see a section labeled Embed. Copy that code and paste it to the website where you want you video to appear.

…You’ve just put your video online.

Podcasting in its simplest form is the uploading of MP3 files to the internet, where they can be accessed by the majority of the online universe with little more than a modern browser. You might consider a podcast to be an audio blog, although podcasts are basically standalone units of communication and not limited solely to “audio.” The term is also applied to short video pieces that are uploaded for general consumption; that is becoming more common, but the term was born as a reference to the audio format. Although the term stems from Apple’s iPod line of products it is generic in nature and refers to any MP3 (and increasingly, video) file provided via one Internet channel or another.

…They are used in educational formats (distance learning programs) and by the mainstream media…. They provide professionally conducted interviews with both newsmakers in the business world and with experts on topics like developing technology. It is both an extension of their current events function and the features section of the magazine that focuses on broader industry analysis.

Every major news outlet online – ABC, ESPN, Fox, CNN and so forth – use podcasts to augment their print-and-graphics webpage formats. You can find them on political websites and blogs, often carrying the candidate’s message but more often carrying the opponent’s gaffe. This particular phenomenon has led to the practice of campaigns hiring “trackers” to trail their opponent from public event to public event with a video camera, hoping to catch a misstatement, a contradiction or some sort of unfortunate occurrence that can be distributed via the assortment of political websites and blogs that clog the web today.

You can now “subscribe” to podcasts that are delivered via an RSS application automatically to your computer…. Podcasts very quickly found their way to the marketing and advertising industry, which as adopted them for widespread use on the Internet. Video podcasts in particular have become the most recent form of “popup” advertising on the web. You can be clicking through a commercial site and suddenly you are watching a commercial.

The proliferation of podcasts that are webcasts of mistakes, poor behavior or just plain foolishness began with people in the public eye but now extends well beyond the currently and formerly famous. Because these snippets of audio and video are so widespread and move across the digital network so quickly, one begins to feel uneasy.

…Podcasts and to some degree the whole social networking phenomenon create the opposite effect. It’s easy to feel exposed, regardless of the fact that you’re still one person using one computer.

For a technical explanation of the various methods of podcast delivery, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting. They provide an excellent and extended explanation of the various software options and delivery choices that you can make in allowing podcasts into your life.

Summary: Temporary Internet Files explained. There is also information how to delete temporary internet files and corresponding index.dat files.

What are Temporary Internet Files?

Temporary Internet Files are, in fact, the cache of the Internet Explorer. This means that when you load a web page with Internet Explorer, it is saved on your computer so that if you later decide to open the same page again, it will open a lot faster. Temporary Internet Files improve speed of web browsing and also make possible so called offline browsing, which gives you the ability to open the web pages from cache even when you are not connected to the Internet.

Despite all these positive things about Temporary Internet Files, they have one big drawback: they compromise your privacy. Everyone with access to your computer can look into your Temporary Internet Files folder (location of this folder is discussed here) and see the sites that you have visited in the past. You can manually delete the contents of Temporary Internet Files folder (explained here) but this will not erase all traces of the pages because a special file called Index.dat is placed in this folder and it will still preserve the names and even the dates of your first visits to many pages.

Where is located Temporary Internet Files folder?

The location of the Temporary Internet Files folder depends on the version of Windows and whether or not you are using user profiles.

Note that on your computer the Windows directory may not be C:\Windows but some other directory. If you don’t have Profiles directory in you Windows directory don’t worry - this just means that you are not using user profiles.

How to delete Temporary Internet Files?

…Start Internet Explorer and click Tools menu, then select Internet Options… from this menu. This will open the Internet Options window.

…Click General tab and then find in the section Temporary Internet Files the button Delete Files… and click it. A new dialog box opens.

…In the Delete Files dialog box, click to select the Delete all offline content check box if you want to delete all Web page content that you have made available offline.

…Click OK to delete the files. Note that if you are doing this for the first time, the deleting can take a large amount of time, so be patient.

WARNING! This will most probably delete all visible items in the Temporary Internet Files folder (except cookies) but a number of invisible traces may remain in the index.dat files. The only way to be sure that you are getting rid of all traces for good is the usage of specialized privacy protection program like Mil Shield - a powerful privacy protection program that was designed specifically to clean and shred the Temporary Internet Files. Additional benefit is the ability to preserve the tracks from some chosen by you sites (selective cleaning), which makes your browsing more comfortable and safe (it is rather suspicious to always have empty history, cookies and Temporary Internet Files - it is better to leave some tracks from “innocent” sites). Mil Shield also cleans all other tracks as index.dat files, cookies, history, cache, AutoComplete records, UserData records, history of recently used folders and documents and many more.

There are a lot of things to analyze on your site before you start optimizing your site. Such things are your site overview, nature of business, home page, site dimension and number of pages, product/services categories, page rank and indexed pages for major search engines, link popularity, and a lot more.

…Analyze your site and think of a generic word that best fits for your web site. Choosing the right keywords is a strategy for better search engine positioning. Analyze your business carefully and think of all the words that relate to your company or product. Most techniques to improve your search engine rankings have one thing in common — Keywords.

…That word will act as your major keyword for your site. Then find a keyword tool that will help you generate keywords for your site…. Type in the major keyword that you had thought of and it’ll list all related keywords that you can use. On the tool you’ll see the number of counts your keyword has been searched. Person new on search engine optimization might use the keyword with a lot of counts (I, sure did that before) immediately but SEO experts says that Do NOT use it for a start as keyword searched as many times will just give you a lot of competition and give your site less probability in regards to your visitors.

…Examine those sites ranked from 1-10 on the keywords you chose to use in optimizing your site. Check everything about the site that is ranked highly on the search engine. Its URL, see if it is the top level webpage or it is the index page of the site as if it is not you can have a great chance to improve your index page for the target keyword and have a better placement in the SERP’s…. Page rank is Goggle’s way of giving specific value to how popular your website is…. Then check their page source, see if they’re actually optimizing their site for some on page optimization factors. Factors such as title tag, check if they use the keyword on their title tag which is one of the main reasons why a site is rank well on search engine. Header tags are used to separate topics and range from h1 being very large and bold and h6 which is very small and bold, it should contain your most important keyword or keyword phrases to assist you in ranking higher on Search Engines. Image alt tags are words that will be displayed in place of your image through an older browser or when your visitors have their image turned off, insert a readable keyword phrase within the alt tags of your image and it’ll help you on your rankings. And on the main content if they use the keyword on the beginning and at the end of the page, also whether or not they’ve bolded, underlined, or italicized the keywords on that page. By continuing this process on other keywords that you’ve chose you would have an improved ranking on SERPs.

We recommend www.americas-web.com.

Finding the right keywords to choose for your pay-per-click campaign sounds easy, doesn’t it? My site sells hiking boots I’ll buy the phrase hiking boots or my site focuses on computer repair I’ll buy the term computer repair.

…And because these phrases are so broad you may get visitors to your site but your conversion may not be good. A conversion is a purchase, click, subscription to your newsletter or some positive action by your site visitor.

…And look at Merrell hiking boots, comfortable hiking boots, computer repair in Denver, Colorado, or Spyware removal as your search terms. These terms will be cheaper and much more defined.

If your term is hiking boots and someone goes to your site looking for Nike and you don’t sell it - you’ve just paid for a wasted click. However, if you buy Merrell hiking boots someone coming to your site is specifically looking for that brand.

The same holds true for the computer example. If you offer spyware removal the person who clicks on your PPC campaign link to spyware removal will get exactly what they are looking for.

Google and Yahoo offer suggestions for search terms and wordtracker.com also offers help with selecting search terms. This site, http://www.americas-web.com also help you select key words for your PPC campaign.

You may get fewer clicks in to our site this way but they will be more targeted. And more targeted clicks convert better.

So you have a domain name.

…Well, the obvious is to get it hosted somewhere. But how do you get it “somewhere”? How does one move their domain from one place to another?

Domain transfers are without a doubt one of the most confusing things to a domain name owner, especially if you’ve never done it before and you don’t have a clue as to where to start. Unfortunately it’s a fact and we can’t make it easy for you.

…The first thing you need to do is determine where your domain name is currently hosted. To do this you must do a whois search.

For this example we will use http://betterwhois.com. Type your domain name in the text box provided.

The who is database gives info about the registrant: administrative contact the technical contact and the billing contact, including addresses phone numbers and email addresses. This is available to the public.

We want info about http://notreallyadomain.com for this example.

Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.

Updated Date: 07-jan-2004 Creation Date: 08-mar-1997 Expiration Date: 08-mar-2006 The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and Registrars.

Referral URL-The URL of the Registrar -who you need to contact in order to change the domain from one name server to the other: either by physically talking to them or using control panel access.

Secondary Name Server-The nameserver the domain currently resides on Two nameservers are generally used: if the primary nameserver breaks then the secondary can take over the primary nameserver duties until the primary is fixed.

This domain was registered thru an Opensrs registrar/reseller. Scan the whois database you will usually find the Registrar contact info.

Providing we have our userid and password we could login and change our nameserver info, contact info or any number of functions.

Once we have changed our name server info there is generally a propagation periodnas the internet as a whole updates with new dns information. For a new domain name, you can count on anywhere from 12 - 24 hours. For a domain name that is already in existance, and has already been moved, it can take anywhere from 12 - 72 hours.

…There have been instances of propagation taking two weeks or more.

Here are some of the different Domain name registrars now available on the net.

Never use your domain name as part of your email address on your contact email for your whois record. Use a web-based email like Yahoo or Hotmail. If you experience any kind of issue, you’ll be emailed at your contact email, and if it’s your domain name and it’s broken, you’re out of luck.

Use yourself as a technical contact on your whois record. Use a second email address as well. Hosting companies do go out of business, and this could hinder your access should you want to move the domain name.

Keep track of the email addresses you use as contacts, the userids and passwords. Keep track of your domain name - when you ordered it, when it expires. If you let the domain name expire, your website will not be accessible through the domain name. Keep track of any userids/passwords associated with domain name maintenance.

www.americas-web.com contributed to this article.