Webmasters guidelines from Google

Webmaster Guidelines

Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized. If a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.

When your site is ready:
Have other relevant sites link to yours.
Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl.
Submit a Sitemap as part of our Google webmaster tools. Google Sitemaps uses your sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Design and content guidelines
Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
Check for broken links and correct HTML.
If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Technical guidelines
Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
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 the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google webmaster tools.
If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.
Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.

Quality guidelines
These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.
If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please report that site at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.

Quality guidelines - basic principles
Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines
Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
If a site doesn't meet our quality guidelines, it may be blocked from the index. If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and request reinclusion.

Shopify - shopify.com

Shopify lets you build shops with as much style and flair as you see fit. When you signup for Shopify, you can choose from one of our growing number of custom-made designs or get really creative and create your own designs.

Track your orders
When you login to your store you are presented with a quick overview of your most recent orders.

Organize your inventory
Organize your products yourself or let Shopify do it for you with Smart Collections.


FAQ

What is Shopify?
Shopify is a hosted application that allows you to set up an online store to sell your goods. You can organize your products, customize your storefront, accept credit card payments, track and respond to orders—all without the hassle of running a physical store.

Do I need to install anything to use Shopify?
Absolutely not! We host Shopify so you don't have to worry about installing or upgrading any software. You only need a modern web browser such as Firefox or Safari and you're ready to go.

What do I need to get started?
If you plan to support credit card payments you will need a payment gateway. Shopify also allows you to accept Paypal payments.

Do I need to be a designer/programmer to change my shop design?
Not at all! Shopify comes packed with a wide variety of predesigned templates that you can apply to your shop. New designs will be added periodically so you can always keep your store looking fresh.

What is Liquid?
Liquid is the template language used by Shopify. You can get more information on using Liquid over at the Shopify Wiki. Liquid is also open source, meaning anyone can contribute to it.

What is Vision?
Vision is an application for designers that runs on Windows or OS X. It allows designers to create templates for Shopify shops right from their desktop.

Is there a place I can discuss tips and techniques with other Shopify users?
You can get advice and answers from other Shopify members and share your tips and tricks in the Shopify forums.

Does Shopify have a Wiki?
Shopify does indeed have a Wiki where you can view and contribute information. Visit the Shopify Wiki.

What types of credit cards can I accept?
Shopify allows you to accept all credit card types supported by your payment gateway.

Can I accept Paypal payments?
Yes, if you have an account with Paypal, you can accept payments from other Paypal members.

What is a merchant account?
A merchant account is a type of "bank account" set up with a payment gateway for the settlement of credit card transactions. Any merchant who wants to take credit card orders must establish a merchant account. If you don't want to use a merchant account, you can use Paypal instead as it allows you to process credit card payments without a merchant account.

What currencies can I accept?
There is no limitation placed on the currencies you can accept.

What percentage of sales does Shopify take?
It's completely free to sign up for Shopify. We charge a 3% commission on all successful product sales up to $10,000 a month. If you earn more than $10,000 in a single month, your rate is decreased to a 2% commission on the earnings over $10,000. Shopify's commission does not include credit card gateway or Paypal charges.

Why do I need a credit card to activate my store's checkout?
You need to provide your credit card to activate your checkout so that Shopify can know where to charge its commission on sales you make in your shop. You should only provide your credit card when you are ready to begin selling online.

Which credit cards can I use to pay my Shopify commissions?
Shopify currently accepts Visa and MasterCard for the payment of commissions.

Bravenet - www.bravenet.com

Join Bravenet to easily build or enhance your website.Everything is free to use!

Free web hosting package features :

Free web hosting
Our ad-supported free web hostingpackage is loaded with new features and a brand new control panel!
5 Hosted Domains*
1.5GB Bandwidth
50MB Disk Space
Easy Website Builders
FTP Account

Tools to help you Build your Website

Blog - Create an online diary or blog.
Guestbook - The most popular guestbook on the Internet.
Headline News - Put live news on your web site.
Hit Counter - Track and graph your website traffic.
Horoscope - Daily Horoscopes on your web site.
Online Calendar - Public event or scheduling calendars
Password Protect - Restrict access to selected website pages.
Photo Album - Store and share your photos online.
Redirect - Shorten your website address. (clik.to/me)
This Day in History - Find out what happened every day in history.
Web Templates - Pre-built templates for your web site.
Speaking Characters - Create animated characters for your site.

Tools to help you Build your Traffic

E-Cards - Host your own custom postcard service.
Free Links - Build your own handy link directory.
Site Search - Allow visitors to search your entire website.
Tell-A-Friend - Visitors promote your site and build traffic.
Traffic Exchange - Generate traffic for your site.
Web Cartoon - A new cartoon for your website every day.
Web Ring - Create a ring of sites with similar interests.
Tools for Interacting with your Guests
Chat Rooms - Host live chats with your site visitors.
Email Forms - Add a visitor feedback form to your website.
FAQ Service - Automated frequently asked questions.
GuestMap - Site visitors pin your map of the world.
Mailing List - Maintain a distribution mailing list with ease.
Message Forum - Message Board to host online discussions.
Vote Caster - Hold a multiple-question poll on your website.
Web Poll - Embed a quick poll in your website.

Tools to help you Earn Money

Affiliate Program - $1.00 for each person you refer to Bravenet.
Classifieds - Buy/Sell/Trade with classified ads.

Cool Text - cooltext.com

Cool Text is a free graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you need an impressive logo without a lot of design work.

Simply choose what kind of image you would like.

Then fill out a form and you'll have your own image created on the fly.

You can design logos, buttons and download their available fonts from the website.