A robots.txt file, commonly mis-represented as a robot.txt file, is a file encoded in the ANSI text format. This basically means it is a simple text file which should be created in Notepad. It controls how search engine crawlers (robots) look at your website and can be used to specify how certain areas of your site is indexed or to give instruction to specific search engines.

The file should be placed in the root directory of your website of where your index.html or home page resides. Even though you may not require the spider to exclude any area of your site from its search you should still have it as all the top-ranked search engines now look for it.

Some reasons you may need to exclude spiders from your site include:
1. There are some private directories or information that you do not want to be crawled.
2. You’re still fixing parts of the site and some areas may contain error pages.
3. You have optimized certain pages for specific search engines and want to exclude other search engine spiders from indexing it.
4. You want to prevent some search engine robots or email harvesting bots (Bad Bots) from crawling your pages altogether.

Syntax For File Creation
The basic instructions are placed in two lines of text.

User-agent: Spider Name
Diallow: File/Directory Name

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As the world is growing people now are becoming more familiar to the internet and finding themselves more comfortable for research and purchases on the web. And this could be a possible reason that makes email an ever-important marketing tool! Moreover, email marketers are perfecting their craft as well!

Email marketing is, to a very great extent, valid and valuable strategy for any of the e-commerce oriented website! However, spamming is an inevitable part of email marketing. What we all are required to do while implementing our email marketing strategy is to be cautious and try our best, not to spam because these days, so many countries are imposing huge and massive penalties on the spammers and setting examples for others. We all have to be very cautious and careful in our email marketing plans and strategies!

Let us have a look, what all we should do as a part of our email strategy to make it legitimate!

• Provide details of your list: the subscription forms should link to a details page where people can review information. It should clearly specify that what kinds of communication they are going to receive from you and what you will be doing with that information.

• Double opt-in subscription: subscription to a double opt-in communication provides that the prospective subscribers will receive an email asking them to confirm their intent to subscribe. It also provides a simple means for people to unsubscribe from your list also. Marketers must send pre-campaign test messages to uncover delivery problems

• List security: keep your mailing list secured and password protected on your system.

• Virus protection: maintain anti-virus software as it reduces the risk of sending infected mail to the receivers.

• Keep records: it is always advisable to keep as detailed record as possible so that it could protect you from the accusation of spamming!

• Maximize search with email: integrate your email programs with the search efforts and thus, skip throwing search-engine-marketing dollars in the trash. Try n include an email offer as a secondary objective on the landing page.

• Use of follow-up auto responders: An auto responder is, as the name suggests, an automated email program that responds to an incoming email automatically, with a pre-written message and I am sure that this will work for you!

• Make use of Online and offline advertising tactics as they really works!

• Use Pay-Per-Click search engines: using pay per click search engines is the quickest and easiest tactic. The keyphrases that people search for the most generally command the highest bids.

• Add RSS/XML Feeds to your website: RSS serves all the purposes of email correspondence and thus it becomes an inevitable tool of your email marketing strategy.

• Use Your Email Signature: email signature is an automatic advertising for your business. It is an effective method of letting people knows that you’re online and hence, ready to receive requests from them and thus it is advisable to always make use of email signatures.

• Create your own newsletter or ezine: use of newsletters or ezines is a highly effective tool of email marketing and it helps greatly to build your email list.

Not only this, you can also make use of various email marketing tools available and it would certainly add to the success of your email marketing strategy. They are:

• Email Preview Pane Rendering Quiz.

• From & Subject Line Preview Tool.

• Calculators:

1. List Growth and List Hurdle Rate Calculator.
2. Email Marketing Usability Rating Calculator.
3. Ecommerce Email ROI Calculator.

• W3C Markup Validation Service.

• Email Marketing Planner & Checklist.

• CAN-Spam Legal Brief.

Although email marketing has lot to offer if followed properly and can result into a lot of expenditure with no or minimal results if not considered properly. The above mentioned tools and the strategies will certainly help the email marketers in achieving their goals of marketing through email! So I strongly recommend following these strategies and tools once! You, yourself see the results and reap the harvest!

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