NEWS: Must be doing something right.

[Tom Speirs]

A bit off topic, but a few facts

The forum has getting on for 2000 members, and nearly 25,000 posts.

Googling "media center game front end" - First

Googling "mame htpc" - First

Googling "mame screensaver" - First

Googling "mame media center" - Third

Googling "mame front end" - Seventh

[Backlash]

Great to see, you have done a supurb job of the software, and deserve every penny you get from registering the software.

Keep up the good work Tom I enjoy using your software every time!

Long live GameEX !!

[iano]

A bit off topic, but a few facts

The forum has getting on for 2000 members, and nearly 25,000 posts.

Googling "media center game front end" - First

Googling "mame htpc" - First

Googling "mame screensaver" - First

Googling "mame media center" - Third

Googling "mame front end" - Seventh

I was a bit dissapointed about the Googling "mame front end" - Seventh, so i Googled "mame front end" myself. First thing that came up was http://www.mame.net/frontend.html and if you click on the link on that page (Zophar's Domain's Mame Frontends) http://www.zophar.net/frontends/mame.html and it lists GameEX and SAYS "This is a MAME frontend for Windows, specifically XP MCE. It will also run on older, less cool versions of Windows. One of the better frontends in my opinion, however you will need the .NET Framework v1.1 and DirectX 9.0c. Very worth the download." which is nice but the thing is he's hosting an old version of GameEX version 1.01 !

[firebrand_X]

I was a bit dissapointed about the Googling "mame front end" - Seventh, so i Googled "mame front end" myself.

Tom, I'm a web developer and here's a little trick you might want to try out:

Currently, your webpage titles say: "GameEx - Front end and HTPC Software". Try changing it to "GameEx - MAME Front end and HTPC Software". It sounds insignificant, but the extra keyword will really help in the search engines.

Also, if you need sitemaps for Google, Yahoo and MSN to browse through, here's a generator: http://www.auditmypc.com/xml-sitemap.asp

Toss them under your root directory beside your index file.

Hope this is helpful

[Tom Speirs]

Thanks, very helpfull.

Now I'm guessing I should have an index file too? Can you tell me about that.

Cheers.

Edit, sorry, you probably mean index.html. My mistake.

Also, currently the URL for GameEx is http://tomspeirs.com/gameex

I do own GameEx.net though. Do you think it would help things if I moved the url to GameEx.net? Obviously Id have to redirect the existing folder.

[firebrand_X]

Thanks, very helpfull.

Now I'm guessing I should have an index file too? Can you tell me about that.

Cheers.

Edit, sorry, you probably mean index.html. My mistake.

Also, currently the URL for GameEx is http://tomspeirs.com/gameex

I do own GameEx.net though. Do you think it would help things if I moved the url to GameEx.net? Obviously Id have to redirect the existing folder.

Yup, the 'index.html' was the right one. I didn't know if you used PHP or ASP or something else, so i just said Index.

The URL won't make too much of a difference, IMO. You already have 'GameEx' secured in Google Search, so the url 'www.gameex.net' won't draw in people searching for the keyword 'MAME'.

And the biggest trick to getting high(er) in Google: Be honest, don't try to cheat the system. If your webpages have good keywords in the text (which you already do), then you'll do just fine. The Title change was the only change I could see that would be helpful.

[Adultery]

Well, that and I'm sure you have a robot.txt in your main directory...

[Tom Speirs]

Well, that and I'm sure you have a robot.txt in your main directory...

Actually, I dont have a robot.txt thats what I was thinking. I should probably google to find out about it, but any advice?

To be honest, Firebrand is probably right, in that Im already doing OK (hence the topic), so probably best not to mess wit it all.

I did just mirror www.gameex.net and gameex.net to to www.tomspeirs.com/gameex. I've been meaning to do that, but its probably not a good idea to redirect the pages Im guessing.

I dont want to mess up what I already have.

[firebrand_X]

Unless I'm off, I always thought that the common use for robots.txt is to tell spiders (web crawlers) which pages to NOT look into? Maybe they can do both, but I'd be careful when redirecting crawlers, unless there's a specific back-end or subsection of the site that you don't want Google to index.

Still, your site is doing extremely well. Being in the top 10 in Google is usually a feat in itself, so I wouldn't change the way the crawlers are looking into your site. But, if you want to score higher for specific keywords (ex: 'mame', arcade emulator', etc) you'll have to use them a little bit more within the body of your pages. As I've mentioned before, you could also add other keywords into the page Title for additional measure. It's crazy how effective 'Title keywords' are in Google and Yahoo.

Incase you're interested, I've heard that directories like DMOZ.org work fairly well, too.