The BookAdder SEO Site-Augmentation Bookshop Package

Augmenting Your Site For Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The purpose of this package is to allow web-site operators to help feed the appetites of search engines, which like--among other things--lots of reasonably relevant pages, and pages that change often. Feeding those appetites will likely raise your placement on those search engines; no guarantees, but it's the prevailing wisdom.

You might want to look at this explanation of Page Rank, in which is stated Fact: The maximum amount of PageRank in a site increases as the number of pages in the site increases. . . . The more pages that a site has, the more PageRank it has. (Emphasis added.)

This package, with just a few minutes' effort in set-up customizing, can give you up extra new pages for your site to the tune of about a hundred thousand pages--all relevant, all changing daily, all honest pages with real content: no "search-engine spam".

Those tens of thousands of new pages are each a description of a book, more or less related to your site's theme, for sale through your site: this package simply tacks a theme-focussed Amazon/Abebooks bookshop onto your site. You select the keyword phrase that will relate the titles to be listed to your site's theme and the package does the rest.

(Note that you are not listing tens of thousands of different titles, because it's hard to make so many titles be relevant to your theme--you are actually listing about 3,500 different titles, but, in ways explained in the documentation, each title gives you an average of 30 site pages, between Amazon's six different divisions and the separate used-book listings by ISBN and by title/author.)

Moreover, this package even auto-generates standard-format XML sitemap files of all those extra pages (and, if you like, your entire site besides), and then auto-notifies the search engines that use sitemaps (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) whenever the pages list changes--ideally, daily, but that's up to you. That way, you can be sure that the engines know about all of your bookshop pages.

Keep firmly in mind that all of these pages are not only honest, relevant, thoroughly "white-hat" stuff, but should add significant appeal to your visitors; it is a safe conclusion that visitors interested in your site's topic may well be interested in books about that topic, and with BookAdder you offer them a good-sized selection of just such books.

Last but far from least, you should make some money off the package through actual book sales through Amazon or Abebooks.

(If you want to see an installed BookAdder package in operation, you can visit this site's own BookAdder bookshop.)

System Requirements:

There is only one: your site's server must be running PHP, at level 4.2.0 or above (which virtually all servers do). It must, though, be civilized PHP: that is, either "Safe Mode" must be Off or PHP must be "cgi-wrapped". (Any host that cannot readily meet those conditions for you is a host you should be running away from as fast as you can.)

(This package is known reliable and stable when on servers powered by one or another variant of the Unix family. It is believed equally functional on Windows-family powered servers, but that has not been tested as exhaustively.)

The BookAdder package and all its files sit off in their own private directory--nothing at all intermixes with the rest of your site. You just set it up, point some links from somewhere else to your new bookshops' front pages (remember, you get six, distinct shops) and that's it.

Disclosures About Money:

This package is free. It is not intended as a way for you to get rich off selling books. My theory is that if selling books loomed large in your life, you'd already be doing it, and wouldn't need this material. This package will probably appeal to you chiefly because it will make your site's page count expand by roughly a hundred thousand relevant pages, all changing frequently. Nonetheless, you should also get some modest income stream from it--which sure beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick--plus it should help draw or keep some visitors for your site.

The way it works is simple: if you are not already an Amazon "Associate", I get the book sales commission revenue. What you are getting, remember, is all those tens of thousands of daily-changing relevant pages at no effort.

If you are an Amazon Associate, or become one (and the package documentation explains how you sign up and even gives you links to the sign-up pages), then you and I will split the sales commissions 50-50. There is a randomizer built in that will arbitrarily, on a 50% probability, assign a given visitor book inquiry to you or to me. (That assignment is made prior to any knowledge of whether the visitor will actually buy.) Moreover, you can easily become an Associate at all six national divisions Amazon operates, since this package really makes six separate bookshops for you anyway (one per Amazon national division), so no matter where in the world you or your visitors are, you can offer them convenient product. (If, for example, you are in the U.S.A., you can make some non-trivial extra from Amazon U.K. or Amazon Canada sales.)

The same thing applies to and works for Abebooks used-book referrals: if you are an Abe books affiliate, you can use your affiliate ID and randomly get an average 50% share.

I designed this toy on the assumption that neither you nor I expect that your book sales are going to be a major revenue stream: you want those pages, and if enough of you want them, maybe someday from the cumulative revenue trickle I'll make back the worth of my time in doing this package. But you should find some pleasing little extra money in your bank account each month.

Finding Out More

I have placed the complete (and almost comically copious) documentation for this package on line, so you can get as close a look as you like at it before trying it. You can also see a live example of it at work by visiting this site's bookshop. Meanwhile, here are the docfiles available for reading (each will open in a new browser window). I suggest you begin with the first one listed below.

• About BookAdder - a useful overview of what BookAdder does, how, and why
• Installing BookAdder - getting BookAdder initially set up and functioning
• Tuning Your Search - how to easily optimize your search phrase
• Further Customizing BookAdder - ad displays, look-and-feel, and other aspects of customizing
• Upgrading - how to proceed if you have an earlier version installed
• Security-Related Concerns - understanding the hows and whys of several related matters
• BookAdder Files List - the purpose of every file in BookAdder: worth reading for tips'n'tricks
• Installation Problems - causes and cures for snags encountered when installing

As you will see in there, the package can be easily customized in many ways, from colors and fonts to ads and other drop-ins.

Instructions:

The download comes as a single ZIP file. I strenuously suggest you make a new directory on your local system solely for the files in this package. Download the ZIP file into that new directory, unZIP it, and begin by reading the plain-text file named simply and appropriateky READ_ME.NOW: it guides you to the full setup instructions, which are just those docfiles listed above (in about the order they're listed).

Envoi:

No, no, no--This page is about BookAdder!

This package is now at release level 5.03 . As with all such things, I think everything works OK, but can't guarantee that. As always, with all software, you use this package at your own risk: no warrantees, express or implied, including but not limited to merchantibility or fitness for any particular purpose, are given. There: now the lawyers are happy, even if no one else is.

More important: you should check back on this page frequently to see if there have been any further updates or fix versions.

For what it's worth, I also assert all copyright rights in this work: ©2004 - 2010, The Owlcroft Company.

My name is Eric Walker. You can email me at webmaster@seo-toys.com   You can even telephone me at any hour between 2:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time (and no harm in trying later) if you are having any problems; call (509) 659-4500 (that's in Washington State) and ask for me.

Package Update History::

5.03 - added Perry McGee's sha256 script (under license) to allow BookAdder to function with older PHP versions that lack the mhash PHP function. Also slightly upgraded status.php with diagnostic data, and made a few other minor changes.

5.02 - fixed encrypting functions for particular PHP versions; amended method for getting results in non-Anglophone (DE, FR, JP) divisions; several minor fixes and improvements.

5.01 - fixed errors resulting from doubled URL-encoding of data; corrected "Signature Version" datum to "2" (was using 2 but calling it 1); changed SHA encryption from 1 (acceptable) to 256 (preferred).

5.00 - provided for encryption-signed "authenticated" calls to Amazon database (now requires user ot have own Amazon "keys".

4.26 - added file module to make using Google Analytics code simple.

4.25 - OK, so I'm a slow learner: made small changes to "front-door" page so that titles and meta-descriptions differ from division to division, to avoid duplication.

4.24 - made changes the Abebooks scripts so that duplicate titles and duplicate meta-descriptions are avoided as between different destination countries; also made the titles and descriptions a little shorter and less "stuffed". Also fixed display so title and author are display in initial caps (looks prettier). And added division names into titles and meta-descriptions on Amazon "letter" pages for the same reasons.

4.23 - made small change to free.php so that book titles with embedded double-quote marks don't screw up the "description" meta tag (and header).

4.22 - made small changes to several <title>, <meta description>, and <h1> tags for, ideally, incrementally better SEO (description metas on the numerous per-edition pages patterned after a suggestion in Google's Webmaster documentation).

4.21 - made small change so <title> tags in per-edition pages include ISBN, to avoid "duplicate title tags" in search engines when there is more than one edition for the same author/title pair.

4.20 - every time I think I'm done, someone moves the goal posts. Abebooks now has changed to a very different (and, in fairness, somewhat improved) search API; that required a major re-write of all the Abebooks-related code, but did allow adding a few extra display features (cover images, seller ratings).

4.10 - major re-write of code for re-starting or looping an ongoing search, so as to better handle server fails; also revised watch.php to allow monitoring a single process.

4.02 - modified installer script to generate an initial foreign-exchange-rates data file; removed US-division dummy-up from Status script, since Amazon finally heeded me and fixed their problem with it.

4.01 - changed method of obtaining foreign-exchange rates for Amazon divisions (the Federal Reserve Board, apparently without prior notice, stopped publishing daily rates as of 1 January 2009).

4.00 - more massive changes under the hood, though this time few in plain sight. Crucial change was switching Abebooks calls from CJ to Performics. Installation process was significantly simplified by interactive scripts. Translations from non-English were much enhanced. Yet more customizeable features. Site-mapping made much faster and lighter on resource use. Too much more to recount in full.

3.00 - massive changes under the hood, and not a few in plain sight. Main change was switch from Amazon AWS 3 interface to ECS 4. Many more customizeable features, lots of new emphasis on security, just too much more to itemize. Also changed name to avoid e-mailer blockages.

2.44 - many small fixes and augmentations; two major changes are making the auto-generated Google sitemaps into gzipped form for bandwidth saving, and modifying the Abebooks interface so as to further increase the site pages added by the package.

2.43 - two fixes: corrected incompatibility with PHP 5.x; and fixed issue with book reviews for Amazon Japan when book is released in UK but not US.

2.42 - just touched up the two documentation files (Upgrading.html and Install.html); no working-script changes.

2.41 - adapted to changed Amazon page format for reader reviews, US and other; several minor improvements also.

2.40 - major upgrade, most especially adding substantial extra pages via the Abebooks interface; that interface is also drastically revised to be more attractive, useful, and likely to sell books. The Google-sitemapping is upgraded in several ways, and some other minor fixes and upgrades were made.

2.31 - small fix to keep ABE-call URLs correct.

2.30 - several minor maintenance revisions and upgrades, but the major change is adding Google sitemap-generation capabilities including optional mapping of the entire site, not just the bookshops).

2.24 - minor maintenance revision: accomodate some Amazon image-data changes; also, modify know.inc for new encyclopedia data-file formats.

2.23 - minor maintenance revision: updated Amazon.UK free-shipping minimum to £19 (from former £25); also slightly improved the ancillary process-monitor tool.

2.22 - Small but significant fix to assure that book pages and other operations will be carried out even for Amazon national divisions for which the user is not an Associate (this apparently got broken in the 2.20 upgrade).

2.21 - Minor fix to free.php to get proper display of reviews when viewing books from Japanese Amazon division (uses US reviews).

2.20 - Fixed error misallocating sales commissions, and started a timed "payback window" during which all existing users will receive 100% of commissions, to compensate. Also added module for changed Digitalpoint Co-op Network operation, and a small change to speed up free-form searches.

2.11 - Fixed crucial error that was putting rel="nofollow" in the title listings, devaluing them; fixed search script to follow Amazon's fixing of its UTF encoding in several divisions; the dofind.php master was modified to make long-search-run fails less likely; now works right with URL subdomains (e.g. stuff.mydomain.com); will tolerate blank lines in avails.inc; modified timer.inc to name log after site, and better display log data; updated unavails.inc with new Amazon "unavailable", which will stop the leak of some unavailable items into the lists.

2.10 - The chief change was to make all per-title ABE-search calls look like separate site pages, effectively doubling the pages-added total for the package; the docfiles were also augmented somewhat, a small utility thrown in, and a few minor performance tweaks made.

2.05 - fixed errors in free-form search; also added ability for user to select multi-divisional cover-image searches (slow) or not (faster).

2.04 - modified booksearch.htm to accomodate grotesque failing in Internet Explorer that was preventing searches from working on that product (so what else is new?), plus a few other minor changes (the package should now work with PHP versions as old as 4.1).

2.03 - Fixed super-stupid trivial one-character mis-typing in last-minute change to finstall.php in 2.02 that made it fatally crash.

2.02 - a few trivial functional changes--the chief change is a major upgrade to the package Install.html docfile, explaining each package file and giving some "tips 'n' tricks".

2.01 - removed piece of code inadvertently left over from testing; slightly augmented docfile on upgrading.

2.00 - Internationalized and massively rewritten.

1.09f - minor patch to accomodate some very old PHP versions.

1.09e - minor patch to accomodate some less-common host-server PHP setups at install.

1.09d - correct yet another idiotic typographical error in 1.09c (extra close-parenthesis) in code script).

1.09c - correct idiotic typographical error in 1.09b (omitted an apostrophe in code script).

1.09b - makes checks to prevent needless fails on hosts using very old versions of PHP.

1.09a - inserts missing semicolon that causes 1.09 to fail; haste makes hideous waste. Sorry.

1.09 - required fix to accomodate Amazon's abrupt introduction of a new string in the "Availability" field; some minor other improvements.

1.08a - generalized mod of 1.08 to handle all titles beginning with a character of ascii code over 122 (or between 91 and 96).

1.08 - modified findbooks.php (and pull.php) so that book titles starting with [ or { don't break the listing (owing to ascii sort order).

1.07 - made new script upgrade.php to make upgrading as nearly "one-step" as possible; minor tweaks elsewhere.

1.06 - modified file-fetch function; fixed reviews to provide correct internal-Amazon links; also numerous tweaks--to file-fetch function, installer, and various others; very substantial documentation update on Upgrading, plus several other docfiles.

1.05 - fixed glitch in holders.php that was causing it to make defective title-holder files for the @ and ~ cases.

1.04 - last fix failed to find a couple of silly intra-site URL link errors in holder.shtml--this fixes those.

1.03 - remove extraneous code mistakenly placed at page bottom in holder.shtml; fine-tune a few file gets for paranoid-rare cases.

1.02 - fix of free2.php for frankly stupid error.

1.01 - major rewrite of free2.php to accomodate Amazon's capricious redesign of the "customer review" pages; other minor tweaks.

1.00 - made cronf.php able to deal with 301/302 Redirects; tweaked the various docfiles; reformatted some of the .shtml files to use <p></p> HTML style. Ventured to now consider this "gold" release code.

0.99a - removed some redundant beta-oriented code; accomodated some even more bizarre server set-ups; removed spurious PHP "warning" when invalid ASIN called for freeN.php files.

0.99 - updated findbooks.php to get all titles now reported by bookcount.php; fixed cronf.php/dofind.php connection for added reliability; further simplified both new installs and especially upgrades; further revised docfiles for greater clarity in several areas.

0.98a - updated bookcount.php to get past asinine Amazon false reporting if raw-titles count greater than 32,000.

0.98 - lots: finally discovered that some hosts default to buffering PHP script output, so put in echo flushes to keep output moving, solving many previously mysterious problems specific to certain hosts; greatly re-wrote section on upgrading from earlier versions; package can now do "complex" (Boolean/wildcard) Amazon keyword searches to meet special needs; added "Overview"-of-installation doc to clarify the steps involved; daily run now backs up all customized files, not just major ones; now handles setting URL of sub-domains properly; and many small tidy-ups.

0.97 - [never publicly released].

0.96 - provided substantial new docfile on upgrading from early versions; touched up pages and scripts to allow for M$ IE's inability to correctly render HTML <center> commands around tables; revised discussion of optimum title count based on shortened per-title size from 0.95 upgrade.

0.95a - corrected a typo in finstall.php and upgrade.php that was creating a defective custom cronf.php file. Drat!

0.95 - "outsourced" ABE call-making to new abe.php file, making all dropin somewhat smaller, and facilitating easier commission split on Abe sales.

0.94 - corrected and augmented instructions in UPGRADE.INFO for replacing existing installations, and provided a new ancillary script, renamed.php, for facilitating such upgrade installs. Also added new special-purpose script pull.php for cases where a revised search keyword produces a materially lower titles total than its predecessor, so that the package failsafe refuses to write out the new results (thinking Amazon had hiccupped): the new script writes out the already found results ignoring prior totals, and so a one-time use rights the ship.

0.93 - fixed silly late error in customization of cronf.php file.

0.92 - augmented the instructions in UPGRADE.INFO to clarify a point in how best to upgrade.

0.91 - fixed bizarre typo that had somehow crept into findbooks.php since testing completed.

0.90 - more massive install improvements; also added a microtimer, to assure compliance with Amazon's "one call a second maximum" term of service. (Safe Mode with no wrappers remains an open issue, but probably cannot be handled at all, by this or any PHP-based package).

0.82 - massive changes--improvements, I hope--in the installation process, to simplify just about everything. This would be 0.90 save that I still need to nail down permissions in the insane PHP "Safe Mode with cgi wrappers unavailable" situation.

0.81 - made installs easier by automating customization of ancillary SHTML files; rewrote install procedures accordingly.

0.80 - made scripts smart enought to autodetect site and package directory; provided automatic backup of the customized files at every daily run, so a new (upgrade) package can just installed ovewr the old; re-did installer to better handle subdomain sites; various other trifling fixes and improvements.

0.75 - updated holders.php so that it puts a correct ssi-include statement in the 28 book-title pages even if the one in the template holders.shtml was not correctly set (something not obvious).

0.74 - corrected nasty but silly error in findbooks.php (left over from conversions away from then back to master/slave system) that killed results on timeout-retry.

0.73 - corrected trivial error in Install.html docfile.

0.72 - tweaked free1.php and free2.php for better display of site name when Amazon has no book-cover image.

0.71 - minor clarification added to CustomizePlus.html docfile.

0.70 - substantial revision in methodology to allow much more and much easier user customization of page appearance; eliminated pagetop.php and pagebottom.php files and replaced them with holder.shtml, a single template file for the 28 title-listing pages, plus holder.php, a script that remakes those pages from holder.shtml. The search output is now a separate set of 28 "dropin" files called as shtml includes by the 28 title-list pages. Also alowed substantial customization of the dropins themselves, so--in sum--those 28 pages can be made to fit perfectly into the "look and feel" of any site with only minimal one-time customization.

0.62/0.63 - (The details of those changes were lost in a drive failure here, but the master-slave method was restored to allow for servers that time out in searches for large numbers of titles.)

0.61 - vastly expanded documentation, and made it html files; made bookcount output screen pretty; added starttime/endtime logging to findbooks; changed sample .htaccess file name, and made it an generated output file from makedirs, so it comes pre-customized.

0.60 - dropped using master-slave processing, and so eliminated "dobooks.php"; correspondingly reworked "findbooks.php" to a standalone script that can run as a daemon process. Expanded install instructions and added "Customize.Plus" info file on further customizing the look of the 28 daily-generated book-list pages. Modified "makedirs.php", mostly cosmetic but added main-directory permissions readout for verification of setting.

0.53 - fixed typo in READ_ME.NOW that skipped a number in the steps; changed some PHP scripts to silence non-fatal "Warning" messages.

0.52 - fixed single non-critical typo in bookshop.shtml HTML.

0.51 - slightly revised pagetop.php and pagebottom.php to fix some trivial XHTML conformity matters.

0.50 - revised makedirs.php and READ_ME.NOW to reflect correct method of setting up package directory permissions to work sith "safe-mode" servers.

0.40 - revised makedirs.php install script to try to accomodate servers that don't automatically grant a user's PHP scripts file-write authority.

0.31 - modified text file READ_ME.NOW to clarify installation procedure.

0.30 - first numbered release.

To link to this page, please copy and paste this exact code:
<strong><a href="http://seo-toys.com/bookadder-seo-package/bookadder-package.shtml">the BookAdder SEO Tool</a></strong>

--Site Directory--

Search this site, or the web:

	Web seo-toys.com

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tools, Toys, and Packages:
  an introduction to SEO principles and the SEO Tools offered on this site

• The SEO Tools, Toys, and Packages:
  the actual free SEO Tools offered on this site

  • "Freebie"--
    several thousand relevant, no-maintenance, daily-changing site pages

  • "Validate"--
    make sure all your web pages are searchbot-readable HTML

  • "Weather"--

    Weather for the Moses Lake/Grant Co, WA area: Area is on 700 Latitude: & Longitude:      Conditions as of Jul 29 2010, 5:52 pm PDT Fair Temp: 93.0 Humidity: 21% Wind: 5.8 MPH from the Variable Heat Index: 90° F. Wind Chill: ° F. Barometer: 29.90 inches Visibility: 10.00 miles Dewpoint: 48.0° F. Coded by the SEO Toys site

    several sizes of page drop-ins for weather anywhere in the world   --this is the "tiny" form;     there are other samples available

    
    
  • "Rates"--

    exchange rates for (almost) any currency versus (almost) any others--   this is just a sample of what it can look like:

    To convert values in U.S. Dollars to foreign currency: To get:   Multiply USD by: EU Euro 0.7268 British Pound 0.6582 Japanese Yen 90.46 Canadian Dollar 1.0189 Mexican Peso 12.545 Swiss Franc 1.0575 To convert values in foreign currency to U.S. Dollars: Multiply:          by: EU Euro 1.3759 British Pound 1.5193 Japanese Yen 0.0111 Canadian Dollar 0.9815 Mexican Peso 0.0797 Swiss Franc 0.9456 (Code by SEO Toys)

    
    

  • "Know"--
    very small, very simple, modest but tantalizing "freshness" dropin suitable for any site or page whatever:
    

  • "ReDate"--
    make sure the searchbots know that your pages are fresh

  
  

• SEO Tips:
  useful explanations of SEO Basics

  • SEO Tips #1:
    "What Is SEO?" - an explanation of what SEO is and of some of the more important basic concepts in doing it

  • SEO Tips #2:
    "Don't Let the Tail Wag the Dog" - basics of good site design that co-exist with, but transcend, sheer SEO

  • SEO Tips #3:
    "That Pesky www" - how to keep from losing backlink value on all your pages

  • SEO Tips #4:
    PR versus SERPs - keeping your eye on the right ball

  
  

• Find and Buy Books:
  both new and used, from our bookshop via Amazon and Abebooks

  • About the SEO Tools, Tips, and Toys Bookshop

  • Internet-Related Books Available New Today:

    • Internet-Related Books By Title:

      ("internet" book titles beginning with the word "internet" are broken out separately in the alphabetical title lists below)

      A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | "Web" | X | Y | Z | non-letters

    • The "Internet"-Books "Master List" (a very large file!)

  • Search For Any New Book at Amazon

  • Search For Any Used Book at Abebooks

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