Affiliate Revenue

Ezine Publishing

Site Promotion

How to Prevent Duplicate Content with Effective Use of the Robots.txt and Robots Meta Tag

Duplicate content is one of the problems that we regularly come across as part of the search engine optimization services we offer. If the search engines determine your site contains similar content, this may result in penalties and even exclusion from the search engines. Fortunately it's a problem that is easily rectified.

Your primary weapon of choice against duplicate content can be found within "The Robot Exclusion Protocol" which has now been adopted by all the major search engines.

There are two ways to control how the search engine spiders index your site.

1. The Robot Exclusion File or "robots.txt" and

2. The Robots < Meta > Tag

The Robots Exclusion File (Robots.txt)
This is a simple text file that can be created in Notepad. Once created you must upload the file into the root directory of your website e.g. www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. Before a search engine spider indexes your website they look for this file which tells them exactly how to index your site's content.

The use of the robots.txt file is most suited to static html sites or for excluding certain files in dynamic sites. If the majority of your site is dynamically created then consider using the Robots Tag.

Creating your robots.txt file

Example 1 Scenario
If you wanted to make the .txt file applicable to all search engine spiders and make the entire site available for indexing. The robots.txt file would look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Explanation
The use of the asterisk with the "User-agent" means this robots.txt file applies to all search engine spiders. By leaving the "Disallow" blank all parts of the site are suitable for indexing.

Example 2 Scenario
If you wanted to make the .txt file applicable to all search engine spiders and to stop the spiders from indexing the faq, cgi-bin the images directories and a specific page called faqs.html contained within the root directory, the robots.txt file would look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /faq/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /faqs.html

Explanation
The use of the asterisk with the "User-agent" means this robots.txt file applies to all search engine spiders. Preventing access to the directories is achieved by naming them, and the specific page is referenced directly. The named files & directories will now not be indexed by any search engine spiders.

Example 3 Scenario
If you wanted to make the .txt file applicable to the Google spider, googlebot and stop it from indexing the faq, cgi-bin, images directories and a specific html page called faqs.html contained within the root directory, the robots.txt file would look like this:

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /faq/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /faqs.html

Explanation

By naming the particular search spider in the "User-agent" you prevent it from indexing the content you specify. Preventing access to the directories is achieved by simply naming them, and the specific page is referenced directly. The named files & directories will not be indexed by Google.

That's all there is to it!

As mentioned earlier the robots.txt file can be difficult to implement in the case of dynamic sites and in this case it's probably necessary to use a combination of the robots.txt and the robots tag.

The Robots Tag
This alternative way of telling the search engines what to do with site content appears in the section of a web page. A simple example would be as follows;

In this example we are telling all search engines not to index the page or to follow any of the links contained within the page.

In this second example I don't want Google to cache the page, because the site contains time sensitive information. This can be achieved simply by adding the "noarchive" directive.

What could be simpler!

Although there are other ways of preventing duplicate content from appearing in the Search Engines this is the simplest to implement and all websites should operate either a robots.txt file and or a Robot tag combination.

Should you require further information about our search engine marketing or optimization services please visit us at http://www.e-prominence.co.uk - The search marketing company

Web Designer, Meet Search Engine Optimization Promotion World (press release), CA - Aug 28, 2008 So why does the average search engine optimization company pay such little regard to professional design? Because search engine optimization specialists are ...

Google Suggest to Change the Ways of Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Roundtable - Aug 28, 2008 Earlier this week, we reported that Google Suggest was going to become more mainstream -- that is, that it would be the search default. ...

Best Syndication

SEO NYC - One Stop Solution For Search Engine Optimization Services Best Syndication, CA - Aug 26, 2008 The medium used for promoting a website is search engine optimization (SEO). If you are seeking services for getting maximum visibility for your website, ...

Search Engine Optimization Firm, Brick Marketing Revises Search ... PR Web (press release), WA - Aug 26, 2008 Brick Marketing, an internet marketing company, has recently revised and re-launched their search engine optimization services to adjust with growing trends ...

What is the Black Hat Definition for Search Engine Optimization? Search Engine Roundtable - Aug 26, 2008 Vanessa Fox blogged about her experience at SES San Jose last week. She attended the highly talked about White Hat, Black Hat session and explained her ...

Affiliate Revenue

Ezine Publishing

Site Promotion

| 1000 Free Places for Ads! | Free Classified Ads | Free-For-All Ads |  Reciprocal Links | Search Engines |
| Award Sites | Webmaster Tools | Free Giveaways | Get Paid to Surf | 
| Free Business Classifieds | Auction Tips | Debt Consolidation Tips | Become a Notary Public |