Dump of PHP Predefined Variables

Not dumped below are $_SESSION, $_ENV, $_FILES, $GLOBAL, $_SESSION.

For more information on the variables use see here.

$_SERVER

1

$_REQUEST

$_COOKIE

$_GET

$_POST

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Search Engine Friendly 301 Redirect in PHP

If you are finding that the www.sitename.com and sitename.com version of your site are both being indexed by the search engines you could hit an issue with the search engines seeing duplicate content - after all most sites have both site names resolving to the same underlying file structure. This can also be an issue for people with parked domains - if you’ve brought multiple domains with the common misspellings of your company name (for example), if the search engines index the parked domain you could have a duplicate content issue. Another issue is having links pointing to the various site names dilutes their value, but pointing them all at just one domain name you’ve got a better chance of higher rankings.

One of the best ways around this issue is to redirect all traffic destined for the domains you don’t want to get indexed to the site name you do want to get indexed. By using a 301 redirect the value of the links will also be redirected to the main site name.

PHP 301 Code

Place the following code into the header of any php document and it will redirect the page access to the correct site name. while preserving the script name and the query arguments.

// If the server name is not www.sitename.com we can do the redirect to www.sitename.com.
// The only time we can is if the method is a GET
// (no way to pass along the POST arguments) and its on port 80 (don't want to redirect the SSL).
if ( strcmp( strtolower( $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] ) , "www.sitename.com" ) != 0 &&
	strcmp( strtolower( $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] ) , "get" ) == 0 &&
	$_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] == 80 )
{
	header("Location: http://www.sitename.com" . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] );
	header("HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently");
	exit ;
}

Related

PHP 301 Redirect
ASP 301 Redirect
CFM Coldfusion 301 Redirect
JSP Java Server Pages 301 Redirect
404 Redirect one file at a time
404 Redirect one directory at a time
404 Redirect multiple pages easily

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Search Engine Friendly 301 Redirect in ASP

If you are finding that the www.sitename.com and sitename.com version of your site are both being indexed by the search engines you could hit an issue with the search engines seeing duplicate content - after all most sites have both site names resolving to the same underlying file structure. This can also be an issue for people with parked domains - if you’ve brought multiple domains with the common misspellings of your company name (for example), if the search engines index the parked domain you could have a duplicate content issue. Another issue is having links pointing to the various site names dilutes their value, but pointing them all at just one domain name you’ve got a better chance of higher rankings.

One of the best ways around this issue is to redirect all traffic destined for the domains you don’t want to get indexed to the site name you do want to get indexed. By using a 301 redirect the value of the links will also be redirected to the main site name.

ASP 301 Code

Place the following code into the header of any asp document and it will redirect the page access to the correct site name while preserving the script name and the query arguments.

<%
  ' If the server name is not www.sitename.com we can do the redirect to www.sitename.com.
  ' The only time we can is if the method is a GET
  ' (no way to pass along the POST arguments) and its on port 80 (don't want to redirect the SSL).
if ( strcomp( lcase( Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME") ) , "www.sitename.com", 1 ) <> 0 _
    AND Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_PORT") = 80 _
    AND strcomp( lcase( Request.ServerVariables("REQUEST_METHOD") ) , "get" , 1 ) = 0 _
) then
    URL = "http://www.sitename.com" & Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME")
    if len ( request.servervariables("QUERY_STRING" ) ) > 0 then
        URL = URL + "?" + request.servervariables("QUERY_STRING" )
    end if
    Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
    Response.AddHeader "Location", URL
    Response.End
end if
%>

Related

PHP 301 Redirect
ASP 301 Redirect
CFM Coldfusion 301 Redirect
JSP Java Server Pages 301 Redirect
404 Redirect one file at a time
404 Redirect one directory at a time
404 Redirect multiple pages easily

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Authority Websites

Traditional search engine optimization will continue to be part of your efforts excepting for our methodology will change. You will continue to work on link exchanges, keywords, descriptions, titles, headlines, image alt descriptions, comments, and content. Now you will focus your keywords to be very specific and watch you density. Your descriptions will not be as long, but concentrate on more concise descriptions. You will want to watch your HTML coding to make the process easier for the search engine spiders. Try using fewer tables and consider Cascading Style Sheets. The link exchanges will have to be more specific to your industry and with websites that are authoritative in nature. <-->

Authoritative websites is the direction to consider for 2006. Not only making your website an authority for your target market, but to exchange links with other websites that are authoritative for that same target market. What are authoritative websites to link with? Basically there are is a relatively small set of websites that can be trusted as authority, or expert websites. Government sites, university websites, well-recognized news sources, and recognized industry news sources are all examples of sites that can be considered as ?expert? websites. These sites, unlike the average website on the Internet, can be trusted to ?link honestly?.

Take the following example. I recently went to Google, MSN and Yahoo and searched on the term “internet marketing consultants” and the result on the first page for all three search engines were somewhat surprising. Instead of finding a page full of businesses that provide internet marketing services over 75% of the results were websites that were resources for internet marketing. A careful review of each of these websites revealed all of them to be content rich in their field of internet marketing. They did not provide any services other than information for others to use about internet marketing. For the purpose of this writing these results indicate (1) that making your site an authority for your field and industry is very important to achieve top ranking, and (2) you want to seek out these types of websites to create inbound links if possible and feasible. Otherwise engage a reciprocal link exchange.

Getting noticed by authority websites can be difficult, but with some creativity it can be done. If you make your business newsworthy, news outlets within your industry and without will pickup your news story and hopefully link over to your website. Traditional marketing and public relations requires you to make your company known as an authority within your industry. You should want your clients to know that you are the best source for whatever it is you sell, and that they should trust you. You gain this trust by being visible, not just through your website, but through the websites of other trusted sources such as news outlets. These types of marketing methods would include engaging in public relations, networking, attending trade shows, and talking to news sources both within your industry and outside of your industry.

Your website is a business. No different than a retail brick-and-mortar store you will spend as much time working your website as a regular any regular business. Do not believe that the comfort of your home or that you are working with computers and technology you are able to run your business any easier. The only thing that has changed is the venue, everything else is the same. You have to provide quality content, engage in activities that make your website known, and make your website the absolute best in your target market.

Posted in Linking and Publicity, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

OnPage Search Engine Optimization Techniques

Search Engine Optimization is the art of designing your web pages to be ranked high by search engines for keywords that you target. There are several methods and they vary from Search Engine to Search Engine. One aspect of Search Engine Optimization relays heavily on the Onpage Optimization.

Onpage Optimization deals with the placement of keywords on the page, the header tags, the appearance of the keywords and the use of keywords in the meta and alt tags on the page. Below are some tips on OnPage optimization that I have picked up and used in my own web sites.

Step1: Select a page title that only includes your keywords.

Step 2: Use Header Tags to emphasize the keywords you have selected. Use your number 1 keyword in the {H1} tag and secondary keywords in your {H2} header tags.

Step 3: Write solid content that naturally includes your main and your secondary keywords throughout the text. If possible use your first keyword as near the top of the content and as close to the bottom of the content as possible.

Step 4: Once the content is complete go through and randomly bold, italicize and underline the main and secondary keywords.

Step 5: Be sure to use your keywords in the alt tags of your images.

As a guide you might do a search for you main keyword in Google. View the page and the source code of the page to see what OnPage Optimization that webmaster did to get a top rank.

While OnPage Optimization can be a significant reason why your web site ranks well in the search engine there are several other key factors like, page content, link popularity, site indexing and competition.

Search Engine Optimization is an equal opportunity marketing practice. If you are diligent you can create a flood of prime targeted.

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The first step in any search engine optimization campaign

[2) Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag

I often see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a high ranking for those keywords. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned. Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get a high ranking. To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual body content of your site.

3) Creating lots of similar doorway pages

Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine is different, they need to create different pages for different search engines. While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice. If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that the search engines make to their algorithms. Furthermore, although the pages are meant for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other. The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from their index. Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search engines. In order to learn how to create such pages, see my article on this topic at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_a&keyword-rich-pa ges.htm

4) Using Hidden Text

Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text. Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their pages as keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don’t perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color. This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords, the human visitors cannot. The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.

However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose you have a page with a white background and a table in that page with a black background. Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn’t be called hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table is black. Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see whether you have inadvertently made any such mistake.

5) Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames

Many search engines don’t understand frames. For sites which have used frames, these search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag: “This site uses frames, but your browser doesn’t support them”. For the search engines which don’t understand frames, this is all the text that they ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag. For more information on the different issues that arise when you use frames in your site, see my article on this topic at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_a&frames.htm

6) Using Page Cloaking

Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different circumstances. People generally use page cloaking for two reasons: i) in order to hide the source code of their search engine optimized pages from their competitors and ii) in order to prevent human visitors from having to see a page which looks good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to humans. The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the search engines from being able to spider the same page that their users are going to see. And if the search engines can’t do this, they can no longer be confident of providing relevant results to their users. Thus, if a search engine discovers that a site has used cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever from their index. Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using cloaking in your site. For more information on what page cloaking is, how it is implemented, and why you should not use cloaking, see my article on this topic at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_a&page-cloaking.h tm

7) Using Automatic Submission Tools

In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or service to submit their sites to the major search engines. It is true that submitting your site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and that an automatic submission tool can help you save a lot of time. However, the search engines don’t like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages if you use them. In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too important for you not to spend the time to submit your site manually to them. In order to speed up the process of submitting your site, you can use our free submission tool which allows you to submit your site manually to all the search engines, without having to go to the “ADD URL” pages of the individual engines. It is available at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_a&submission.htm

Devoting too much time to search engine positioning

Yes - I lied. There’s another common mistake that people make when it comes to search engine optimization - they spend too much time over it. Sure, search engine placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your site and you do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines work and in optimizing your site for the search engines. However, you must remember that search engine optimization is a means to an end for you - it’s not the end in itself. The end is to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence, apart from trying to improve your site’s position in the search engines, you also need to spend time on all the other factors which determine the success or the failure of your web site - the quality of the products and services that you are selling, the quality of your customer service, and so on. You may have excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of your products and services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to be desired, those high rankings aren’t going to do much good.

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Avoiding a Bad SEO Experience

There are many pitfalls associated with search engine optimization. There is the decision of whether you should do it in-house or outsource it. There is the process of finding a vendor that will be right for you and your business. Feel free to discuss this on our blog ‘Insights into search for Business’.

Avoiding a Bad Search Engine Optimization Experience

As a provider of search marketing services we have many enquiries from companies that have had a bad search engine optimization (SEO) experience in the past and are looking for a reputable company to work with. Often these clients have been banned from search engines because the companies that they have hired to improve their search rankings use quick fix, unethical SEO techniques.

What can you do to ensure that this does not happen to your business? Or if you have had problems in the past how can you be sure that these experiences will never happen again?

It is essential that you take care in choosing who you work with as this company will be responsible for representing you and your business. Would you hire a new employee, a lawyer or an accountant without doing any research? There is a lot at stake here so it is essential that you do the groundwork and be as informed as possible.

These companies may be representing you – but it will still be your site and your business. It is your responsibility to know what the SEO company is doing and if it is using unethical techniques. It is your site so you should be aware of the techniques being used to promote your business and that search engine guidelines are being followed.

Often these unscrupulous companies offer a guaranteed meteoric rise in ranking and the lure of quick profits. Remember if it seems to be too good to be true then it usually is. Avoid companies that email you their services – or even worse - the ones that send out a fake invoice for their services. If they are presenting their services in this manner you probably have a good insight into their general business principles.

What should you do when evaluating a search engine optimization company?

 

Determine your business goals and your goals for search marketing. Find out what your SEO expectations are. Are you in a competitive marketplace? What is your search marketing budget? 

 

You should ask around. Which companies are people you know recommending? A successful SEO will get a high percentage of their clients from referrals. 

 

Do they communicate clearly with you? Are they interested in your business? Are they trying to inform you about the industry and not just selling? 

 

Where is their site in the search engine results? If the company is good at SEO then their site should be ranked well, if their site is not listed in the rankings you need to wonder why. 

 

Ask for step by step information on what they will do to promote your site. If there is any area which your gut tells doesn’t sound right do your research. There is plenty of information available for you to research. Type “ethical SEO” and ‘search engine spam” into Google and you will find lots of data to compare. 

 

What is their Page Rank? A PR of 3 is relatively easy to get with a small site, while a PR of 6 is harder, and above that is extremely difficult. If you’re approached by a SEO company (or any marketing company for that matter) with a PR of 0 or an unranked site ask why. 

 

What is their customer support like? When you first approached them did you receive a form email in reply? Did they even look at your website? Did you receive a detailed proposal along with testimonials and other backup material? Ask for references and follow up on them. 

 

Do they know SEO or is it just a sideline to their main business (web design, web hosting, advertising agency). If you speak to anyone in this industry you will find out that keeping up to date on the latest SEO information is a full time job 

 

How much experience do they have? Are they new to the industry in which case do you want them experimenting on your site? 

 

Has the company ever turned down a site because it could not be successfully optimized? e.g. sites built with frames or flash sites. Or turned them down because they were involved in unethical business practices e.g. link farms. 

 

Make comparisons with other companies. Some SEO companies rely on one aspect of SEO (e.g. linking campaigns), others offer a complete package. Remember to compare like with like. There is no point in comparing a proposal which is just going to cover meta tags and keywords to a proposal which is a full service SEO package including optimization, content creation, and a links campaign. 

 

Does the company provide ongoing maintenance to maintain your rankings? Search engines change their algorithms constantly and without regular monitoring and maintenance rankings will eventually slip. What is good today may not be good tomorrow. 

There are a growing number of excellent and ethical search engine optimization companies out there. Do your research and find out who they are. Also develop an understanding of what is involved in developing a search marketing program. Take an assertive stance and become informed. Also, use your common sense. Developing a search marketing plan should be as involved as developing a traditional marketing plan. It requires hard work and dedication. Find out the costs involved and put together a search marketing budget. Shop around and be aware of other business factors being offered by the SEO company such as customer service and payment terms.

If you look upon the process of choosing an SEO company as you would in choosing a business partner then you are headed in the right direction. It could be that a large part of the success of your business is reliant on search marketing - so you should do the groundwork and find out what is involved. Then you can make an informed decision and feel confidant that you have chosen a quality business partner who is dedicated towards helping your business grow.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »

Writing Optimized Articles

Search engines give the highest organic ranking to authority sites. These are sites that have lots of unique and relevant information which makes people want to link to the site. One way to build up this information is by developing articles related to your business or industry. These articles should be optimized in order for you to get the benefit of increased ranking on various search engines. The goal is to put these articles on your website and also optimize them to be indexed by search engines.

To write an optimized article you should choose a topic that is related to your business and website. Do not copy content from your site. It should be original as search engines do not like duplicated content.

How is this done? The article should be optimized for a particular keyword. So if your keyword is ‘Online Soccer Game’ and you wanted to write an article about the ‘basic rules’ of Online Soccer Game you may go about the article like this.

1. Locate Keywords in Title
   The article title should incorporate the keywords. The title informs the search engine of the content of the page. Enclose the title with an h1 tag as certain search engines may give this more weight. For example: ‘Online Soccer Game – The Basic Rules’
2. Locate Keywords throughout the Content
   Incorporate the keyword into what you write. The theme of the article should revolve around the keyword. As the keyword will be closely related to the content and it is your area of expertise this should not be too challenging. Use common sense while doing this and write for the reader – not the search engine. Aim for around 600+ words.
3. Locate Keyword in First Paragraph
   The first paragraph is generally the most important and search engines put more weight on this than the paragraphs that come after it. Therefore make sure your keyword is as near to the top of this paragraph as possible. This should be easy if it is the topic of your article. This is also the part of the article that draws in the reader, captures their attention and entices them to read further.
4. Locate Keyword in Final Paragraph
   Certain search engines may give extra weight to the final paragraph, so include the keyword in a summary.
5. Locate Keywords in Subheadings
   Search engines can look at the subheadings within an article and give them extra weight especially if they are enclosed within h2 or h3 HTML tags. They do this to find out the relevancy of the page content. Subheadings are also often scanned by online readers. For example: ‘Online Soccer Game and The Offside Rule’

Inject your personality into your writing and try to connect with your visitors. This connection will make your visitors feel that they belong. Informal, friendly, conversational language works best.

When writing the article the key is to have the subject matter of your article relate to your keywords. This will make it easy to write for both the article reader and the search engine. You should also include a brief biography about yourself and include a hot link to your website so that if your article is picked up you get acknowledgment and your website gets a valuable link.

Article Distribution Channels

You can submit your article to the publishers of your choice. This can be a time consuming process so you may want to save time and use an article distributor. There are many article distribution channels (also known as ‘content hubs’) that you can use. Do a search and you will see things like ‘we will distribute your article to 20,000+ publishers’ for example. Most of these distribution services charge you for the service. There are a few things you should find out.

• How many people will receive the article?
• Who will receive the article?
• Will the article copyright remain with you?
• Will your websites hyperlink be submitted and remain active?

Distribution services will submit your article to websites, blogs, newsletters, etc and so it will spread throughout the internet. Links from your articles on all these sites will point back directly to your website. This results in increased search engine rankings and also increased traffic to your site.

Publishers are always on the lookout for great articles. The benefits of optimizing articles for you are great. And it is a long term strategy. Articles have longevity in that they often receive greater exposure over time as they are picked up and redistributed by other publishers. This increases your exposure and the total links to your site.

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Choosing a Newswire Service to Distribute Optimized Press Releases

Press releases have traditionally been associated with public relations. Over the past ten years there have been major changes in the field brought about by the development of the web. This has led to the online distributions of releases and so the function is now being increasingly associated with the technical skills belonging to search engine marketers. For many people in the search marketing field who are not experienced in public relations and have been approached to optimize press releases the field can be confusing. The basics of press release optimization are similar to keyword optimization for web sites; however there are some areas that demand specialized knowledge.

Firstly an overview of the basics of press releases. Generally speaking the goal of a press release is to generate favorable media coverage that is aimed at your target audience. Therefore you need to know your target audience and where they go for their information. From this you can build a media list of journalists and publications you want to contact. Once you have your media list you need to determine your distribution method.

What makes up a successful press release?

There are many ingredients to a good press release. It has to be well written, preferably by a subject expert, it has to be a good read, and it has to be newsworthy so that journalists and your target audience will be interested in your news. A good press release always has well written content offering unique information presented in a story type of format.

When you have prepared your press release how do you deliver it to your media contacts? You have a few options. You can correspond directly with individual media contacts. You can distribute it via a media database service which enables you to pay for and build a media list from their database of editors, reporters, producers, etc. Your other option is to deliver your release via a newswire service.

A newswire service distributes news and information. It may also offer additional services related to targeting, evaluation and measurement of results. Your distribution may be targeted towards a more specialized distribution list or on a more broad, national or international level.

There are many newswire services to choose from and for someone new it may be confusing. If you do a search for ‘newswire service’ you will come across many services including PRNewswire, BusinessWire, PR Web, MarketWire, PR Leap, US Newswire, and many others.

Choosing a newswire service depends on your approach. Press releases can be approached from a public relations viewpoint or a search marketing viewpoint or some combination of both. Before the growth of the web it was primarily used as a public relations tool to get news published. With the growth of the web it developed into a way to target prospects, not just the media. It also developed into a way to get additional search engine traffic through almost immediate indexing and placement, incoming links, brand development, and keyword targeting. Press releases can also be used to control and dominate a search engine space by focusing on a particular brand name.

Traditional Newswire Slow to Adapt

I have observed that some of the older, more traditional, newswire services such as PRNewswire (est. 1954) and BusinessWire (est. 1961) were slow to adapt to the needs of the digital environment. However they have rapidly caught up. Unfortunately their services are relatively expensive ($500-$700 per 400 word release and can include an annual membership fee of $100+). These are the newswire services that tend to be used by traditional PR agencies for their corporate clients.

Some of the newer newswire agencies such as PR-Web (est. 1997) and PR Leap (est. 2003) were at forefront of adapting to the digital age. They promote their services by stating that they offer free press release distribution but do accept contributions for an increasingly expanded range of services. These contributions for expanded services range from $20 to $200+. These newswire services are generally used by small to medium sized online businesses, search engine marketing and new media agencies.

Favorite Newswire Is…

From my experience, and trial and error with the various services I tend to favor PR-Web for optimized press releases. PR Web is on the leading edge of online news releases and is geared towards optimized press releases. Not only do they release instantaneously to online media sources and journalists but they also offer a database of older press releases for media research. Then there is the cost advantage. I find that the $80 contribution works well and gets you listed in Google News and Yahoo News on the day of release. I also use the $200 contribution which enables you to include hotlinks in the text and also attach images. (In my experience the free service does not offer the range of services that you will need to maximize exposure for your release.) These news listings also filter through the web search engine results pages (SERPs) within a few days where they can stay active for around a month. When they are picked up by other media sources and added to their site’s content they can say in the SERPs for an indefinite time.

If you are involved in a online reputation management campaign or if you are trying to control a particular search engine space you may want to use more than one newswire service and use multiple releases for the keyword. I have found that this is a useful way to increase your total presence within the SERPs for a brand or corporate name. This enables you to have your unique content located on different sites to show up for your keyword.

More and more search engine marketers are making use of the possibilities that press release optimization offers for their clients. And more and more public relations professionals are coming to these marketers to optimize their press releases. To take full advantage of these possibilities my advice is to experiment with different newswire services to find out what service works best for you and your clients. Also be aware that the field is very dynamic so try to stay on top of new developments and stay on the lookout for any new newswire services that enter the marketplace.

James Peggie is the marketing manager for Elixir Systems - a search marketing company located in Scottsdale, Arizona. His expertise includes search marketing, online public relations and online reputation management. www.elixirsystems.com

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Blocking The Search Engine Spiders From Indexing Specific Pages

Dylan Downhill
© 2005 Elixir Systems

The best way to ensure content is not indexed by the search engines is to not put it on the publicly accessible web in the first place. If you don’t want personal details of your love life to be found then don’t put them on the internet!

If you want to publish information for a select group (perhaps a new design) then if you don’t link to the new pages from anywhere then the spiders will not be able to find them.

You can put password protection on the pages - the search engines will not enter passwords and so not index the pages.

You can add a line to the robots.txt file blocking access to these pages (a good tutorial is here). This allows visitors to read the pages but will block spiders from reading them. This is also probably the best way to block whole directories. One down side is it makes it clear to anyone where your protected content is.

The robots meta tag is also available, just put the following line in the <head> section of each page:
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW”>
The spiders will download the page, but upon finding the meta tag will ignore the page. This should be avoided where you don’t want the spiders to download the page - due to resource usage issues for example.
Click for more information on the robots meta tag

The ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ tag is only supported by Google at present and so doesn’t help protect content as well as the methods above. I mainly use it to block text links I don’t want to be found for (links saying ‘home’ for example).

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