Just wrote a short blurb on my other blog that deals with online marketing.
An eyetracking study has been done that followed how people actually view your website. The images posted are more than just eyeopening. They show you how to layout a website and in what order for real, human, visitors.
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 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.
Source: ArticlesFactory.com
Should you require further information about our search engine marketing or optimization services please visit us at http://www.e-prominence.co.uk – The specialist search marketing company.
If You Have A Blog But Not A Lot Of Time, Here Are 5 Tips To Help
by: Lynette Chandler
1. Start a Community Blog. A community blog is just that, a community of like-minded people who contribute to a blog. One of the obvious advantages to this type of blog is that you don’t need to spend a lot of time posting yourself to be part of an active blog. If you have a community of three or more people and you each post at least twice a week then you will have a pretty active blog. Be sure to use an RSS feed and have all contributors post the feed on their sites to get the benefit of each sites visitors.
2. Hire a team of bloggers. Newspapers have contributors, blogs can too. If you’ve ever used writers to do articles and content for you , they can do the same type of thing with a blog. Many of the most successful blogs are already doing this. The combination of group promotion effort, regular updates and pinging can help bring in traffic quickly. One thing to note here is blogs are a somewhat social tool. Some very popular niche blogs are not all that visible in the search engines, yet they get a lot of traffic because people recommend them and they become a sort of buzz hub. Search engines do not always pick up on this but they do eventually. This is why group blogging can be very powerful because you’re leveraging the power of not one (your) influence group but several people’s influence group. If you do pay your bloggers, you can always offset this cost by displaying Adsense ads. Many popular blogs earn a good amount in Adsense, that they make a nice profit even after paying their bloggers team. After a while it becomes a passive income stream.
3. Recycle Content. By taking previously published articles, interviews or even audio and breaking it up into blog sized pieces you can recycle old content and make it new again! You can break up long pieces into a bunch of segments and have a series going for, say, a week or so. Then you won’t have to worry about coming up with new content for a week!
4. Include audio. For some of us, it’s much easier to speak than to write. So, mix up your blog. Carry a small portable MP3 recorder or blog by phone. What a convenient way for moms who are running around all day , busing the kids where they need to go , doing errands , and whatever else needs to be done. Maybe you’re stuck in traffic, or waiting for the kids to get out piano class or school. An idea or thought strikes and you think “Oh I need to share that on my blog” so, pick up your phone (assuming you have a cell phone - and many of us do), dial a number, say what’s on your mind, save it and you’re done. Your blog is published. If you’re using Blogger, you can do this for free through AudioBlog. It involves calling a long distance number, but most cell phone plans don’t charge extra for long distance anyway so you’re not incurring any extra cost.
If you’re using another blog publishing tool like WordPress, Movable Type or TypePad, then you’ll need a service like AudioBlogger.com. This one is a paid service but it’s only $4.95 a month and it gives you more options like a nice flash player, statistics and even video that make it worth while.
5. Automating Your Blog. One of the things I love about using Wordpress as a publishing tool is that it offers a forward blog entry option that saves me tons of time. By using this tool you can blog ahead of time and have your entries posted on the day and time you choose. So let’s say you have a week’s worth of posts ready to go. You don’t have to come back each day and post, instead you write everything up in one day and schedule a new post out 24 hrs after the next. This will save you time!
Let’s face it. There will be times we have a ton to say and times we have little or nothing to share. Instead of having multiple entries one day and nothing over the next few days, by using forward entry you can blog everyday of the week. Or rather you blog once and the blog publishing tool does the job automatically the rest of the week. You can even forward blog for weeks and months ahead of time.
Note: Blogger users unfortunately cannot do this because Blogger publishes all entries regardless what you date it immediately.
Affectionately nicknamed Tech Diva by her peers, Lynette Chandler regularly dispenses blogging and RSS help to countless business owners. Visit http://www.BloggingStarterPack.com to learn more about blogging and get a copy of her video free.