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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

On Page Optimization - Usage of Meta Robots Tags

I am pretty active on SEO forums, and I always see people asking what is the Meta Robots Tag and what is its function. Well, here is your answer. The Meta Robots Tags is one of the most frequently used tags. It basically gives the search engine bot (Googlebot, Msnbot, etc.) specific instructions on what to do in your webpage. Those instructions usually give certain restrictions to the search engines such as not indexing your web page, not following any links on your web page, not taking a snippet as a description, and much more.
These Meta Robots Tags should be included in the <head> section of your web page. You should note that, you do not need to tell a search engine to index your web page or to follow links on your web page and so on. The search engine does that by default. I will list all the main and most commonly used Meta Robots Tags.

NoIndex

This tag will prevent your web page from being indexed in the search engines’ database. If wish for nobody to see it or have access to it directly from the search engines, then you would put the “noindex” tag so that search engine won’t index it and make it available to everybody on the web. This is the “noindex” code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

NoFollow

This tag is used to tell the search engines not to follow any links that are on that particular web page. Let’s say you have too many outgoing links from your website, this makes you lose a lot of your link juice. Therefore, you would use a “nofollow” tag so the search engine won’t follow any links on that given web page. This is the “nofollow” code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”>

NoArchive

This tag will prevent your web page from being archived by the search engine. In other words, there won’t be a cached copy of your web page in the search engine’s database. This is useful if you have an ecommerce website because you can make promotions, change prices, and all sorts of changes without ever archiving the other versions. This is the “noarchive” code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noarchive”>

NoODP

This tag will prevent an open directory project to give a description of the page when you show up in SERPs. If your site in submited in DMOZ, the description and the title that will be shown in SERPs are those that are listed in DMOZ. This isn’t good because sometimes, the title and description do not fit the web page. Using the “noodp” tag will make sure that the proper description and title are shown in SERPs. This is the “NoODP” code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>

NoYDIR

This tag is similar to the “NoODP” tag. The only diference is that this tag prevents the Yahoo directory title and description from being displayed in SERPs. This is the “noydir” tag:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noydir”>

NoSnippet

This tag is used if you do not wish the search engine to display a snippet of your web page in SERPs. For those who do not know what a snippet is, it is a description that the search engine takes out of your content which he thinks fits best your web page. This could be annoying because the search engine might not select the right description for your web page. This is the “nosnippet” code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”nosnippet”>

NoImageIndex

This tag is used if you wish the search engines not to index your web page’s images. However, this could work against you because you can be found in image search if you include keywords in your images. I suggest you use it only if neccessary. This is the “noimageindex” code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noimageindex”>

NoTranslate

This tag is used if you wish the search engine not to translate your web page’s content. This is the “notranslate” code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”notranslate”>

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