If you have two pages cannibalizing each other and want to keep both without changing their content, noindex one. Keyword cannibalization happens when two pages share a similar keyword and searc h intent, thus causing them to compete against each other in SERPs. Use a robots meta tag to manage which pages appear in search results. These extraneous pages detract resources from more valuable pages. Index bloat happens when Google indexes pages with little-to-no value for searchers. The directive looks like this: X-Robots-Tag: noindex However, unlike the robots meta tag, which lives in a page’s HTML header, an x-robots tag is placed in the HTTP header response. The same directives specified for robots meta tags are used for x-robots. To block a PDF, video, or image from appearing in SERPs, use an x-robots tag. Use a robots meta tag in conjunction with the robots.txt file to avoid this. If pages covered under your robots.txt directives receive external links, search engines may index them. Remember - robots.txt only blocks crawlers from accessing a page, not from indexing it. If you link to a page included in your robots.txt file, you may want to add a robots meta tag to it as well to ensure it doesn’t show up in search results. Internal subdirectories, like those that are employee-onlyįollow these steps to create a robots.txt file, and be sure to link to your XML sitemap.Forums where user-generated spam can cause issues.Use it to block search crawlers from accessing and indexing: It’s like a personal Do Not Disturb sign for your website hanging out on the root directory of your domain or subdomain.Ī robots.txt file is best for blocking entire subdirectories from being accessed and crawled rather than for individual pages. Robots.txt is a file that allows site owners to tell search engines which parts of their site they don’t want crawled. You don’t need to include “follow” in the meta tag since that’s the default. Googlebot and other web crawlers may access the page and follow the links on it, but they should not index the page itself. Googlebot and other web crawlers may access the page, but they should not index it or follow its links. Common robots meta tag directives include: It can also be used to ask crawlers not to follow links, translate a page, block a specific search bot, or keep a cached link from appearing in SERPs. Often called a noindex tag or a noindex meta tag, the robots meta tag can do more than just tell a search crawler not to index a page. Robots Meta TagĪ robots meta tag is added to the section of a particular web page and only passes instructions about that specific page. However, they can’t and shouldn’t be used interchangeably. More simply put: They tell Google what to put into Google Search and what to keep out of it, as well as which pages they should crawl. All three give instructions to search crawlers about pages and are part of the robots exclusion protocol (REP). Robots meta tag is often confused with robots.txt file and x-robots tag.
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