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Published: March 30, 2009
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Google, Yahoo, the X-Robots directive and your website rankings
Last week, Yahoo announced that they now support the X-Robots-Tag in the HTTP header. This new tag allows you to influence how Google and Yahoo index your website pages.
What is the X-Robots-Tag?
Google introduced the new X-Robots-Tag directive in 2007 to allow webmasters to control access to non-web page documents, such as Adobe PDF files, video and audio files.
The X-Robots-Tag is included in the HTTP header of a document. The HTTP header is the initial reply of a server to a query. It contains information about the document that follows, including content type, creation date, character set, encodings, etc.
The new X-Robots-Tag allows webmasters to add information about search engine indexing to the HTTP header. _
Which commands are supported by the X-Robots-Tag?
At this time, the X-Robots-Tag supports the following commands:
- X-Robots-Tag: NOINDEX (Use this tag if you don’t want to show the URL in Google’s search results)
- X-Robots-Tag: NOARCHIVE (Use this tag if you don’t want to see a Cache link in the search result pages for the document)
- X-Robots-Tag: NOSNIPPET (Use this tag if you don’t want to display a summary in the search result pages.)
- X-Robots-Tag: NOFOLLOW (Use this tag if you don’t want Googe and Yahoo to index the links in the page.)
The X-Robots-Tag is currently supported by Google and Yahoo. Other search engines don’t support the tag yet.
How to add the X-Robots-Tag to your documents
It depends on your server and on the method you use to create your web pages how you can add additional tags to the HTTP header. If your web server uses Apache, you can use the htaccess file to modify your HTTP headers.
In general, you shouldn’t mess with the HTTP header if you’re not 100% sure what you’re doing. A broken HTTP header can keep search engines away so that no search engine will index your website.
Instead of using the X-Robots-Tag, you can also add meta tags with the same functionality to your web pages:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noarchive”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”nosnippet”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>You can edit these tags directly in the head part of your web pages. They have the same effect as the corresponding X-Robots-Tags explained above.
Do you need the X-Robots-Tag or the corresponding meta tags?
If you don’t want to limit access to your documents of if you only have normal web pages on your website then you don’t need the X-Robots-Tag or the meta tags.
The X-Robots-Tag has been designed to restrict access to your documents. That means that it does not help to increase search engine rankings.
The new X-Robots-Tag and the meta robots tag allow you to restrict access to your documents. If you want to make sure that search engines index all of your web pages then you have to optimize your web pages.
Search engine robots must be able to easily parse your web pages and they must be able to find the right elements on your web pages. If you optimize the right web page elements with the right keywords, your web page will get high search engine rankings for these keywords.
Does Google ever forgive a penalized website?
Getting high rankings on Google is so important for the success of a website that some webmasters try anything to get on Google’s first result page.
Unfortunately, many of the methods that promise high search engine rankings are basically spam. Google doesn’t like spam at all and if Google finds out that your website contains spam elements, your website will be penalized.
Which web page elements are cosidered spam by Google?
Google considers quite a few things as spam. The most popular ones are automatically generated doorway pages, cloaking and false redirects, keyword stuffing, hidden text or hidden links, paid links and automated linking systems.
What does Google do to penalize websites?
When Google penalizes a website, the website will either be removed completely from the index or the positions of a website in the search results will be lowered.
Does Google ever forgive a penalized website?
In a discussion in an online forum, webmasters shared their experience with re-inclusion requests on Google. One webmaster reported that it took over one year until a website had its old rankings back:
“One of my clients was completely banned from Google for a spammy link exchange program; we cleaned ‘em all up and filed a reinclusion request, and they are currently #1-3 for just about every relevant search phrase you could think of.
They’re ranking higher now than they ever did before the penalty – but it did take about a year to work their way up to that point.”
Another webmaster confirmed that it takes long until Google re-gains trust in a website:
“That’s what I’ve seen, too. A long, slow release from ‘probation’ as trust builds.
I do think Google always has a record of the past penalty somewhere, and any future infractions might be dealt with quite harshly. But you definitely can see a site get completely released from the ranking effects of a penalty.”
It’s very likely that Google keeps a record of all previous penalties that have been applied to a website.
What does this mean for your website?
You should avoid shady SEO methods at all costs. Do not participate in automated linking schemes. If someone promises you a quick and easy solution that requires no or little work then it is very likely that it’s spam.
If your website has been penalized, remove all spam elements from your website and file a re-inclusion request on Google.
It seems that Google does forgive penalized websites but it takes a long time until a penalized site has its rankings back. During that time, you’ll lose a lot of visitors and sales.
If you want to be on the safe side, only use ethical search engine optimization methods to promote your website. These methods might not sound as impressive as some of the promises that you can read on the Internet but they make sure that your website will get lasting results on Google’s first result page.
How to convince webmasters that they should link to your site
Suppose that you have a great website with great content. Your web pages are perfectly optimized for visitors and search engines and you have found many related websites that could link to your site.
How do you convince these websites that they should link to your website? Here are five tips that will help you to convince other webmasters.
1. Offer something in return
The easiest thing that you could offer is a link in return. However, not all webmasters want to exchange links.
There are many things that you could offer in exchange for a link. This could be a discount for your products, an ad on your website or even a simple hint.
If you find a broken link on a website, inform the webmaster about the link. Tell him that your own website might be a good replacement for the broken link (if it is).
2. Ask your current link partners
If another website already links to you then they might add another link to a different page on your website.
Getting a second link from existing link partners is much easier than getting new links because you don’t have to explain yourself anymore. The other webmaster already knows you and your site.
3. Make friends with people from your industry
Networking can help you to get links to your website. This works best with blogs that are related to your website.
Contact the blog owners and compliment on their sites. Do not ask for a link in your first contact. When you’ve a good relationship with the blog owner, you might inform him about a new product or a new article that you’ve written.
Chances are that you’ll get a link from the blog then. These links from related blogs have a great impact on the position of your website in Google’s search results.
4. Show that other webmasters already linked to your website
It’s easier for people to do something if they see that other people have done the same thing before. If many other websites link to your website, you could mention this in your link request.
If a well known website mentioned your site, that’s even better: “As you might have seen on NYTimes.com, we’ve published a new product. This might be interesting to the visitors of your website.”
5. Offer something that other people don’t have
This is the easiest way to get links. If you have a report with ground-breaking new information or something other that’s very interesting and only available on your website then it will be very easy to get links to the page that contains that information.
