5 Ways To Control How Google Displays Your Content
As a blog owner or webmaster, traffic from Google search is likely one of your largest sources. Google traffic to Pingable ranks 2nd only behind StumbleUpon traffic. So how can you control what content Google indexes, or how it displays your content search engine result pages (SERPs)?
Using the following Meta Tags you can control how Google displays your content, and what it displays. You use a meta tag by placing them in the head section of your HTML code.
- No Cache<meta name=”googlebot” Content=”noarchive”> – Will stop Google caching your content. Google keeps a cache of your content, and a link to it is available in Google SERPs.
- No snippet<meta name=”googlebot” Content=”nosnippet”> – Will stop Google displaying the short snippet of text beneath the title in SERPs.
- No index<meta name=”googlebot” Content=”noindex”>- Will stop Google from displaying the page you include the tag on in their SERPs.
- No index Image<meta name=”googlebot-image” Content=”noindex”> – Will stop Google form indexing an image.
- Setting an expiry date on your content.<meta name=”googlebot” Content=”unavailable_after: 25-Dec-2007 12:00:00 EST”> – Will create an expiry date for your content, so it is not displayed after a certain date. Useful for excluding content in a paid members area.
Why stop Google showing some of your content?
Apart from the obvious scenario where you have commercial / or paid content that you don’t want shown, there is the important issue of duplicate content. A site is penalised filtered for having the same content on different pages, using the above meta tags you can control which pages are indexed and which are not and avoid displaying duplicate content.
Visibility of content
The visibility of your content, and how it’s displayed in Google SERPs is a key part of SEO that is often overlooked. Using the following meta tag you can tell Google what to display in the snippet for each page.
<meta name=”description” content=”informative description here”>
Controlling Meta tags in WordPress
Headspace is a fantastic WordPress plugin which makes life much easier dealing for different meta tags, keywords and descriptions in WordPress. It enables you to have individual meta descriptions and keywords and much more for each page on your site.
Comments (28)
I have never heard of the nosnippet, no index image and unavailable_after tags. Any proof that are having any effects and are actually doing what you say it does?
Thanks
The meta tags came from a Dan Crow article, he works for Google and specializes in Internet indexing and crawling, so I think we can assume they work.
I also haven’t heard of no snippet. Thanks for the info.
Very interesting but not quite understand how it works, especially No. 2 No snippet. I think I’ll just have to try it out and see the results. Thanks for the info anyway.
Very interesting and useful info
Nice pointers thanks, I might give some of them a try.
Sorry I can’t remember the meta tag but there is also one that can force Google to output your meta description in the search results rather than the description in DMOZ if you belong to the lucky ones who are included.
Yeah Google traffic is very important and knowing things like this could mean the difference of visibility or obscurity.
Thanks for sharing this here. Very informative blog. I will be a regular.
Thanks for the great info and blog! Didn’t know this could be done would be here regular
I only knew meta is used for description and content, but, ur explanation give me another used of meta tags
Thanks !
These will come in handy so google doesn’t index my admin login pages.
Thanks!
Great post… I didn’t know about the image one.
Cool.
I’m really interested in controlling and testing the snippet of text going into the SERP. Thanks for the meta-tag on how to exclude. Has anyone tested different words or phrases that will boost the CTR? I suppose this could be done within AdWords with some paid traffic. The proper title and text snippet have a large impact on getting the click. This is an overlooked area as too many focus on getting to the #1 slot.
I wonder if you use the no snippet if it will just show something on the page instead.
I know that image search is not good if you have adsense ads. They convert lower and you can get smart priced. Great tips most people never realize you can control what google lists about your site.
The no image one looks interesting. If you use adsense image search drives down ctr and lowers money you earn.
Didn’t know Meta could do such tricks. I only thought Meta was used years ago to improve SEO rankings.
that a good information, i am trying my best to keep my site load fast , beacuse google caffiene is going to be up soon and they are ranking sites which loads up fast.
Controlling Google displays must be done. And with the help of the five methods displays will be much better and uncomplicated to use.
This is good stuff.. i tried this with my writing team and it did wonders.
These are basic tips that help a good writer improve and reach the next level. Very basic and very important for all starters.
Thanks for the share.. People should always remember SEO is good but its not the only thing.
This is good stuff.. i tried this with my writing team and it did wonders.
These are basic tips that help a good writer improve and reach the next level. Very basic and very important for all starters.
Thanks for the share.. People should always remember SEO is good but its not the only thing.
Thanks. I was searching for these for a long time as I don’t have access to my headers. The only way that I can prevent Google images from accessing my site is by this method. Google image has had a detrimental effect on my site’s bounce rate and this has helped me.
I’m probs 4 years too late but nice pointers thanks, aim to use a few of them
Its such as you read my thoughts! You appear to understand so much about this, like you wrote the e-book in it or something. I believe that you can do with some p.c. to force the message house a bit, but other than that, this is wonderful blog. An excellent read. I’ll definitely be back.