SEO News Tip of the Day!

Information optimisation using the VoiSpeed IP Phone System

While search engine optimisation is quite specific, the term optimisation is generic and can mean all kinds of things. One form of optimisation is information optimisation. Recently I have been playing with the VoiSpeed IP phone system which we recently switched over to at work. I have to say it is a great piece of kit and enables you to do all kinds of tasks.

VoiSpeed IP Phone System

Currently the VoiSpeed IP phone system isn’t that well known, which I think is a real shame as it isn’t just a viable alternative to the traditional business phone system, it is a far superior phone system. I have been testing its many features and some of them are an absolute dream. Here are just a couple of my favourite features so far (it would take me weeks to mention all of them).

Instant text messaging

This is probably the simplest feature on the phone but its one of those things that in a year’s time your wonder how you coped without. It just a pure and simple text facility, right click the mouse on someone’s icon who is logged onto the office phone system, select send text message and write away. The amount of time this has saved me from not having to go from one office to another is just great.

Voice mail box with a twist

The voice mail on the VoiSpeed phone system is just a little bit better than anything else I have used before. It works just like any other mail box, a call comes in, the receptionist forwards it to your extension for the caller to leave a message, and they record their message. But then, because this is the VoiSpeed IP phone system and it is software based and driven by your network, it automatically sends the message to you by email, ready for you to log into your email account from wherever you may be and listen to the message.

Anyway thought I would give you a break and something to read while churning through the directory list below.

How to Prevent Duplicate Content with Effective Use of the Robots.txt and Robots Meta Tag

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 < Meta > 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.

Should you require further information about our search engine marketing or optimization services please visit us at http://www.e-prominence.co.uk ? The search marketing company