If you index as many web pages on your site, you may increase the chances of having a command of the search engine rankings. This is often the reason why this is very tempting for most marketers. Despite the value of indexing the pages on your website, it is not always a good idea. In some cases, it is actually a good idea to keep most pages on your website without indexing them. This is obviously confusing right? Wait a minute and complete reading the post. You will obviously find out why this is a great idea. In particular, you will learn how to remove specific types of web pages from the search engine results page and why it is a good idea to do so.

Why Go To Such Lengths?

You are obviously wondering why it would be a great idea to such lengths. Apparently, this does not appear like a good idea. A number of reasons can account for the removal or complete exclusion of a web page from Google’s index. In the case of marketers, it is because duplicate content (a replica of a web page or a portion of it) is quite common. It is not appropriate to duplicate web pages or portions of it.

Another case involves landing pages. Sometimes landing pages or thank you pages may be found without going through the channel the marketer desires. When you make a landing page, you want your targeted audience of customers to reach it after giving you the information you desire. If your targeted audience of customers finds it by going through the search engine, you will not achieve your desired goal. It is better to remove such pages from the search index so that they cannot be found in search engines. One thing you have to bear in mind is the fact that the landing page bears your offer which you should only give away after receiving information from customers.

How To Remove Web Pages Or Portions Of It From A Search Engine Index

You can add a robots.txt file to your web page. This is actually one of the best ways to de-index a web page from search engines. This gives you 100 % control over what bots is indexing. You can choose to block a whole page or a portion of it using this method.
Add a noindex metatag; adding a nofollow metatag is an alternative. This is actually a very easy way to de-index a web page or a portion of it. The noindex meta tag simply tells a search engine not to add it to its index and not to follow the links on the page. The nonfollow tag tells the search engine to add the page to the index without following the links on the page.