Blocking user-agents

The Disallow line lists the pages you want to block. You can list a specific URL or a pattern. The entry should begin with a forward slash (/).

To block the entire site, use a forward slash.
Disallow: /To block a directory and everything in it, follow the directory name with a forward slash.
Disallow: /junk-directory/ To block a page, list the page.
Disallow: /private_file.html

To remove a specific image from Google Images, add the following:
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /images/dogs.jpg

To remove all images on your site from Google Images:
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

To block files of a specific file type (for example, .gif), use the following:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*.gif$

To prevent pages on your site from being crawled, while still displaying AdSense ads on those pages,

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Allow: /

Do the Little Things in SEO Make a Big Difference?

Many companies and professionals in the SEO sphere often make “best practices” recommendations to clients that include items like:

* Switch from underscores to hyphens to separate words in the URLs
* Employ the H1 tag for page headlines
* Use H2s and H3s for subheadlines
* Use the keyword you’re targeting on the page in bold/strong at least once
* Change your internal links to contain the anchor text you’re targeting on the page
* Move the keywords to the front of the title tag
* Reduce the code to content ratio
* Apply relevant alt tags to images & photos
* Nofollow links to pages like login, register and legal disclosures

Tips to Optimize Images

1. Use a unique, attractive image which can earn natural links from other websites. Just copying an image from another website and optimizing it properly may not help you all that much.
2. Put relevant keywords in the file name of the image.
3. Describe your image via the ALT tag, including relevant keywords. It i best to describe the image with some text around the keyword, to make it look more natural.
4. Create some text surrounding the image which is relevant and contains keywords relevant to the image.
5. Optimize the page containing the image. I f your page is well optimized for the targeted keyword, then your image has a better chance of appearing in the search results. For best results, make sure that the targeted keyword appears in the page title tag.
6. Try to acquire quality links, with correct anchor text, both to the image and to the page itself.
7. Don’t make your image too large or too small
8. Use a PNG, JPEG or GIF format.
9. Make sure that your URL is not in any way suggestive of "adult" themes. E.g. if you want your image to be optimized for Women's Gifts and you have just the keyword women in the URL, this may give Google that the idea that your website is somehow related to porn, which may cause it to be filtered it and from the safe search results. You can read more about this issue here.
10. Create an image sitemap and follow all other guidelines and best practices provided by Google for image optimization. Last but not least, share your image on various social media platforms such as Twitter and Flickr, to give them more visibility in Google's eyes.

Ten Controversial Search Engine Optimization Techniques

1. Duplicate Pages

In general, search engines ignore duplicate pages. In extreme cases, they may ban a site.

2. Invisible Text

Search engines consider the use of text that is the same color as the background color as spam. So stay clear of using invisible text.

3. Keywords In Comment Tags

Hardly any, if any, of the major search engines index comment tags, so don't waste time adding them for optimization purposes.

4. Keywords In Hidden Value Tags

Keywords in hidden value tags are considered spam by all of the major search engines, so don't waste time with this practice.

5. Keywords In Style Tags

Very few search engines index the content of Link Farms And Link Exchange Programs

Search engines consider link farms and link exchange programs as spam, as they have only one purpose - to artificially inflate a site's link popularity, by exchanging links with other participants.

Do not confuse link farms and link exchange programs with reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is the exchange of links with individual sites, and certainly an accepted technique for improving your site's link popularity.

7. Links Only Pages

I recommend adding text descriptions to link pages and site maps. Some search engines have been known to kick out links only pages.

8. Meta Refresh Tags

In general, meta refresh tags set for under 30 seconds are considered as spam by search engines. As such, most search engine optimizers use JavaScript redirects.

Are you confused? I certainly am!

So to be on the safe side, I suggest sticking with JavaScript redirects, until there is conclusive proof that search engines accept meta refresh tags.

9. Tiny Text

Many of the major search engines consider tiny text (i.e. font size 1) as spam. Some use of tiny text is fine. Search engines don't like web pages that use a lot of tiny text. The reason is because some webmasters have used it to fool search engines by "hiding" dozens of keywords in a web page.

10. Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of serving search engine optimized pages to search engine spiders, while at the same time serving un-optimized pages to site visitors.

Cloaking is one of the most controversial strategies in search engine optimization. Major search engines publicly state that they consider all cloaking to be spam. However, many professional search engine optimizers have been using cloaking for years, with much success.

Until there is conclusive proof that search engines do indeed ban sites that use cloaking, I suggest you take care if you decide to use cloaking.