To show clients that I “practice what I teach” in regards to blogging consistently, I’ve decided to post informative videos about online marketing, sales, and mindset from time to time that will help you learn more from the best of the best. Matt Cutts is definitely one of those when it comes to search engines.

In this video, Matt talks about getting certain URLs off Google’s search results.

Why wouldn’t you want URLs on Google?

If you’re a website that has private information like credit cards, social security numbers or the like, you probably don’t want people (or search engines) to discover these by accident.

Here are some of the tips Matt shares about removing certain URLS from Google’s search results:

• Don’t Link to the Page – “not a great approach…” This is a very weak strategy if you are trying to keep web pages off Google.
• htaccess – this lets you re-direct from one URL to another. You can password protect certain pages, which will help keep certain pages off Google. “This is very good…if you have a password on the directory, Google won’t crawl that page.” One of the high recommendations.
• robots.txt – this is an electronic “no trespassing” tool. This tool is provided on the Google Webmaster console. The best thing about this tool is that it’s testable before it goes live.
• no index meta tag – this will still be crawled but the page won’t be indexed. Yahoo and other search engines may still link to this page.
• no follow on individual links – this is a “weak approach”.
• URL Removal Tool – this tool is found in Google Webmaster Console. This tool is simple and easy to use. It removes the URL for 6 months. Make sure to prove that your site is YOURS. Another tools highly recommended.

If there are videos you find that give great tips, please email me today!