I got referred to the following generator. I like it compared to the other generators I've seen out there. It seems easy to use and has a lot of options. Here's the link:

http://webdeveloper.earthweb.com/re.../99061/meta.htm

My question is that I'm trying to figure out how to get Google and other SEs to not list certain pages on my site when someone is doing a search. For example, if I have an educational article, I don't want someone coming in on a link to the middle of the article - they need to come in on the first page and only the first page. I still want SEs to index my whole site and I don’t' want to do anything that effects my page ranking.

My guess is that this has to do with the Robots setting (like on the Meta tag Generator I mentioned). Anybody got any ideas on what setting I should put the Robots value on to get the results I’m looking for and if this even has anything to do with Robots settings? Thanks for any help.

instead of me explaining.. it would be better if u c this tut by urself..

http://www.searchengineworld.com/rob...s_tutorial.htm

Thanks - that's exactly the bit of info I was looking for

That is going to instruct the robot to not index those pages, which is what you do not want to do. Sure, it will have the effect of not showing up in the search index all right.

What I think you want to do is have a redirect on those pages that you do not want them entering on. The redirect will be to page one of the article. You can accomplish this with some server side code to effect the redirect if the Http referral Url is from outside of your domain.....I would refine that a bit by making it a specific referral from google.com, yahoo.com, etc. That way you will not intefere with peoples bookmarks.

The standard thing I have seen on short articles of around 5 or 6 pages is that they place quick links in a navigation box somewhere. The links are labeled something like Introduction, Part 1 In the Beginning, Part 2 More to go on, Part 3 Advanced Techniques ...yada yada. If the articles are longer, then they will break it down into chapters each with their own set of sub-nav boxes.

This nav box is very visible and noticeable upon entry to the page. It also clearly shows the visitor exactly where they are inside of the article itself.

This serves the purpose of easy navigation for both the visitor, and the spider has better linking to follow too.

Originally Posted by RonnieTheDodger

That is going to instruct the robot to not index those pages, which is what you do not want to do. Sure, it will have the effect of not showing up in the search index all right.

That's right - what you will have done is fixed a small problem by creating a really big one - you won't have people landing on page 3 of an article because they'll never land on the article at all...

The navigation structure Ron suggests is a far better option than redirecting, because unless you know what you're doing and are very careful, you risk creating a loop which will keep sending people to page 1 even if they've already read page 1... but if the navigation structure is clear, you can tell them how to get to the beginning of the article and leave it up to the visitor to decide if that's where s/he wants to go.

Originally Posted by RonnieTheDodger

The standard thing I have seen on short articles of around 5 or 6 pages is that they place quick links in a navigation box somewhere. The links are labeled something like Introduction, Part 1 In the Beginning, Part 2 More to go on, Part 3 Advanced Techniques ...This nav box is very visible and noticeable upon entry to the page. It also clearly shows the visitor exactly where they are inside of the article itself.