When it is about website development in WordPress, most of us have heard about indexing. WordPress is the most popular platform for website development, and SEO is just the right process to rank your website pages. Even if you aren’t familiar with the WordPress CMS, it is not wrong to assume you are not aware a bit of it. It is simple to use, but it also has several customizations, which creates a lot of confusion sometimes. Best example we are aware of is “noindex” pages.
There is no need to worry, like other WordPress features, it’s easy to learn, and being a reputed WordPress Website Development Company, we have mentioned every crucial information in this blog post. Let’s start without delay!
Table of Contents
Introduction to Noindex
Search engines checks your page to see when to rank it as a result, which is termed as “indexing”. That means Noindex is completely opposite when your page does not appear in results after a search. This is termed as “crawling” when the search engines “crawl” through the page and add it to their results. We will talk about why you would need to Noindex some pages.
What is the Noindex tag?
First, let’s begin with what is the robots Noindex tag. In simple terms, this tag tells Google and other search engines to not index and rank a webpage. It is the only tag used to remove a page from Google’s index. This small line of code goes in the <head> section of the website and simply goes un-noticed by the end users. You can only find the Meta robots noindex command if you access the source code of a webpage.
Why Noindex a Page?
The Noindex command is used to prevent a page from appearing in Google or to remove a page that is already indexed. The Meta robots Noindex will not prevent search engine from crawling a page but the robots.txt file prevent crawling. Some specific examples where you need to Noindex a page in WordPress are:
- A page from the site has personal contact details that you don’t need people to find
- A page has private content that you want to hide in search engine
- A page is showing up in Google as a site link and you don’t require it over there
- If you have “thin content” or “low quality” content pages, Noindexing them could help your other pages boost SEO performance
Plugins to Noindex a WordPress Page
Below, we’ll discuss how to Noindex a WordPress page with most popular SEO plugins:
1. Rank Math
Rank Math is a relatively new SEO plugin when compared to others but it has robust features quite similar to other SEO plugin tools. Major ones are customizing Meta data, setting index / Noindex, creating xml sitemaps, adding structured data to posts, editing robots.txt and the .htaccess file. Rank Math comprises some functionality in their free plugin that is only included in paid plugins like setting up redirects and addressing 404 errors.
2. Yoast
Yoast is a popular SEO plugin that has been serving since 2008 and is used by more than 5 million WordPress sites. Experts providing WordPress SEO services prefers Yoast because of its standard SEO features like optimizing Meta data, creating xml sitemaps, editing robots.txt, and indexing control. Yoast has an extensive range of paid versions such as premium SEO, local SEO, News SEO, and WooCommerce SEO.
When to perform Noindex?
There are certain scenarios when website pages should not be indexed by search engines. Let’s check them in detail.
1. Development Stage
If you are in the process to create a website, it’s important to prevent search engines from indexing it. It is important to Noindex website when in development phase. Thus while installing a theme and customizing the pages, website crawlers should not get access to them. You never know when a search bot visits a page. And you don’t want incomplete information to get indexed?
2. Thin Content Pages
Search engines care about the page quality and share guidelines on how to build useful pages. The basic objective is to make your pages primarily for users, not search engines, and avoiding tricks to improve search engine rankings. Thus, if your page doesn’t have useful data for website users, search bots consider it as ‘thin content’ and even penalize the website.
3. Archives, Author, and Tag Pages
Not all pages hold same importance for users and should appear in search engine results. Often, blogs comprise of several archives, author, and tag pages that don’t have much importance. When these archives are indexed, user get numerous results for the pages contained in archives and tags.
Archive don’t add to users’ experience and may confuse visitors. Thus, it is a smart move to Noindex archive and tag pages to save crawl time. In other words, Noindexing specific pages helps to prioritize crawling and have better SERP results.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I check my Noindex pages?
After you are done Noindexing, you can check if it worked by using websites or Google tools. Just search Noindex checker and paste your tagged URL, HTML, or which way you used.
- How do I change a Noindex I accidentally set?
If you changed your mind or accidentally set a page to Noindex, you can fix it by removing the tag, or choosing the “yes” answer to Yoast SEO`s setting.
- Do I have to download SEO plugin to Noindex?
Noindex of web pages can be done in different ways, but it is recommended that you download SEO plugin for an easier and more customizable WordPress experience.
Wrapping Up:
To conclude, we have helped you understand new WordPress terms and how to Noindex a page on a website. Hope we were able to assist. If you want to know more about proper Noindex process and implementation, simply hire WordPress Developer from a reputed development company. WordPressIndia is a recognized brand known for its feature-rich website development.
