15.06.2020• SEO
Week 14 – No Index
It’s week 14 of the A to Z of #seo – which means N for…
No Index 🎯
As mentioned a few times before, in order for a page to rank on Google it needs to be crawled and indexed. However, what if you don’t actually want a page to be added to the index?
Well, this is where the ‘noindex tag’ comes into play. It looks like this: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> and is added to the top, or <head>, section of a page.
Most of the time this is good practice if, for example, you have Google Ads landing pages built specifically to convert well but a) the content might be very similar to a ‘normal’ page on your site and b) you don’t want this Landing Page in the menu or found by other links on your site. Noindex them – job done. Remember there are different ‘bots’ for different parts of Google search though. Noindex is also good for things such as ‘print-friendly’ versions of pages & pages in development (just remember to remove the tag!)
However, many times during an Audit, I’ve seen important pages blocked from Google via this tag from human error usually. If a client says to me “why doesn’t this page rank”, one of the first things I do is check it actually CAN be indexed. (there are other ways of ‘hiding’ pages from Search Engines, but that’s a post for another day).
If you are using Yoast plugin on a WordPress site/blog such as this, here’s how to set it:
The default should be ‘yes’ changing to ‘no’ sets the no-index tag. The second radio button in this is used for follow and no-follow: (another post for another day!)
..and here is the link to Google’s documentation on this tag and how to implement it –
Enjoy!
Related Posts
16.09.2020• SEO
Week 26 – Zero Click Searches
🎯 It’s Week 26 – and the last – week of the A to Z of #seo !! ℤ – for Zero Click Searches...
Continue Reading15.09.2020• SEO
Week 25 – Yoast SEO
We’re on to WEEK 25(!) of the A to Z of #seo – which means: 🅈 for Yoast SEO Yoast (named after its founder...
Continue Reading14.09.2020• SEO
Week 24 – XML Sitemaps
Here we are again – Week 24 of the A to Z of #seo : 🅇 for XML Sitemaps Here’s what you need to...
Continue Reading