Which pages to "noindex"
-
I have read through the many articles regarding the use of Meta Noindex, but what I haven't been able to find is a clear explanation of when, why or what to use this on.
I'm thinking that it would be appropriate to use it on:
legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of use
search results page
blog archive and category pagesThanks for any insight of this.
-
Here are two posts that may be helpful in both explaining how to set up a robots.txt for wordpress, and the thinking behind setting up which parts to exclude.
http://www.cogentos.com/bloggers-guide-to-using-robotstxt-and-robots-meta-tags-to-optimise-indexing/
http://codex.wordpress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_WordPress#Robots.txt_Optimization
The wordpress link (second link) has a link to several other resources as well.
-
Yes I'm using wordpress.
-
You also want to block any admin directory, plugin directory, etc. Are you using Wordpress or a specific CMS? There are often best-practice posts for robots.txt files for specific platforms.
-
yes, generally you would noindex your about us, contact us, privacy, terms pages since these are rarely searched and in fact are so heavily linked to internally that they would rank well if indexed.
all search results should be noindexed - google wants to do the search
definitely NOT blog/category pages - these are your gold content!
I also noindex any URL accessed by https
-
As well as pagination pages I have read, but not done it myself, that you should consider using it on low value pages that you are wouldn't want to rank above other pages on the site (hopefully they wouldn't anyway) and also sitemaps as don't necessarily want them to appear in the index but definitely want them followed.
-
Noindexed pages are pages that you want your link juices flowing through, but not have them rank as individual entries in the search engines.
-
I think your legal pages should rank as individual pages. If I wanted to find your privacy policy and searched for 'privacy policy company name', I'd expect to find an entry where I can click and find your privacy policy
-
Your search results page (the internal ones) are great candidates for a noindex attribute. If a search engine robot happens to stumble upon one (via a link from somebody else for example), you'd want the spider to start crawling pages from there and spreading link juice over your site. However, under most circumstances you don't want this result page to rank on itself in the search engines, as it usually offers thin value to your visitors
-
Blog archive and category pages are useful pages to visitors and I personally wouldn't noindex these
Bonus: your paginated results ('page 2+ in a result set that has multiple pages') are great candidates for noindex. It'll keep the juices running, without having all these pretty much meaningless (and highly dynamic) pages in the search index.
-
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Search Console Indexed Page Count vs Site:Search Operator page count
We launched a new site and Google Search Console is showing 39 pages have been indexed. When I perform a Site:myurl.com search I see over 100 pages that appear to be indexed. Which is correct and why is there a discrepancy? Also, Search Console Page Index count started at 39 pages on 5/21 and has not increased even though we have hundreds of pages to index. But I do see more results each week from Site:psglearning.com My site is https://wwww.psglearning.com
Technical SEO | | pdowling0 -
Where did the "Location" go, on Google SERP?
In order to emulate different locations, I've always done a Google query, then used the "Location" button under "Search Tools" at the top of the SERP to define my preferred location. It seems to have disappeared in the past few days? Anyone know where it went, or if it's gone forever? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | measurableROI0 -
How can I Style Long "List Posts" in Wordpress?
Hi All, I have been working on a list-post which spans over 100 items. Each item on the list has a quick blurb to explain it, an image and a few resource links. I am trying to find an attractive way to present this long list post in Wordpress. I have seen several sites with long list posts however; they place their items one on top of the other which yields a VERY long page and the end user has to do a lot of scrolling. Others turn their lists into slideshows, but I have no data on how slides perform against 10-mile-long-lists which load in 1 page. I would like to do something similar to what List25.com does as they present about 5-10 items per page and they seem to have pagination. The pagination part I understand however; is there a shortcode plugin to format lists in an attractive way just like list25?
Technical SEO | | IvanC0 -
"INDEX,FOLLOW" then later in the code "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" which does google follow?
background info: we have an established closed E-commerce system which the company has been using for years. I have only just started and reviewing the system, I don't have direct access to the code, but can request changes, but it could take months before the changes are in effect (or done at all), and we won't can't change to a new E-commerce system for the short to mid term. While reviewing the site (with help of seomoz crawl diagnostics) I noticed that some of the existing "landing pages" have in the code: <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">INDEX,FOLLOW</a>" /> then a few lines later <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW</a>" /> Which the crawl diagnostics flagged up, but in the webmaster tools says
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
"We didn't detect any issues with non-indexable content on your site." so the question is which instructions does google follow? the first or 2nd? note: clearly this is need fixed, but I have a big list of changes for the system so I need to know how important this is tthanks0 -
Duplicate content with "no results found" search result pages
We have a motorcycle classifieds section that lets users search for motorcycles for sale using various drop down menus to pick year-make-type-model-trim, etc.. These search results create urls such as:
Technical SEO | | seoninjaz
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Triumph&vehicle_category=On-Off Road&vehicle_model=Tiger&vehicle_trim=800 XC ABS We understand that all of these URL varieties are considered unique URLs by Google. The issue is that we are getting duplicate content errors on the pages that have no results as they have no content to distinguish themselves from each other. A URL like:
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Triumph&vehicle_category=Sportbike
and
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Honda&vehicle_category=Streetbike Will have a results page that says "0 results found". I'm wondering how we can distinguish these "unique" pages better? Some thoughts:
-make sure <title>reflects what was search<br />-add a heading that may say "0 results found for Triumph On-Off Road Tiger 800 XC ABS"<br /><br />Can anyone please help out and lend some ideas in solving this? <br /><br />Thank you.</p></title>0 -
Pages noindex'ed. Submit removal request too?
We had a bunch of catalog pages "noindex,follow" 'ed. Now should we also submit removal request in WMT for these pages? Thank you! LL
Technical SEO | | LocalLocal0 -
We are still seeing duplicate content on SEOmoz even though we have marked those pages as "noindex, follow." Any ideas why?
We have many pages on our website that have been set to "no index, follow." However, SEOmoz is indexing them as duplicate content. Why is that?
Technical SEO | | cmaseattle0 -
Should I use a "-", ":", or "|" in the title tag?
Out of habit, I've always put a "-" or dash to separate items in the title tag. However, I've noticed that more and more sites are using either a ":" or "|" in the title. Is there one that is better to use than the other?
Technical SEO | | beeneeb0