Noindex is a meta tag used to indicate to search engines that a particular page should not be included in their index. It is a common technique to protect pages from being indexed by search engines because the content is not relevant to search engines or has other reasons for not being indexed.

When should I use noindex?

Noindex should be used on pages that are not relevant or cannot be optimized for search engines. Examples can be: administrative pages, user profiles, a page with temporary content or pages that are intended only for certain user groups.

What is the difference between noindex and robots.txt?

Noindex is an HTML tag that is placed in the head section of a page. It is recognized by search engine robots and causes the page not to be indexed. Robots.txt is a text file located in the root directory of a website. It can instruct search engine robots not to crawl certain pages or directories.

What is the difference between noindex and nofollow?

Noindex is an HTML tag that prevents the page from being indexed by search engines. Nofollow is another meta tag that tells search engines not to follow links on the page. It can prevent search engines from crawling links on the page and prevents backlinks from having positive influences on rankings.

How does noindex affect rankings?

When noindex is used on a page, the page is not indexed by search engines. Therefore, the page cannot be considered for rankings.

How do I prevent my page from being blocked by noindex?

To prevent a page from being blocked by noindex, you must ensure that there is no noindex tag on the page. If you have a noindex tag on the page and want to remove it, you must delete the tag.

Can I use noindex for specific pages?

Yes. You can use noindex for specific pages by adding the tag to the head section of the page. However, note that the noindex tag must be applied not only to the page, but also to any subpages that you do not want to index.

Can I use noindex for my entire website?

No. Noindex can be applied only to specific pages and not to the entire website. If you want to protect the entire website from being indexed by search engines, you must use a robots.txt file.

Can noindex affect my rankings?

No. Noindex only affects the indexing of the page, but not the rankings. If the page is not indexed, it cannot be considered for rankings, but if a page is indexed, noindex does not affect the rankings.

Can I use noindex to remove duplicates?

No. Noindex can only be used to prevent a particular page from being indexed, but it cannot be used to remove duplicates. To remove duplicates, you must use Canonical tags or change the content of the pages.

Noindex

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What does Noindex mean in SEO?

The noindex command is a commonly used value in a meta tag that corresponds to the HTMLSource code can be added to a web page to suggest search engines (especially Google) not to include that particular page in their list of Search results to record.

By default, a website is set to "index" is set. You should give a web page in the section of the HTML a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/> directive if you do not want search engines to crawl a particular page and include it in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Which pages are usually set to "noindex"?

Thank you pages - If you include lead capture forms on your website, such as "Contact Us" or "Schedule an Appointment," you are likely directing users from your web forms to unique thank you pages once a user submits a form. Having unique thank you pages for each form is a best practice for tracking goals and lead submissions on your website, but you don't want visitors arriving at your thank you pages as they are in the Index are included by Google! A visitor should only appear on your thank you pages once they have filled out your web form. If you set your thank you pages to "noindex" will prevent these pages from being included in SERPs.

Pages intended for members only- If you have a section of your website dedicated to your employees or organization members, but do not want these web pages to be accessible to the general public or search engines, the "noindex"-guideline contribute to these pages not being found in SERPs.

Duplicate Content: If you have multiple pages with similar or duplicate content, you should make sure that only one version is indexed to prevent your website from being used for Duplicate Content is punished.

Test pages: If you have test pages that are only used for internal purposes, you should set them to "No-Index" to ensure that they do not appear in the search results.

Login pages: Pages that require a login or password to access should also be set to "No-Index" to ensure that only authorized users have access to it.

Shopping Cart/Checkout pages: Pages that are only intended for payment or the shopping cart should also be set to "No-Index", as these do not provide any relevant information for the search engines.

Thin Content Pages: Pages with little or no useful content that do not offer much added value should also be marked "No-Index" to ensure that they do not appear in the search results and could potentially affect the Relevance and quality of your website. It is important to make sure that these pages are not reachable through internal links to ensure that search engines do not find them through accidental crawling reach these pages. It also makes sense to exclude these pages using robots.txt and to use the "noindex" tag in the header to ensure that these pages are not indexed.

Data protection conditions and, if applicable Imprint - Automatically generated legal texts can be found in abundance online. That's why they offer great potential to appear on Google as "Duplicate Content" and thus potentially harm your website. You should not include any automatically generated content in Google's Index which is why the "Noindex" tag.

WordPress plugins for no-index settings

There are several WordPress plugins that you can use to mark pages or posts on your website as "noindex" mark. This means that search engines will not index these pages or posts and display them in the search results. Some of these plugins are:

Yoast SEO: This is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress. It gives you the ability to rank any page or post on your website as a "noindex" by simply placing a checkmark in a specific checkbox.
All in One SEO Pack: This Plugin is also very popular and offers similar functionality to Yoast SEO. You can tag any page or post as "noindex" by activating an option in edit mode.
Meta Robots WordPress SEO: This Plugin allows you to add meta robots tags at page and post level. You can use the "noindex" to prevent search engines from indexing the page or post.
WP Meta SEO: This Plugin offers you the option of adding meta robots tags at page and post level. You can use the option "noindex" to prevent search engines from indexing the page or post.

It is important to note that setting "noindex" for pages or posts on your website may result in these pages or posts not being displayed in search engine results. You should therefore only use these settings for pages or posts that are not intended for the public or that you do not want to be displayed in search engine results.

Noindex setting with Yoast SEO

To create pages on your website with the Yoast SEO-Plugin on "noindex", you can carry out the following steps:

Install and activate the Yoast SEO-Plugin on your WordPress website if you don't have it already.
Open the page that you have selected as "noindex" in edit mode.
Scroll down to the "Yoast SEO" section at the bottom of the page.
Click on the "Advanced" tab in the Yoast SEO section.
Activate the option "Block page for search engines"
Click on "Save" or "Publish" to save the changes

Noindex setting at Shopify

To create a page in your Shopify-store on "noindex", you can first navigate to the "Themes" section in your Shopify admin area. There you will find the "Edit code" tab. You can then search for the "head" tag in the "theme.liquid" or "header.liquid" file and add the meta robots tag there. The code should look something like this:

This tag signals the search engines that this page should not be indexed. It is important to note that it may take some time for the changes to be recognized by the search engines.

If you want this setting to be applied to specific pages or products in your store, you can add the above code to the appropriate templates.

It is also possible to use the noindex-tag via Shopify's own SEO settings. To do this, you need to go to the desired page, open the settings and select "noindex" select.

However, it should be noted that this is only a recommendation and it does not guarantee that the page will not actually be indexed.

When should links be no-follow?

Internal links play an important role in the SEO strategy of a website. They help search engines like Google to understand the structure and hierarchy of a website, and they enable a better distribution of the so-called "Link Juice" (or the "Link Power") within the website. If you set internal links to "nofollow"you block this flow of link power and make it difficult for search engines to crawl and index your pages correctly. This can have a negative impact on the Ranking have

In addition, internal links help to improve the user experience by helping visitors to find related content quickly and easily. When these links point to "nofollow" are set, this could affect the Crawling-This will unnecessarily burden the search engine budgets and thus reduce the visibility of your most important pages.

External links, i.e. links that lead to other websites, may under certain circumstances be considered "nofollow" can be marked:

Sponsored Links: If you are paid to place a link, you should mark it as "nofollow" to comply with Google's paid link policy.
User-Generated Content: Comments on blogs or forums may contain links that you cannot control. Such links should be marked as "nofollow" to minimize the risk of being penalized by bad backlink practices.
Untrustworthy or irrelevant sources: If the link leads to a website whose content or credibility is questionable, it is better to set it as "nofollow".

There are also other attributes such as "sponsored" and "ugc" that have been introduced for more specific cases such as paid or user-generated links. This serves to give Google more context about the type of link.

In summary, internal links should generally not be set to "nofollow" as this will reduce the flow of internal link power and the Crawling-efficiency may be compromised. External links should be marked as "nofollow" under specific conditions such as sponsored content or user-generated content to comply with Google's SEO guidelines.

Advantages:

No-Index is a useful tool that Webmaster helps control search engine results. It prevents pages from appearing in search engine results, which helps organize page content better. This is especially useful when page content is not intended for search engines or public views.

Disadvantages:

The main disadvantage of No-Index is that it prevents search engines from indexing page content. This means that search engines cannot access these pages and thus cannot link to them. As a result, pages that are indexed with no-Index are marked, are not visible when users search for specific content.

Conclusion:

Nofollow links are an important part of the SEO landscape, but their use should be thoughtful. Originally introduced to combat spam practices and give webmasters more control over the links on their pages, nofollow links have come a long way. Today, they serve multiple purposes and should not be missing from a balanced link strategy.

In particular, they are useful to check the "Link Juice" from your site. By marking a link as "nofollow", you are essentially telling search engines that they should not consider this link when crawling. This is especially important for links to untrusted sites, paid partnerships or user-generated content to avoid potential SEO issues.

However, the use of nofollow links should not be overdone, especially for internal links. Excessive nofollowing can lead to Crawling-problems and a poor distribution of the "Link Juice" within the website. This could cause important pages of your website to be ignored by search engines or not sufficiently indexed be

New attributes such as "sponsored" and "ugc" offer additional options to give search engines more context about the type of link. This allows for more granular control of link power and gives search engines better clues for understanding the structure and importance of your website.

In practice, nofollow links should be used strategically and in accordance with search engine guidelines. A thorough knowledge of when and why a link should be marked as "nofollow" can make the difference between an effective SEO strategy and potential Ranking-problems.

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