What is No-index Tag?
No-index Tag is a Meta tag for HTML that tells search engine crawlers not to crawl certain pages & category that are tagged with a No-index Meta tag. In layman terms, it will not show your pages or site information in Google results if you use a No-index Meta tag. It works the same as a Robots.txt File.
If you search “site.xyz.com” (any blogger site URL) you will not find any categories or tags pages indexed on Google.
So, you noticed why there are no categories indexed in Google Results for Blogs? But for the e-commerce site, it is indexed. Why would you want to no-index categories from Google index for blogs:
- Avoid Duplication of posts on the Google index.
- Only Quality Content will be indexed on Google.
If you’re using Yoast SEO Plugin in your WordPress site, how you’ll no-index categories from Yoast SEO Plugin?
These are two options that will enable you to disable/no-index categories in Yoast SEO Plugin:
- No index each category on your blog.
- No index all category on your site.
No Index Each category
Follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Login to your WordPress account and Click on “Categories” option under Post Tab.
Step 2: Click on “Edit” category (The category you want to no index)
Step 3: Scroll down to Yoast SEO option and click on “Advanced” option
Step 4: Under Allow search engine to show this category in search results option, click on the drop-down menu and select “No”.
Step 5: Now you just need to update the category to save the changes you made on this category.
No Index All Categories
Step 1: Log in to your WordPress account and click on the “Search Appearance” option under the Yoast SEO tab on the left side of your WordPress Dashboard.
Step 2: Click on “Taxonomies” tab under the same page.
Step 3: Under the “Categories” option you’ll get “Show Categories in Search Results” Click on “No” Tab.
Bonus Step 4: Scroll down and select “Tags” option “Show Tags in Search Results” Click on “No” Tab. We don’t want to show our Tags in search results also, so better click on the “No” tab.
Step 5: Now you’ve made all the changes, click on “Save Changes” button.
Note: Under Each Category option you’ll find No-Follow Tag. No-Follow tag is also the same as the No-index tag. So you can turn it off if you don’t want search engine crawlers to follow the links to your categories pages.