Best way to implement noindex tags on archived blogs
-
Hi,
I have approximately 100 old blogs that I believe are of interest to web browsers that I'd potentially like to noindex due to the fact that they may be viewed poorly by Google, but I'd like to keep on our website.
A lot of the content in the blogs is similar to one another (as we blog about the same topics quite often), which is why I believe it may be in our interests to noindex older blogs that we have newer content for on more recent blogs.
Firstly does that sound like a good idea?
Secondly, can I use Google Tag Manager to implement noindex tags on specific blog pages? It's a hassle to get the webmaster to add in the code, and I've found no mention of whether you can implement such tags on Tag Manager on the usual SEO blogs. Or is there a better way to implement noindex tags en masse?
Thanks!
-
Hi there
I definitely admire your creativity on this one, but unfortunately the Google Tag Manager loads tags asynchronously. That means that the tags are added for users who execute javascript on page loads, but it means that the copy of the page that is crawled does not contain the tags. All of this means that the Google crawler won't see a noindex tag on the crawled version of its page if it's loaded via the Google Tag Manager.
I think your reasoning for noindexing the pages themselves is a very good one. You're removing pages with thin or potentially duplicate content from Google's indexing, which is healthy, while keeping the content on the page for the user, which again is a healthy thing to do. I can definitely see the reasoning.
Unfortunately, the only way I can see the tags being implemented is manually by the webmaster. If the site runs wordpress, you can change the robots meta data very quickly in the Yoast SEO plugin. If you get to the page in question and scroll to the Yoast plugin section, you'll be able to select the noindex tag from a drop-down menu, meaning it can take as little as 30 seconds.
Hope this helps and good luck with the implementation.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
I am looking for best way to block a domain from getting indexed ?
We have a website http://www.example.co.uk/ which leads to another domain (https://online.example.co.uk/) when a user clicks,in this case let us assume it to be Apply now button on my website page. We are getting meta data issues in crawler errors from this (https://online.example.co.uk/) domain as we are not targeting any meta content on this particular domain. So we are looking to block this domain from getting indexed to clear this errors & does this effect SERP's of this domain (**https://online.example.co.uk/) **if we use no index tag on this domain.
Technical SEO | | Prasadgotteti0 -
What's the best way to integrate off site inventory?
I can't seem to make any progress with my car dealership client in rankings or traffic. I feel like I've narrowed out most of the common problems, the only other thing I can see is that all their inventory is on a subdomain using a dedicated auto dealership software. Any suggestion of a better way to handle this situation? Am I missing something obvious? The url is rcautomotive.com Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | GravitateOnline0 -
Multiple H1 Tags on Page
Can having multiple H1 tags on a webpage be detrimental to its rankings?
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Best way to fix a whole bunch of 500 server errors that Google has indexed?
I got a notification from Google Webmaster tools saying that they've found a whole bunch of server errors. It looks like it is because an earlier version of the site I'm doing some work for had those URLs, but the new site does not. In any case, there are now thousands of these pages in their index that error out. If I wanted to simply remove them all from the index, which is my best option: Disallow all 1,000 or so pages in the robots.txt ? Put the meta noindex in the headers of each of those pages ? Rel canonical to a relevant page ? Redirect to a relevant page ? Wait for Google to just figure it out and remove them naturally ? Submit each URL to the GWT removal tool ? Something else ? Thanks a lot for the help...
Technical SEO | | jim_shook0 -
Tag archives in wordpress
I have duplicate content issue on my site, because i allow to index tags in my wordpress. And the content overlaps on them. What could be a solution to this? How do i fight it, if still want my tag pages to be indexed in Google, but i don't want to to influence my traffic negatively? Currently i have 596 tags! 🙂 Site:
Technical SEO | | pycckuu
richclubgirl.com My idea was to put canonical tag for the post i want to rank from the most popular tag pages (with biggest page authority). Would love to hear from You!1 -
Blog for a Prestashop: WP at subfolder or blog with dedicated keyword based domain?
Hi Scenario 1: site running with prestashop at domain whatever.com There's a blog at a subfolder of domain, running with Wordpress whatever.com/blog Scenario 2: site running with prestashop at whatever.com. The blog is at a different server and domain with keywords, e.g. cloudtechnology.com What's better for the blog posts to have better SERP results? Scenario 1 or 2? From the point of view of a user, I have seen for friends and colleagues that scenario 2 works for the blog, and might work for the shop, since blog posts contain links to shop etc. However, all examples I've seen for scenario 1 are still struggling...it's hard for them to make the blog visible at SERPs...is it a coincidence or is there a reason? Thanks for your answers!
Technical SEO | | pupila0 -
Subdomain for a blog
My client has a site hosted with a company that allows very little customization including I am unable to add a blog to the site. As he has a fair amount of time & money invested in the site, he is reluctant to start over. So my question is this. His blog is currently hosted off site, would it benefit him if I had them add a cname or a record to show his blog at blog.mydomain.com? Or does Google recognize that it is still a separate site and treat it as such? Finally does it matter how they set it up cname, a record or redirect? This is definitely not my area of expertise (if that is not already obvious from the question!). Thanks for your help! Matthew
Technical SEO | | farlandlee0 -
What is the best way of generating links with our exchanging them
I have read that google do not look kindly at sites that exchange links so i am trying to find a way of generating links to a new site. I am building a new site and need to start to get google to index it and build important links to generate traffic. I have looked at link exchange sites but have read that this is not great with google and it is better if you have sites where there is just one way linking. I do not want to buy links and would like to find a way of generating free links which can help build up traffic and the status of my new site. Any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860