When ever we talk about some of the best WordPress SEO plugin, Meta robots WordPress plugin always make into the list. Here we will talk about why you need this plugin and how this plugin is going to make your blog more SEO friendly.
Meta Robots is a powerful WordPress SEO plugin which will help you to optimize your WordPress blog for search engine. Meta robots plugins comes with a setting panel, from where you can make lots of changes including putting noindex and nofollow attributes into your blog.
How to use Robots Meta WordPress Plugin?
For any newbie blogger, it may be hard to understand which part they should noindex and which part they should index. By default, all the part of your blog is indexed and crawled by Google. In simple word, here is difference which you need to understand:
- Noindex: Search engine bots will not index the page
- Nofollow: Search engine bots will not follow the link
- Index: Search engine bots will not index the page
- Follow/Dofollow: Bots will follow the link and link juice will be passed to that external page.
Pages like Category, tags, author, page1/page2, wp-admin doesn’t add any value to search engine and just add quantity of pages. It”s a good idea to keep all such pages noindex from Google. Here is optimum settings :
Put check box on the following options: You need to expand all the options. RSS feeds, Prevent indexing, Permalink Settings, Internal Nofollow settings.
- Noindex the comment RSS feeds
- This site results page
- The login and register pages
- Author archive
- Date based archive
- Category archive
- Tag Archive
- Redirect Attachment URL’s to Parent post URL
- Nofollow outbound links on the homepage
- Nofollow login and registration link
- Nofollow comment links
Here is a quick screen shot for the same:
More over by using Meta robots plugin, you can also put noindex, nofollow attributes in a single blog post. When we write blog posts, some of the posts doesn’t matter any value to search engine. Making such post noindex is very useful, though you want all the links from that post to be followed , Meta robots provide you an option by which you can make changes on your individual blog posts.
By default option which is selected is index,follow, you can change the option as per appropriate. For an example, if you are writing any affiliate post, you might want Google to index the post, but don’t want Google to follow the link juice to your affiliate link. In such case you can select the option no. 2 . index, nofollow.
Also check:
Along with it, under settings >Robots meta, there are many option which you can select to enhance your wordpress SEO. From the option page, you can also edit your wordpress .htaccess file and your robots.txt file.
Are you using Meta robots plugin on your blog? Do let us know what do you think about this plugin and do you find it useful. If you are completely new to SEO and want to learn WordPress SEO from scratch, you can opt for Personal WordPress SEO coaching here.
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Article by Harsh Agrawal
Harsh has written 1206 articles.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Ya! I am using this plugin and it is really useful.
can we use both Meta Robots and all in one seo together ? If the answer is yes, what are the optimum settings for both plugins ?
Yes ManPreet you can use both the plugins together and both of them serve different roles.
I used yoast wordpress seo plugins which have its robots meta settings, still I can used this meta robots ?
Okay so I run an authority site in my hypnosis niche. I’m using this plugin. Every blog post of mine usually has affiliate links and stuff in it. So are you saying it would be better for me to use index nofollow instead?
The theme I’m using is thesis 1.8 didn’t Wordpress or thesis naturally make all links in the post norollow anyway?
My main goal with my site is for it to rank high and post to rank high for their respected keywords. So in your opinion i need to make post that have links to other sites as index, no follow correct? Know what about post which only have links to other blog post on my site. Should that be norollow as well?
@Josh
By default links are not nofollow..You need to add Nofollow attribute.. rel=nofollow
When you are linking out to other sites which are useful and add value …You should keep it as dofollow..
You should use Nofollow link attribute for only Affiliate links.. You can also use Gocodes WordPress plugin to mask and keep them nofollow…
Hi there,
I apologize in advance for the stupid question…
I have downloaded and activated this plugin, but I cannot find its settings… Where on earth have they been hidden? In the blurb they say to look in the “admin/edit” area. Admin area? And where is that; it could be a translation problem, but I have looked at WP in English as well and cannot find it.
What if I am not using wordpress and my website is joomla or PHP based? Is there any plugin for that?