How To Noindex WordPress Categories and Tags

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When I posted about how to recover from Google panda, I mentioned that you should let your quality pages be indexed by Google and keep others as “noindex”, but “dofollow”.

Noindex WordPress Categories and Tags
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This goes for your tags, categories, author pages, and monthly archive pages.

Two major reasons to noindex WordPress categories and tags:

  1. Avoid post duplication.
  2. Only quality pages will become part of Google Search.

The second reason is very important after the Google Panda algo became live because Google mentioned that Google Panda now focuses on quality content.

Obviously, your tags and categories pages can’t be considered “quality pages” for search engines. They are good for user-navigation, but they don’t add any value to search engines.

Many WordPress users are not aware of how they can keep WordPress blog tags and categories as “noindex”.

Here are some ways to add the “noindex” attribute to your category and tag pages.

Ways To Noindex WordPress Categories and Tags:

Noindex your tags and categories

This part is subjective as it depends on what SEO plugin you are using. If you are using SEO plugins like SEO by Yoast or All in one SEO, follow the links I’ve listed below, where I explain how you can “noindex” tags, categories, and author archive pages.

If you are using your theme’s SEO option, you need to use the “noindex” option in front of the tags and categories archive.

Here is a video that shows where to access these settings in Yoast SEO plugin:

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 Do let us know if you are keeping your WordPress tags and categories as “noindex” or “doindex”. Which methods are you using to keep them “noindex”?

Suggested Reading: How To Effectively Manage WordPress Tags

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

41 thoughts on “How To Noindex WordPress Categories and Tags”

  1. Hi, harsh thanks for the tip on this. i have been using yoast with indexing enabled, for everything including tags, and now decided to give it a try. Just a little worried of already indexed pages. Let see, wha will happen.

  2. Blesso

    Hi Harsh,
    I recently did a site audit with SEmrush and found that there are a lot of duplicate content because of tags and categories. And I was wondering how I can fix all of these and I thank you for the information you put in this post on how it can hurt rankings and penalise by Google. I followed your other post on how to fix it on All in One SEO plugin, Bookmarked it. Thanks once again.

  3. Jagannath mondal

    Thank you for sharing this. Much needed,

  4. Mohamed hady

    Do I have to deactivate my theme’s built in SEO fields when I use a SEO plugin?

  5. Ken M

    We use Yoast on almost every site we have and find it makes things really easy. It is a great plugin as is proven by how many WordPress sites have it. This article is very helpful. For SEO purposes this info is really helpful and the plugin just works.

  6. Naman Dwivedi

    Hi Harsh, is the Yoast SEO Plugin options changed? i am not able to change many things, i am not able to set noindex on my tags and categories. please help me. thanks

  7. Mohammad Rizwan

    Hi HARSH i have website on indian serial i want noindex author page but i cannot find noindex option in yoast..

  8. Adeel Sami

    Hey, Harsh!

    I actually have the categories and tags set to “noindex” and also “nofollow” through Yoast SEO plugin.

    I read one of your reply where you said to keep them dofollow instead, so I am going to do that. 🙂

    Thanks for the knowledge!

    ~ Adeel

  9. Tusher

    I have a question sir,

    When I buy a top level domain for my blogspot.com domain, are then it’s change to unhosted and I apply adsense directly for a upgraded adsense.

  10. Shekhar Chugh

    Thanks a lot for sharing
    Now, I can easily work on wordpress

  11. Ravi Chahar

    Hey Harsh,

    Wouldn’t it be great if we use the robots.txt file to accomplish the goal? Though the process of indexing and crawling is different but still, it would work for no indexing.

    Using a plugin would be also great for the people who don’t have the technical background.
    I would surely try it.

    Thanks for bringing this up.
    ~Ravi

  12. Ugyen Dorji

    This is exactly I wanted, as Google index categories and tags which lead to duplicate contents. I think this will help me to do better SEO. Thanks for this guide….

  13. LH Louis

    Love this video you’re sharing Harsh, and isn’t better to get categories to get index by Google as well and also keep dofollow, both are great!

  14. Sachin

    Harsh Sir,

    I am using Google XML Sitemap Generator for Creat Sitemap & Udinara All Image Sitemap Plugin for Image Sitemaps. I have submitted both sitemaps to Google Search Console. Is It Okay? Or Need to Do Some changes ??? Please Reply..

    Regards,
    Sachin.

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