If you want to prevent specific pages on your WordPress site from being included in search engine results, you can do so by utilizing the Yoast SEO plugin. This is especially beneficial for pages that contain confidential data or duplicate content that you do not want to show up in search results.
In this post, we’ll guide you through the steps to ‘noindex’ a page using Yoast SEO.
Step 1: Install Yoast SEO
If you haven’t already, the first step is to install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin. You can download it from the WordPress plugin repository or from your WordPress dashboard under Plugins > Add New.
Step 2: Edit the Page You Want to Noindex
Once you’ve installed Yoast SEO, go to the page you want to ‘noindex’. This can be any post, page, or custom post type on your WordPress site.
In the editor, scroll down to the Yoast SEO meta box located below the text editor.
Step 3: Set the Page to Noindex
In the Yoast SEO meta box, click on the advanced settings (gear icon). You will see an option labeled Allow search engines to show this post in search results?. By default, this option is set to ‘Yes’. Click on it and select No.
// The option would look something like this Allow search engines to show this post in search results? Yes/No
This will set the page to ‘noindex’, telling search engines not to index this page.
Step 4: Save Changes
After selecting ‘No’ for indexing, make sure to click the Update or Publish button to save your changes. This will implement the ‘noindex’ setting for that page.
Conclusion
Using Yoast SEO to ‘noindex’ a page can help control which pages on your WordPress site are indexed by search engines. While this is a powerful tool, use it with caution. Excessive use of ‘noindex’ could result in your site not appearing in search results as often as you might like.
