Semalt: Can We Stop Search Engines From Indexing Specific Pages In WordPress?

If you have developed a new website, it is ideal to block the search engines from crawling and indexing your site until it is fully prepared.

Get down to the tips stipulated by Ross Barber, a top specialist from Semalt, if you are confused about how to stop search engines from indexing your site.

Search engine spiders crawl your site to cache its pages for the index. Most webmasters get excited knowing that the search engines index and crawl their pages, but there are times when your web pages will not be indexed properly.

Unfortunately, there is no choice in WordPress that lets you stop your pages from being crawled. The only option you have is to let the search engines crawl everything, and nothing is left behind. Stopping Google, Bing, and Yahoo from indexing your site is necessary if it is not prepared fully.

For example, if you have a blog where a few pages have no content, it will be great to stop search engines from indexing your site until those pages are ready. Various blogs and websites do not block search engines from crawling the downloadable pages.

It means more and more people can download their eBooks, digital files, and other media even when the site is not ready to be published. They may download the material from some private pages by doing quick searches online. If you want to stop search engines from crawling your pages and posts, you should remember the following methods.

Add the Robots Meta Tags to the Theme Header

Method 1

It is possible to block several pages from the search engine results by utilizing the WordPress conditional tags. To get the desired results, you should use the proper conditional tag. For instance, if you want to block a single post, then the tag (is_single) is used, and if you want to prevent a page, then the (is_page) is used for that WordPress page. It is important to add the code to the header section of your theme's header.php area. You may use different conditional tags for different pages, whenever needed.

Method 2

There are three ways to add meta tags to your site by changing the header.php template. The best part is that the outcome of all those methods is same, but you can choose the method which you find to be easier than the others. For blocking a particular page or post, you should have its ID and edit it. When you select the ID of that post or page, you will be able to stop search engines from indexing it. You can insert a YouTube link in the browser address bar. The second way is by adding a specific code in the header section of theme's header.php template. This code denotes the post ID you want to block. You can block as many pages as you want using this technique. The third and final way is configuring everything correctly. Blocking the correct number of pages and posts is important. If you have added the code properly, you can see in the header section of that page.

Utilize the WordPress custom field option

The third and unusual method is utilizing the WordPress custom field option. This method is one of the best and most effective. First of all, you should add a particular code to the header section of the header.php area. Once this code is inserted, you cannot change it until the site is ready to get fully indexed.

I feel the above techniques are user-friendly and easy to configure for your clients. If you are using any of these methods for blocking a large number of pages and posts from getting indexed, you should create backup files of those pages and take note of those that you want to block.