How to change noindex to index?

[markgreggs]

Hey,

I've recently upgraded to a pro SEOmoz account and have realised i have 14574 issues to do with 'blocked by meta-robot' and that 'This page is being kept out of the search engine indexes by the meta tag , which may have a value of "noindex", keeping this page out of the index.'

How can i change this so my pages get indexed?

I read somewhere that i need to change my privacy settings but that thread was 3 years old and now the WP Dashboard has updated..

Please let me know

Many thanks, Jamie

P.s Im using WordPress 3.5

And i have the XML sitemap plugin

And i have no idea where to look for this robots.txt file..

[loopyal]

Hello Mark.

Please send me a bitly shortened link to your website so I can see what you are seeing

It probably isn't your robots file.

First try this.

In the Admin section, you should see "Settings" on the left navigation

Click that and you should see "Privacy"

Click that and you should see two radio buttons

<label for="blog-public">I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers</label>

<label for="blog-norobots">I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors</label>

Obviously, choose the top one and save it.

Then, refresh your front page or inner pages and look in the code to see if it still says noindex

If you have a cache, you will need to flush it.

[markgreggs]

Hi Alan, thanks for your quick response.

My website is: www.FifaCoinStore.com

Here is a printscreen of my settings: http://gyazo.com/0cd3d21c5ec1797873a5c7cacc85a588.png?1357600674

I believe since the WordPress 3.5 update they have removed this privacy option which is why i can't seem to find it. I read this page from WordPress on it: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Reading_Screen

Or am i just looking in the wrong place?

Thanks again

[loopyal]

Thank you Mark

Nice looking site!

Your front page is index, follow.

Index pages are noindex, follow

Final pages are index, follow

I do something very close to this on my site.

Often, index pages are useless to searchers, because the index page changes so quickly that by the time the info gets into a search result, the information is no longer on that page, and the searcher will either just click away, cursing you and your site, or they will go looking through a few index pages and then curse you when they can't find what they wanted.

So I agree with the way you're doing that - if it is the case that the content changes quickly. If the index pages are just collectors of groups of items, then index, follow would be better, provided that you have enough text on the page to make it worthwhile.

As to how to make that happen, it isn't obvious.

I need to upgrade some of my sites to 3.5.

It could be that you have a plugin or a "custom field" that sets the index follow.

I suggest you edit a post and a page and scroll down to see if you have a field that handles it, such as "robotsmeta" that is set to "noindex,follow" for those pages

[markgreggs]

Thanks again for your reply Alan.

Currently the site is still in its final stages of development and once my automated system is finally built and implemented then I won't need to be changing any of the index pages except posting a few blogs once in a week or so.

So i think it would benefit me more to have each of my index pages getting indexed but then again I'm not sure on how to go about allowing them to be indexed due to WordPress' update.

My plugins are all highly downloaded and i use the 'All in one SEO pack' - if that may be the problem? I've gone through all the settings and the noindex buttons are all anticked.

Perhaps it could be the initial theme i used?

[loopyal]

Yes, I would have them indexed in that case too.

I think it is the categories that are noindex.

I think this is an 'All in one SEO pack' adjustable feature.

In the  setup for that, look for a checkbox:

"use noindex for categories"

uncheck that if it is checked.

If that isn't it, I don't know the answer

[markgreggs]

If i remember correctly my pages were still not being indexed before i installed the all in one SEO pack.

Here is my settings for the SEO pack: http://gyazo.com/6b4dddacb307bdacfdd7741894e0356b.png?1357647136

As you can see they are as you explained.

Any other ideas?

[loopyal]

It could be that the older wordpress had a setting that this new version has decided to ignore. This is typical of programmers!

The next possibility is to look in the database, but the options part of the database is hard to read.

Another idea is to look in the code of the the theme and hack it, so it is permanently index, follow or just remove that altogether.

Maybe someone else has a better idea?

Alan

[markgreggs]

Just asked the WordPress Forums and one of their reply was to install this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-robots-txt/

Just seems to add the privacy tab again so i can set the settings to: I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers

Like you first stated

Will install it now and see how it goes

[markgreggs]

Just installed it and now its added this field into my settings>Reading

http://gyazo.com/0be601793fc1cb866d918ea61e7d8ec1.png?1357649141

What do i need to change to allow it to index all my pages?

(Don't want to type something in that will block all my pages )

[markgreggs]

Just updated it to this: http://gyazo.com/4a8a008055abbd563f96bf29b6b259a6.png?1357651763

And then checked my page sources and they're still 'noindex' - why can't i correct this?!

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Mark

Did you find it? I struggled too for a bit, but it's moved to Settings->Reading

See this screenshot

-Dan

[evolvingSEO]

Answered below as well, but wanted to drop this here in case anyone else is looking. WP has changed the location of what used to be "Privacy" under settings. The functionality (which blocks search engines from your wordpress installation) is now under Settings->Reading

[Screenshot](Hi Mark Did you find it? I struggled too for a bit, but it's moved to Settings->Reading See this screenshot -Dan)

-Dan