How to re-follow using the WPSEO plugin

[crazymikesapps1]

Hello,

I unindexed numerous blog low quality blog posts and nofollowed them at the same time using the Advanced meta tab for the Yoast WPSEO plugin. I am trying to reindex them, which I figured out and can successfully do,

What I cannot figure out is these posts will not return to follow status and remain nofollow. I have been recreating the blog posts, but this is very time consuming.

Is there some way to do this without have to reduplicate a new blog post?

I Googled this and searched MOZ with no luck.

thank you

Mike

[BlueprintMarketing]

You must wait for Google Bot

you can ask Google to crawl it.

Useing

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1352276?hl=en

[BlueprintMarketing]

have you reversed everything that you've done inside the Yoast plug-in?

You say that you keep creating new blog posts, and they are all no follow, no index. is this correct?

have you looked at the main rules in

Robots Meta configuration

https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

you could also have no index selected for categories, tags, etc. whatever you could've easily just click the button, and no indexed your entire blog if it is a category.

How familiar are you with this plug-in?

I should Have started with this 1st however have you pulled your robots.txt file?

in this tool it will tell you to put  "Existing robots.txt URL (optional)" _______________________

put your URL in their and then hit upload it will show you everything in your robots.txt file rather you have one or 4. It's possible because of plug-ins I'm not saying that's the issue but check it.

http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/

If you need more help with it sending your URL I will figured out.

Sincerely,

Thomas

XOSVrJY.jpg xUZ4d0o.jpg

[BlueprintMarketing]

in order to see what I was referencing before you can simply no index no follow from this part of the admin panel as well

https://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-1-2/

I think your problem is going to be in here

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[crazymikesapps1]

Thomas,

I have the meta setup correctly in the plugin. I guess I was confused that the follow would automatically apply once I reversed the meta robots to index, always, but it still shows as nofollow. I have all blog posts as default index, follow.

I think you are saying Google Bot actually has to crawl to change the nofollow to follow?

thank you

Mike

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Mike,

if the source code still shows no follow & no index then unfortunately Google bot will not change that.

the easiest way to tell is to use the Moz bar if you use Google Chrome or Firefox you can download it for free here

http://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar

whenever you're on the page you think is blocked simply click the tool and it will tell you.

However if you have the no follow and no index removed then you have to wait for Google bot to index your site prior to any changes in Google.

Try running your site through one of the 3 tools here.

The Moz crawl test is pretty awesome it sometimes can take a while for the results come in. If your site is very large I would use it because the other free tools below will not go over a set amount of pages for instance Internet marketing ninjas 1000 pages is the max in the case of screaming frog 500 pages is the max.

https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test

One thing I would do is download this tool it is free to crawl your site up to 500 pages and works on Mac, PC and Linux

http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

It will show you very clearly if you have any pages that are no follow , no index

if you run that tool then export all the no follow no index pages or export the crawl report I can use the Pro version and I will change your tags to no longer say no follow no index

I'd also be interested in seeing what your robots.txt file says by putting a URL of mine into this tool below I was able to get this information

http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/

Sitemap: http://app.wistia.com/sitemaps/23283.xml

I can now see that as long as anything that says Disallow with the / is going to be blocked

its a very simple way to check for things that could be causing problems that would replicate identical symptoms.

The same company that makes that robots.txt tool makes another tool that could help you quite a bit. Similar to screaming frog however this one will crawl your site up to 1000 pages at no cost.

http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/google-sitemap-generator/

I know it says site map generator however in addition to doing that it will show you every single blocked page and for what reason it's blocked. In addition you don't have to download software it's right on the web. After which it will e-mail you the results or you can watch them come in.

Here's some more information that might be of help to you

Kristina Kledzik works for distilled however she wrote this great quick audit guide right here.

http://www.zemanta.com/blog/technical-seo-audit-for-publishers/

https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/7-technical-seo-wins-for-web-developers/

If you don't feel comfortable sharing your URL for more than welcome to private message me here.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

Mike

try this as well.

http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/linkcount/

http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/spider/

http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/

read this

http://www.zemanta.com/blog/technical-seo-audit-for-publishers/

All the best,

Thomas

[evolvingSEO]

Hey There

Just seeing if you still need help with this? Just to clarify, having a "nofollow" meta tag on the post does not prevent it from being indexed, that would be a "nopindex" tag - perhaps we're using the two terms interchangeably here?

To get the posts indexed again, you want three things to be true;

1. There is no "noindex" present in the html meta tags
2. There is nothing blocking the content in robots.txt
3. You are linking to the posts from the block so they are crawled.

If those three things are all true, Google does need to crawl the page again to then reindex it. Thomas is correct in that you can "fetch as Googlebot" in webmaster tools to speed up this process and you can then submit that page, or even the whole site to the index.

Let us know if you still need help!

-Dan

[crazymikesapps1]

thank you.

But the issue is I have used the Yoast meta advanced to noindex/nofollow numerous blog posts. Now that I have corrected them, I can reindex them with the same SEO tab in each blog post. But, the nofollow will not go back to follow or default.

I was trying to figure this out and the only solution was to copy the post to a new blog using the original url and delete the old post once I am done.

Not a great work around, but not sure how to get the advanced tab to show that I want to follow a post again.

Yes, bought the yearly subscription to ScreamingFrog and using it to fix issues on your site.

thank you again

Mike

[crazymikesapps1]

Dan,

No this issue is still not resolved and I am hoping at this point I am not missing a small detail.

I noindexed and nofollowed numerous low quality pages. I have been fixing them up and when I go back to change the settings in the WPSEO tab I can successfully select the index portion of meta robots. But, I cannot get the nofollow to return to follow.

I realize Google has to crawl the site to reindex and the Google Link submission tool is faster, but that isn't the problem. It is getting those pages to show as wanting to be "followed."

I have no robots.txt file or am using the default WP file and my WP reading settings is allowing search engines to index the site.

I also have default WPSEO blog post settings as index/follow

I hope this makes my issue clearer?

thank you for your response.

Mike

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Mike

Yep it's clearer, thanks You had noindexed/nofollowed a lot of low quality pages, since improved them and want to return them to index/follow.

Just to check, do you have this option when editing each individual post in the Yoast box?

--> http://screencast.com/t/epjFCpGl8hT

Or do you mean you are selecting nofollow and it keeps switching back? Is Yoast and WordPress updated to the latest version?

Also, you are seeing "nofollow" in the HTML source? I know this is probably what you mean, just confirming to not miss a detail.

-Dan

[crazymikesapps1]

Dan,

Yes, I had low quality content and as I fix it up I am trying to add it back. I unfortunately noindexed, nofollowed about 100 posts. After I changed to noindex/follow, which is what I wish I had done with all of them.

To set the posts to get re-indexed I have to select - "index" "always include" and when it comes to the Meta Robots Advanced I select "None" and change nofollow to follow and the post changes to allow it to be indexed turning the little color ball from blue to green, but the nofollow does not change and it remains noarchive as well. I have tried this over and over and still will not let me follow with the post again. I did check the source code as well and verified that is shows nofollow,noarchive.

I am using the latest version of WP and the WPSEO plugin as well.

I have attached a screenshot of what my settings are after trying to save a noindex,nofollow blog post.

thank you

Mike

aftersaving.jpg

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Mike

That is odd for sure. I could see this being tricky to diagnose over a Q&A so I'll suggest some more things and ultimately you might want to try to see if someone can help.

These are just guesses / possibilities;

1. Do you have any caching plugins etc? Try disabling those
2. Try disabling / enabling Yoast. Your settings should remain.
3. Try one by one disabling other plugins and seeing if it changes.
4. Are you using a theme that could conflicting? Check your theme settings.
5. You may want to try Yoast support directly - he typically will claim it's not his plugin causing an issue (and 99% of the time it isn't) - so might be tough to get help, but that would be the ultimate source I think of a solution.

Beyond getting hands on with it, that's what I could offer as some other guesses. It does sound like something possibly simple. I would keep exploring all options! If you do find the cause feel free to write back and let us know.