What to do if lots of backend pages have been indexed by Google erroneously?

[martin1970]

Hi Guys

Our developer forgot to add a no index no follow tag on the pages he created in the back-end. So we have now ended up with lots of back end pages being indexed in google. So my question is, since many of those are now indexed in Google, so is it enough to just place a no index no follow on those or should we do a 301 redirect on all those to the most appropriate page?

If a no index no follow is enough, that would create lots of 404 errors so could those affect the site negatively?

Cheers

Martin

[GastonRiera]

Hi Martin,

Just add a robots tag with noindex.
This **WILL NOT **create 404 pages, because you are not deleting that pages, and wont hurt your rankings. 
Google does understand that you might not want some pages to be indexed, so just with noindex tag is enough.

Remember that it should be placed in the parte, like this:

<title>...</title>

More info about robots:
Robots meta directives - Moz
About the Robots tag - Robots.org

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR