Wordpress noindex

[NakulGoyal]

It should.If that does not work for some reason, try Yoast. One of these 2 plugins should be able to deindex these pages for you. I presume you are using the latest version of Wordpress as well as the Plugin.

[surgeonsadvisor]

There is a plugin way – and a coding way…

I will explain both

Plugin version is good for individual posts / coding way is a mass archive way…

PLUGIN VERSION

Using a plugin called WordPress SEO by Yoast.. you can go into the previous posts and do the following.

Open the POST dashboard in your WordPress blog.

Find the post/s you are interested in working with.

Click ‘Edit’ post

Then scroll down to the WordPress SEO by Yoast section on the bottom anc click ADVANCED

From there.. you can select noindex / nofollow for that post – as well as a few advanced meta tags.

You can do this for any or all of your posts… 

CODING VERSION

Step 1
In your theme folder locate the following files:

/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/

Archive.php

Header.php

Open them both up.

Step 2
First thing to do is SAVE the header file as:

header-archive.php

with that new version open add the following code into the header section:

Then save it.

Upload that file to your wp theme folder online.

Step 3 now go to the open archive.php file and find and replace the following:

FIND:

REPLACE WITH:

Save and upload that file to your theme folder as well.

Now you have just MASS added a NOINDEX / NOFOLLOW to all of your archive pages – but NOT the individual post pages themselves.

Hope this helps!

[blacey]

That will only put noindex on the date archives.

I noticed the same problem and wrote an article on how to avoid duplication in WordPress. For a fresh WordPress installation with 10 published posts, Google ends up indexing close to 30 URLs, all pointing back to just 10 unique articles, because of the date, author and category archive pages.

In header.php of your theme add the following code:

 1){
  echo '';
} ?>

';
} ?>

';
} ?>

If you want, this could be condensed to:

$paged > 1 || is_author() || is_trackback()){
  echo '';
} ?>

You can read more at my blog: http://www.laceytechsolutions.co.uk/blog/wordpress-development/avoiding-duplicate-content-in-wordpress

[blacey]

This seems overly complex for a coding solution. All you need is 3 lines of code (max) in header.php of your theme (See my reply above)

[blacey]

Also, if you use the plugin to set the posts to no-follow and you want to change SEO plugin changes are those settings won't be transferred, if you code the solution into the theme its plugin independent and (in my eyes) the best way to go about avoiding duplication in WordPress.

[surgeonsadvisor]

I agree Ben, that coding into the theme itself is the best way to do this - however since there are a  few ways to do this task - we wanted to offer various solutions.

[PeterM22]

Thanks so much Ben, This has done exactly what I wanted

[blacey]

I fully understand that. People at my work fully advocate the use of plugins, I personally believe that somethings should be hard-coded into the theme (This being one of those things).

Chances are once you find an SEO plugin you tend to stick with it until you notice issues or find one that does things better.

I'm surprised that WordPress doesn't do more to help prevent duplicate content.

[blacey]

Brilliant. Glad I could help.

[JonathanRolande]

Thanks, this helped me