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Noindexing Auto-Generated Category and Tag Pages

Consider No-Indexing Auto-Generated Category or Tag Pages

Auto-generated category or tag pages can often lead to duplicate content issues and dilute your SEO efforts. It’s a good practice to no-index these pages to ensure they don’t negatively impact your site’s SEO.

Shopify

To ‘Noindex’ Product and Blog Tags on Shopify, you can follow these steps to prevent search engines from indexing these pages while still allowing link-following for SEO purposes:

  1. Access the Theme Editor:
    • From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
    • Find the theme you are currently using and click on Actions > Edit code.
  2. Edit the theme.liquid Layout File:
    • In the left-hand sidebar, find the Layout section and click on theme.liquid.
    • Add the following code snippet within the <head> section of your theme.liquid file:
      {% if current_tags %}
        <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">
      {% endif %}
      
  3. Save the Changes:
    • Click on the Save button to save your changes.

By adding this code, you ensure that product and blog tag pages are set to noindex, follow. This means that search engines will not index these pages, but they will still follow links on them. This helps to avoid creating low-value pages that can hurt your SEO.

Example

Here is how the modified <head> section of your theme.liquid might look:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>{{ page_title }}</title>

  {% if current_tags %}
    <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">
  {% endif %}

  {{ content_for_header }}
</head>
<body>
  {{ content_for_layout }}
</body>
</html>

Implementing this change will help improve your Shopify store’s SEO by avoiding the indexing of low-value tag pages.

Additional Considerations

  • Custom Templates: If you have custom templates for your category or tag pages, make sure to include them in the condition check.
  • Using an SEO App: There are Shopify SEO apps that can help you manage noindex tags without editing code. These apps can offer more flexibility and additional SEO features.
  • Test Your Changes: After implementing the changes, use a tool like Google Search Console to verify that the noindex tags are being recognized by search engines.

Example

Here is how the modified <head> section of your theme.liquid might look:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>{{ page_title }}</title>

  {% if template == 'collection' or template == 'search' or template == 'blog' %}
    <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
  {% endif %}

  {{ content_for_header }}
</head>
<body>
  {{ content_for_layout }}
</body>
</html>

This should effectively prevent search engines from indexing your auto-generated category and tag pages on Shopify.

WordPress (WooCommerce)

In WordPress with WooCommerce, you can use an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO to no-index category or tag pages. Follow these steps:

  1. Install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin.
  2. Go to SEO > Search Appearance.
  3. Navigate to the Taxonomies tab.
  4. Under Categories and Tags, set the Show Categories in search results? and Show Tags in search results? options to No.
  5. Save changes.

This will add a tag to your category and tag pages, preventing search engines from indexing them.