🏔️ [Noindex:] Everything You’re Scared to Ask

Hi friend,

Sandra from Avalanche here. Let’s talk about what the noindex tag is, and why you might sometimes need it for your SEO strategy.

Why You Might Need a Noindex Tag

Anyone who’s been in the SEO space long enough knows that you don’t necessarily want Google to index every single page on your site. This is because letting some types of pages be searchable can reduce your conversions or hurt your UX.

A few examples of content you shouldn’t index include:

• Sensitive/legal information: Pages that handle your privacy policy, customer data, or other private information should not be indexed.
• Staging pages: If your page isn’t ready for prime time, a noindex tag lets you keep working on it until it’s ready.
• Private pages: In general, pages you don’t want to be publicly viewed should have a noindex tag on them.
• Gated content: If you’re locking a piece of content behind a form on your site, make sure the page the content is on can’t be found in a Google search.
• Admin pages: Enough said.

When to Add the Noindex Tag to Your Pages

The answer here is simple: If you don’t want your page to be indexed after you publish it, add a noindex tag prior to publishing or shortly after.

How to Add the Noindex Tag to Your Pages

There are a few different ways you can add a noindex tag to your pages. These are the easiest methods we recommend:

• WordPress: use an extension like Yoast SEO that makes it as easy as selecting “No” from the dropdown in its advanced settings
• HubSpot: Add the meta tag <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”/> in the advanced settings on your page or post in HubSpot.
• In general: Add the same meta tag (<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”/>) to the HTML or HTTP response header of any page you don’t want to index.