How to De-Index Tags and Category Pages in WordPress Using RankMath SEO

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Managing what search engines like Google index from your website is crucial to maintaining good SEO health. 

While you want to ensure that valuable pages are indexed, some pages, such as tags and categories, may only provide little benefits if they appear in search engine results. 

In today’s tutorial, we’ll explore why you may want to de-index certain pages and how to do this using the RankMath SEO plugin.

While the article focuses on using RankMath SEO to de-index tags and category pages, most WordPress SEO plugins follow a similar process. 

So, you can follow the steps here to remove tags, categories, taxonomies and other non-relevant pages from the search engine index, no matter what WordPress SEO plugin you’re using. 

Why You May Want to De-Index Pages From Search Engines

You may not want to show certain pages in search results. 

These pages may provide little to no value for organic search engine users. They may also be purposely published to serve a distinct user experience during the user acquisition journey. 

Let’s look at reasons to keep some pages out of the search engine index. 

1. Preventing Duplicate Content 

One of the critical reasons for de-indexing tag and category pages is to avoid duplicate content issues. 

Tag and category pages often display snippets of your posts, which Google and other search engines consider duplicate content. 

This might lead to lower rankings as search engines prioritize unique content.

There is much theory about tags and category pages being problematic for causing duplicate content, depending on how you set them up. To be on the safer side, especially when you are still a beginner, blocking these pages from indexing is the best option. 

2. Improving Crawl Efficiency 

Thanks to the flood of AI-generated content, search engines have limited time and resources to crawl your site. 

By de-indexing unnecessary pages, you help search engines focus on the most essential content, ensuring that your key pages are crawled more efficiently. 

This can enhance your site’s overall SEO performance and improve user experience.

3. Enhancing User Experience 

Users may not find those pages particularly helpful when they land on tags or category pages from search results. 

These pages usually serve as collections of posts rather than standalone content. The user is looking for a simplified and direct answer to his search query rather than a collection of posts to dig into. 

De-indexing the categories or tag page can improve user experience by driving traffic to more valuable, content-rich pages. 

4. Focusing on High-Value Pages 

De-indexing tag and category pages lets Google focus on more valuable pages, such as your individual blog posts or product pages. 

These pages are more likely to provide the information users seek, leading to better search engine rankings and a higher click-through rate.

It helps you focus your SEO efforts, investment, resources, and time on important pages, thereby leading to more significant results. 

Types of Pages to De-Index

Now that you’ve understood why blocking certain pages from indexing is a good WordPress SEO practice, it’s time to discover which pages should not be considered for indexing. 

These pages might offer tangible value for specific site users but not people who find your site pages through search engines. 

Here are the main types of pages you should consider de-indexing:

1. Tag Pages 

Tags help organize content on your website into relevant topics, but from an SEO perspective, they usually don’t offer enough unique value to be indexed. 

Since they contain lists of posts, there’s little incentive for search engines to rank these pages highly.

2. Category Pages 

Like tags, category pages serve as collections of related content but don’t usually provide unique information. 

It’s common practice to de-index category pages unless they are highly customized and offer significant value to visitors.

3. Author Archives 

If your website features multiple authors, you may have author archive pages that aggregate posts by each author. 

If these pages replicate content found elsewhere on your site, it may be beneficial to de-index them to avoid redundancy.

4. Date-Based Archives 

Date-based archives (such as monthly or yearly archives) may contain duplicate content and rarely contribute meaningfully to your site’s SEO. 

De-indexing them can clean up your indexed pages and keep search engines focused on your valuable content.

5. Media Pages 

WordPress automatically generates attachment pages for media files like images. 

These pages usually don’t contain valuable content and are often best de-indexed to avoid cluttering Google’s index with low-value pages.

6. Admin Login Pages

Why would you want to show your site admin login URL in SERP? There is no point in doing so; it poses significant website security risks. 

You should remove this page from indexing if you haven’t done so. 

Thankfully, if you blog on WordPress, your admin login page is automatically blocked using the no index tag. 

Additionally, the RankMath default setting blocks all WordPress password-protected pages from indexing. 

7. Thank you, Checkout, and Unsubscribe Pages. 

These pages are basically built to complete a user journey on your website. They are not meant to compete in SERP or optimize for any keyword. 

Removing them from search engine indexing is the right thing to do. Otherwise, you’re unnecessarily using more crawl budget than required. 

8. Website Internal Search Results 

While internal search results are good for on-site users, they offer no value to SERP users. 

Google doesn’t want to send its users to your internal search results because it ruins its user experience. 

Thankfully, the RankMath SEO plugin allows you to no-index internal search pages in one click. 

How to De-Index Tags and Category Pages Using RankMath SEO

Now that we’ve covered why and what to de-index let’s walk through the steps for doing this with RankMath SEO.

Step 1: Install and Activate RankMath SEO Plugin

RankMath SEO is a free WordPress SEO plugin that provides essential on-page optimization guidance for your site. 

It’s free; you should install it by following the steps below. 

Go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins > Add New Plugin.

In the plugin search bar, type “RankMath SEO.” Next, click Install Now and then Activate the plugin.

Complete the basic setup by following the plugin’s wizard, which guides you through connecting RankMath with Google Search Console and setting your site’s default options.

Get help if you need more information on how to install WordPress plugins. 

Step 2: Access RankMath SEO Settings

Once the plugin is installed and active, you must access the settings.

From the WordPress dashboard, find RankMath SEO in the left-hand menu. Click on Titles & Meta.

RankMath SEO has made controlling the meta robot setting for tags and category pages easy.

Inside the RankMath Titles & Meta setting, locate Post from the menus tab to manage the settings for tags, categories, and other taxonomy-related archives.

Step 3: De-index Category Pages

To de-index your category pages, click the Category option under Post to open its settings page. 

RankMath has several other useful settings for Category pages, but we are most concerned with the no-index tag in this article. 

Here is what you need to do. 

First, ensure the RankMath SEO “Category Archives Robot Meta” option is enabled, as shown in the image below. You must turn this option on to reveal the Robot Meta and Advanced Robot Meta settings for Category archives. 

Once this option is turned on, click the No Index tag option, as shown in the above image. If it makes sense for your SEO, you can select multiple robot meta directives. 

For example, you can set the no-image index tag for your category pages and even the no-follow link attributes. 

Remember to click the Save Changes button when you finish settings. 

Step 4: De-index Tag Pages

Next, de-index your tag pages by following these steps.

Click Tags from the Post tab. And just as with the Category archives setting, click the Tag Archives Robots Meta button. This will open the settings to control the tag page robots’ meta directives. 

Select the No Index directives on this settings page and click Save Changes to apply these settings.

Step 5: Verify Your Changes

After de-indexing tag and category pages, you’ll want to confirm that the changes have taken effect. This is simple to do in GSC.

However, if these pages are already indexed by search engines and the URLs are available in the Google Search Console page indexing report. 

You’ll need to resubmit your sitemap to search engines for recrawl. Doing so will let Google know about your new site architecture/sitemap and allow it to index only the pages you allow. 

Depending on your site crawl frequency and other factors, this process can take a few days to several weeks to take effect. 

So, be patient and check your GSC reports often to see if tags and category pages have been dropped from the page indexing report. 

Conclusion

De-indexing tag and category pages using RankMath SEO can help streamline your SEO strategy, prevent duplicate content, and improve user experience. 

Limiting search engines to only index your most valuable content will ensure that your site ranks higher for the right reasons. 

RankMath SEO makes it easy to manage these settings, giving you complete control over what search engines see and index.

If you enjoy reading this article, you may be interested in learning how to add keywords and SEO titles with RankMath SEO in WordPress.