Meta robots or robots.txt to noindex blog category and tag

It is always better to noindex category and tag pages for a blog site to prevent your blog from several issue like duplicate and low quality pages. Same post can be found for several tag and category, so there will be a duplicate part available on several tag and category pages.

How to noindex your blog category and tag pages?

There are two methods that will tell Google to noindex your tag and category pages. Youcan do it using the meta robots tag or you can add disallow rules in the robots.txt text file.

Using meta robots tag you can noindex your blog tag and category pages by placing the below line of code inside the <head>:

<meta name=”robotscontent=”noindex“/>

To disallow your categories and tag pages you need to add these line of codes inside your robots.txt file:

Disallow: /category/

Disallow: /tag/

Thus Google crawler or bot will not crawl tag and category pages.

So which one you should use? noindex using meta robots or disallow using robots.txt?

Now the question come. Which one is better to use to noindex tag and category pages?

Well, if you ask me which one you should use then I will always suggest you to noindex your blog category and tag pages using meta robots instead of using robots.txt. Also I suggest you to add follow with noindex in your meta robots in addition. So you have to use the below meta robots code to noindex your category and tag pages:

<meta name=”robotscontent=”noindex,follow“/>

Now you may ask why you should use meta robots with noindex, follow instead of using disallow method through robots.txt on your blog. So here I am going to tell you the reason in details.

Why to use noindex, follow with meta robots instead of disallow category and tag pages with robots.txt?

At first I am going to tell you what happened if you disallow Google bot and most of the other search engines from robots.txt. Disallow category and tag pages through robots.txt will completely stop Google bot or crawlers from accessing the URL. So all the links available inside the pages will not be accessible by crawlers. Thus you will lose many internal linking features which can help you a lots to rank your site better on SEO.

If you use meta robots with noindex, allow then Google and most of the other search engines will not count the pages as duplicate and in this way it will protect you from duplicate and low quality content. But it will still can access the links of your own site. Thus you will not lose those internal linking of your own site and at the same time you can avoid duplicate, low quality and short length page with only one post inside a tag from Google as it will not counted. Internet linking is very important for search engines, so why to lose them? That’s the reason you obviously should use noindex, follow with meta robots. it will not stop search crawlers completely to access your page. crawlers can still access the page and can check links with follow. Thus you will not lose the SEO improvement that can be for the internal linking for tag and category pages.

So noindex, follow meta robots tag it will help you in three ways:

  • It will avoid duplication of post.
  • Only quality pages of your blog will become part of Google Search.
  • Google bot can still follow the internal links of your blog site.

So it is really great and far better to use noindex, follow with meta robots. Isn’t it? So always use this method to noindex category and tag pages from your blog and only keep the quality content without any duplication and without losing the internal link SEO.

WordPress plugin to noindex, follow with meta robots:

A popular SEO plugin Yoast SEO will help you to add noindex, follow for all the category and tag pages. Even you can add noindex, follow for any particular page on your WordPress blog. There are another plugin available that is called All In One SEO Pack which you can use to configure meta robots and you can add noindex, follow all the category and tag pages.


So did you understand what I discussed above. If it is still complicated to you to understand then ask anything related to it through the comment box below.

One response to “Meta robots or robots.txt to noindex blog category and tag”

  1. Tribhupati raj singh chouhan says:

    Hii sir i want to my blogger post and page not comes in google seacrh, but which method i should use for stopping my blog post and pages removing from google search to permanently. i confued, which method is good, noindex or robot.text?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *