Everyone wants their website to rank as high as possible in search engine results because it helps drive organic traffic. This is the purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is the process of enhancing your website with the goal of convincing search engines that your content is applicable, relevant, and the most valuable.
SEO and CRO
SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) work hand in hand to maximize engagement on a website. SEO is a method for generating site visitors, ensuring your website ranks high on search engine results pages and attracts organic traffic. It involves optimizing content, keywords, and technical aspects to improve visibility. But driving traffic alone is not enough. That’s where CRO comes into play. CRO focuses on converting visitors into customers by enhancing the user experience, refining design elements, and optimizing conversion funnels.
What is the Google index?
Google indexing works by analyzing content, images, and videos on a page, and stores the information in its very large database (aka the Google index). Google Search rankings are chosen from Google’s algorithm, which picks what it determines as the best and most relevant pages from its index and shows them as search results. For example, you go to google.com and search ‘how to paint with watercolors’, and Google uses the information in its vast index to give you search results that it thinks is the best fit for your search.
When visibility doesn’t make sense
While visibility is great, most websites have pages or posts that it would want excluded from search results and therefore excluded from the index. Examples of pages that you wouldn’t want indexed are thank you pages, landing pages, and policy pages. There could also be admin or login pages you wouldn’t want to show up in search results. These pages are typically have little content and don’t provide a good UX as entry to a website.
How you keep them from showing up?
Here are the technical steps on how to have your page or post set to “no index” in WordPress:
- Add the Yoast SEO plugin to your website (the free version is sufficient for this use case)
- Navigate to the page or post you’d like to prevent from being indexed and click “Edit”
- Scroll down to the Yoast SEO section and open the “Advanced” accordion
- Change the dropdown under the question “Allow search engines to show this content in search results?” to “No”
- “Publish” or “Update” the page or post
We hope these technical steps help you manage a website that serves your business. We’d love to hear how we could partner together to build comprehensive digital presence for your business. Schedule a free chat with us here!
