noindex issues

  • Resolved highlandmoss

    (@highlandmoss)


    10 months, 3 weeks ago

    I have spent some time over the last few days trying to debug this issue. I have a lot of pages that are not currently indexed due to a noindex meta tag.

    I have narrowed it down to SEO Framework (disabling the plugin resolved the issue)

    I checked all SEO Framework settings as well as settings in any other plugins I have which could theoretically have some kind of setting. I also checked the affected pages (in this example it is a product category) and ensured they are set to be indexed.

    Here is the complaint from Google Search Console:

    ——

    Indexing allowed?

    error

    No: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag

    ——

    This is a sample url that is failing:

    https://highlandmoss.com/house-plants/wee-plants/

    Here is the meta tag being generated:

    <meta name="robots" content="noindex,max-snippet:-1,max-image-preview:large,max-video-preview:-1" />

    I attempted to manually override the issue by adding this code snippet, but it has no effect. 

    function remove_noindex() {
    // Check if it's a single post of type 'post'
    if ( is_single() && get_post_type() == 'post' ) {
        echo '<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />';
    }
    // Check if it's a WooCommerce product category
    elseif ( is_product_category() ) {
        echo '<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />';
    }
}

add_action( 'wp_head', 'remove_noindex' );

    I flushed the object cache, wprocket, cloudflare etc but now running out of ideas.

    As SEO Framework is made with an abundance of confidence, it does mean a lot of things are automated and so I don’t want to tinker with it. I was hoping for direct help from the developer but this forum is where I was directed.

    I did a search and found other people had sort of similar issues but couldn’t find a solution that worked for my instance.

    Thank you to anyone that can help me out.

    • This topic was modified 10 months, 3 weeks ago by highlandmoss.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 6 replies - 16 through 21 (of 21 total)
  • Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hello!

    When I perform a site:highlandmoss.com-query on Google, they show me 2580 results.

    Please check the Performance Report at Google Search Console to gather insights about ranking: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553. Also, check the Indexing report; at Pages, it should show you about as many Indexed as you have products. The “Not indexed” number can be largely ignored unless that Indexed number is too small.

    I inspected your site and saw no technical SEO issues on critical pages other than the following:

    1. The header URL of Shop All needs a slash at the end. (shop-2/ instead of shop-2)
    2. Although TSF outputs paginated (canonical) URLs for Searchanise (did it do this before?), those URLs lead to duplicated pages of the first Searchanise page. If this appeared because of changes made to your site to accommodate Searchanise and TSF compatibility, I suggest undoing them. It’s better to have something not entirely supported than something supported incorrectly.

    I found an issue in the sitemap, however. This one will cause many 404 errors in Google Search Console, but I do not know of its effect on ranking:

    1. kadence_element is listed in the sitemap, and those pages aren’t meant to be publicly queryable. This needs to be addressed in Kadence Pro, and I recommend reaching out to them about this issue.

    Aside from technical SEO, have any changes you made in the past month affected how the site flows for visitors, or does everything appear and work the same? Have there been (unintentional) changes to the checkout page, such as via a plugin update?

    Thread Starter highlandmoss

    (@highlandmoss)

    Hi Sybre,

    Thank you so much for your detailed reply.

    It looked like a lot of pages were still indexed which is great and I managed to sort the few I found which had dropped off for whatever reason.

    However, I did find that my shop-2 page is not indexed, with the message in console being “Page is not indexed:?Alternative page with proper canonical tag”

    I am happy to add the trailing slash to the url but I am not sure where to do that – would this be by just updating the slug in the quick edit area?

    I will ask Searchanise about the duplicated pages and see if they know whats going on with that.

    I can eliminate kadence_elements from indexing, will do that now, thank you – I wasn’t sure if noindexing them would affect the SEO of the pages they are displayed on. These are hooked elements which get called in dynamically.

    Thanks again!

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hello!

    The trailing slash is added to the URL via the permalink settings — this is good: you do not need to change the permalink settings.

    However, the trailing slash is missing from the site’s menu URL, and that leads to /shop-2. This page has the canonical URL pointing to /shop-2/ (with the slash), hence Google is stating there’s an alternative page. Adding the slash in the menu will make it directly lead to the canonical page.

    Although you can add “noindex” to the kadence_elements, its WordPress Core post-type sitemap will still show in the index. Because the sitemap is empty thanks to “noindex”, this sitemap will lead to a 404 page. The 404 responses of an empty WordPress Core sitemap are a bug in WordPress itself. Still, adding the “noindex” didn’t hurt: it’ll improve crawling, but you’ll also get a nag from Google about the 404 response. This nag (of little consequence) is why I didn’t provide it as a solution — it’d be another thing to worry about ??. It’s best to have Kadence Pro resolve this.

    • This reply was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: clarity
    Thread Starter highlandmoss

    (@highlandmoss)

    I just added that fixed for shop-2 – so easy! Thank you so much, its the sort of thing that when you know, you know. But so many times I have gone down some deep rabbit hole thinking I need some complex solution to little fixes like this.

    Searchanise is going to turn off the mods they did temporarily so we can see if that corrects the duplicate page issue. I will update you once they have done that.

    Little bit of a separate thing – but have you considered adding any kind of broken link/broken image checker to the plugin extensions? I did a media cleanup and unfortunately even with a lot of checking it removed some images from my old articles, care guides etc. I have been looking all over for a well coded and reliable broken link checker but haven’t found anything I liked. I am away to see if Jordy Meow has made anything for it as I like his stuff but thought it would be in your wheelhouse and SEO related too.

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hello!

    Google inspects your site for 404 errors automatically: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203. But, they may be slow to report on issues, and I’m unsure if they even report image issues.

    You can also use a tool like Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/.

    Lastly, you may also find 404 errors reported by your server already in its log files. Scan the errors by extension type (.png, .jpg, .webp, etc.) to find the images. Logging errors via a web application like WordPress (with the help of plugins) is inefficient; it will either hog the database or write to a file slowly, making the site more prone to crash during a minor (accidental) DoS attack.

    Thread Starter highlandmoss

    (@highlandmoss)

    Thank you for this!

Viewing 6 replies - 16 through 21 (of 21 total)
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