Recently, one of our readers asked that if we can hide one of our WordPress site posts or pages from Google, which means hide from Google?
In other words, can we do something that does not index our page? Many times you have to hide the page from Google to keep your privacy safe or to keep the unwanted users out.
In this article, we will learn how you can hide a page from Google without affecting the entire SEO of your existing WordPress site.
Hide a Post or Page from Your WordPress Word from Google:
Google allows us to exclude whatever part of our content we want. You can do this easily by using your website's robots.txt file or by using HTML Meta tags.
I will tell you today in this post that you can do this by using two methods in WordPress. You can choose from these which prove to be good for you.
We will also tell you how to make your blog posts and pages password protected in WordPress.If you do not want to use the first two methods, by doing so, you can control the visibility of posts and pages for your users.
Method 1: Use Yoast SEO to hide any WordPress page from Search Engines
The next thing you need to do is edit the post that you want to hide from Search Engines. Scroll down to the bottom of the post editor Yoast SEO Meta Box and then click on the Advanced Settings button.
Advanced settings option allows you to embed meta tags robots on your blog posts or pages.By using Meta robots tags, you can tell the search engine that neither index nor follow this post or page.
You can then save or publish your blog post or page.
Yoast SEO plugin will add this line to your blog post or page.
<meta name = "robots" content = "noindex, nofollow" />
This line search engine simply states that neither follow nor index this page.
Method 2: How to hide your Blog Post or Page from Search Engines by using Robots.txt.
In this method, you have to edit the robots.txt file of your blog or website. If you give inaccurate information in this file then this can have a negative impact on the overall SEO of your site. For this reason, this method is not recommended for beginners.
This robots.txt file is a configuration file that you can add to your WordPress site's root directory. This is to provide instructions to search engine bots, hence the name is a robots.txt file.
You can edit your robots.txt file by connecting your website to an FTP client or even going directly to your web hosting 's cPanel.
You need to add the lines given below in your robots.txt file.
User-agent: *
Disallow: / your page /
User-agent line allows you to target specific bots. We use the asterisk sign to include all search engines.
The next line is the URL of the part of your website that comes after your domain.
So let's assume that you have to hide from the blog post search engines below.
http://www.wikibeginner.in/2017/12/my-blog-post.html
Here's how to add a URL to a robots.txt file to hide this post.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /2017/12/my-blog-post.htm
Do not forget to save your changes and upload your robots.txt file again on your server.
Disadvantages of using a robots.txt file to hide your content:
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that the robots.txt file is publically accessible.Anyone can open it directly to know which pages you are trying to hide.
Although many search engines follow the instructions of robots.txt file, many search engines simply ignore them. These are the bots that spread spamming on the web.
Method 3. How to make your WordPress posts or pages password protected?
This method is a different way. Instead of asking a search engine that posting is not an index, it only shows your post on those logs that have a password address.
WordPress comes with the built-in feature of protecting your blog posts and pages. Simply edit your post or page that you want to protect.
Click on the "Edit" link next to the Publish Meta Box, under the Visibility Option.
This will show you the available visibility options on your WordPress blog. You can keep any post/page public, keep it private or you can password protect it.
Private posts are only available to log in users, who have the editor's role on your WordPress site.
Password protected posts Anyone who has a password will be able to see. You simply click on the password protected option and then enter a strong password.
Now you can publish or save your post/page.
Any visitor who now accesses this page/post on your website will have to fill in the password first and then it will be able to see the contents of your post / page.
Tell me if you have any questions related to this post in your mind?
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