While the ultimate goal is to get your blog to the highest positions, not all blog pages need to be visible in search results. In both cases though you need meta robots or robots meta tags.
So, today you'll learn what meta robots are and how to add them without any coding, using only the .
But first, let's define what these robots are and why you need them.
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What are Meta Robots?
Meta robots or robots meta tags are the directives added to the HTML of the page. They tell web crawlers what they can or can't do on a certain page. In other words, they tell web crawlers how to crawl and index a page in search results.
You can't see meta robots since they are added to the page's <head>, code part.
Nonetheless, you need them to define:
- whether a page appears in the search results
- whether crawlers should follow links on a page
- whether a snippet of a page should be displayed in SERP
- whether images on a page are indexed
Note: Shopify blog meta robots are always INDEX, FOLLOW by default. This means that web crawlers will display a page in search results and follow all URLs on a page.
However, if you want to change that you should know more about the robot meta tags directives.
Meta Robots Directives
Basically, all meta robot directives consist of the name and content. While the former defines who should follow the instructions, the latter defines the instructions for the crawler.
There is a multitude of diretives. However, let's focus on the basic ones since that's what you'll need for the blog pages.
- INDEX, FOLLOW — tells web crawlers to index a page and follow the links on that page.
- NOINDEX, FOLLOW — tells web crawlers not to index a page but to follow the links on that page.
- INDEX, NOFOLLOW — tells web crawlers to index a page and don't follow the links on that page.
- NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW — tells web crawlers neither to index a page nor to follow the links on that page.
How to Add Meta Robots to Shopify Blog?
Now that you know what each directive means, you can change the default (INDEX,FOLLOW) one to anything you like.
Magefan Blog allows you to add meta robots directly from the admin panel for each blog page: post, category, tag, and author.
Let's do one for the blog post as an example.
1. Navigate to Apps > Magefan Blog > Posts and find a blog post you'd like to change the meta robots for.
2. Scroll down to the Search Engine Listing section and find the Meta Robots.
3. Choose the option you need and Save a post.
That's it. No need to dive into code or call out for a developer. You can now change the meta robots for blog pages easily.
However, it's important to note that if you decide to set NOINDEX robots for a page, make sure to exclude it from sitemap too to avoid SEO issues.
