How to Noindex, Follow Pagination in WordPress & WooCommerce

Please note: This guide requires your WordPress website is using Yoast SEO in order to work successfully.

When managing a WordPress or WooCommerce site, ensuring that search engines properly index your content is crucial for SEO. However, paginated pages can sometimes clutter search results without providing significant value. To address this, you can use a custom WordPress function to set paginated pages to “noindex, follow,” allowing search engines to follow links but not index the paginated pages themselves.

This blog post will explain how to implement this functionality using a simple code snippet and explore the SEO benefits of this approach.

Here’s the code that achieves this in WordPress:

Security code:

This line ensures that the file is not accessed directly. ABSPATH is a constant defined by WordPress, and this check ensures that the script runs only within the WordPress environment.

Hooking into the wpseo_robots Filter:

This line uses the add_filter function to modify the behavior of the wpseo_robots filter. The filter is provided by the Yoast SEO plugin, allowing you to customize the robots meta tag output.

Defining the Callback Function:

The as_noindex_archives function is called whenever the wpseo_robots filter is applied. It takes one parameter, $robots, which represents the current setting for the robots meta tag.

Checking if the Page is Paginated:

The is_paged() function checks if the current page is part of a paginated series. This is essential to target only the paginated pages.

Setting Noindex, Follow for Home and Archive Pages:

These conditional statements check if the current page is the homepage or an archive page. If so, the function returns 'noindex,follow', instructing search engines not to index the page but to follow the links on it.

Returning Default Robots Meta Tag:

If the page is not paginated, or if it is neither a homepage nor an archive, the function returns the existing robots meta tag settings.

1. Reduces Index Bloat

By setting paginated pages to “noindex,” you prevent search engines from indexing pages that often have little standalone content and provide less value. This helps avoid cluttering search results with similar or less relevant pages.

2. Enhances Crawl Efficiency

Using “follow” ensures that search engines can still discover and crawl links on paginated pages. This allows important content linked from paginated pages, such as individual product pages in WooCommerce, to be indexed and ranked.

3. Improves Content Focus

When search engines index fewer irrelevant pages, they can focus more on your high-quality content, which can potentially improve the visibility of your most important pages in search results.

4. Prevents Duplicate Content Issues

Paginated pages can often lead to duplicate content issues if indexed, as they may contain repeated snippets of content from other pages. Using “noindex” helps mitigate this risk.

5. Maintains Internal Linking Structure

By allowing links to be followed, you maintain the integrity of your site’s internal linking structure, which is important for distributing link equity throughout your site.

How to Implement the Function

To implement this function on your WordPress site, follow these steps:

1. Access Your Theme’s Functions.php File:
   • Go to your WordPress dashboard.
   • Navigate to Appearance > Theme Editor.
   • Select the functions.php file from the right sidebar.
2. Add the Code Snippet:Copy and paste the provided code snippet into your functions.php file. Be cautious to insert the code in the correct place and avoid disrupting any existing code.
3. Save Changes:After adding the code, click on the Update File button to save your changes.
4. Test Your Site:Ensure that your site is functioning correctly and that the robots meta tag is being applied as expected to paginated pages.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice; please consult us or another developer for specific guidance.