A seldom mentioned SEO tip from Google's beginner SEO guide

[rob1123]

Hey guys,

So I was looking through Google's SEO starter guide (http://static.googleusercontent.com/...rter-guide.pdf) and came across this:

Avoid

allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested

This is simple enough to do in wordpress, go to your theme editor and add

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX>

Or if it is PHP

<?php if(is_single()): ?>
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" />
<?php endif; ?>

I can't vouch for how it will effect your ranks, but if Google recommends it right?

\/V Oh and look no WSO V\/

[swords]

Makes sense, Google should punish websites that A) have these pages B) "want" these pages to be indexed (intentionally or not).

[yukon]

Originally Posted by rob1123

Or if it is PHP

I can't vouch for how it will effect your ranks, but if Google recommends it right?

\/V Oh and look no WSO V\/

I can tell you right now, you'll never rank a single internal Wordpress Post page, I guarantee that!

The is_single in that code above is the actual blog post/page.

With that code your adding a NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW tag to every single blog post on your site.

Bad move If you want SERP traffic.