Don't want your thank you page appearing in search results? Here's how!
To start with, lets go over some basics. A search engine will index pages which have been crawled, so if you want to stop a page appearing in search results then you need to stop it from being crawled in the first place.
When would you want to stop pages from being indexed?
- Pages with little content: Thank you pages are a prime example. Maybe a contact downloaded a ebook and then gets directed to a "thanks for downloading" page. Search engines won't find these useful and you don't want to be giving away high-value pieces of content without a contact having filled in a form.
- Outdated content: Maybe you have an old blog post which needs updating but you do not want to remove it from the website as it still has some relevance. De-index it and then index the post once it has been updated.
- Duplicate content: Search engines do not like duplicate content. Maybe you have a piece of content which is offered in different forms such as a printer friendly version. If this is the case you only want to make sure you have 1 version that is indexed.
Here's how:
Step 1:
Go to the website/landing page or blog that you wish to de-index and click 'edit'.
Step 2
Within the content editor go into 'settings' and click 'advanced' and within the 'Additional code snippets' add: <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
Step 3
Click update to make the change and publish.
