How to set “noindex,follow” in your robots meta tag for Joomla!

Use meta tag robots value noindex,follow to get a higher ranking in searchengines. In this blogpost I explain you how to set the value of meta tag robots to noindex,follow in Joomla! for category blog pages. Using meta tag robots you can restrict search engines to index the current page of your website.

Set meta tag robots in Joomla! 1.5.x

To change the value of meta tag robots in Joomla! 1.5 for content category pages you have to add some code in your template. For every individual article it’s possible to change the value through parameters. For the blog view of a category it’s not possible.

Open your template and paste the following PHP code somewhere in the head of your template between PHP tags. It’s not nessecary to paste the code in the head but it’s more easy to explain.

// Set robots for category pages
$document =&amp; JFactory::getDocument();
$view = JRequest::getVar('view');
if ($view == 'category') { $document-&gt;setMetaData('robots','noindex,follow'); }

// Set robots for category pages

$document =& JFactory::getDocument();

$view = JRequest::getVar('view');

if ($view == 'category') { $document->setMetaData('robots','noindex,follow'); }

Save & Close
Go to a category blog page on your website and refresh the page.
Open the source of the category blog view and see the meta tag robots set to noindex,follow.
Click on the read-more button of an article to open that article.
Open the source of the single article and see the meta tag robots set to index,follow.

With this code set in your template the value of meta tag robots of every page request where the view is “category” will be changed into noindex,follow.

Set meta tag robots in Joomla! 2.5

Using Joomla! 1.6, 1.7 or 2.5 it’s very easy to set the value of meta tag robots for your content article. You don’t have to dig into PHP code. It’s a two-step-strategy to follow.

Open your Joomla! backend
Step 1. Go to Content >> Category Manager and open the category you need to change
Open the parameters tab “Metadata Options” and set the value of Robots to “No index, follow“
Save & Close
Step 2. Go to Menus >> Menu Manager and open the menu containing the menu item to the category blog you need to change.
Open the menu item you need to change.
Open the parameters tab “Metadata Options” and set the value of Robots to “Index, Follow“.
Save & Close
Go to the menu item on the frontend and refresh the page.
Open the source of the category blog view and see the meta tag robots set to noindex,follow.
Click on the read-more button of an article to open that article.
Open the source of the single article and see the meta tag robots set to index,follow.

With this configuration set the value of meta tag robots of the changed category will be changed into noindex,follow.

Higher ranking on individual pages using noindex

Search engines rank your page using internal and external links going from and to your website pages. You can improve the rank of your website pages by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to your pages. Since a category page has lots of great internal links from and to your website it will rank higher then each and every separate article in that category. This results in higher ranking of your category pages then your individual pages. By using the explanation above the meta tag robots of your category pages have the value noindex,follow and will have a lower ranking then your individual pages.