Please help me stop google indexing https pages on my wordpress site
-
I added SSL to my wordpress blog because that was the only way to get a dedicated IP address for my site at my host. Now I am noticing Google has started indexing posts both as http and https. Can some one please help how to force google not to index https as I am sure its like having duplicate content. All help is appreciated. So far I have added this to top of htaccess file: RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_ssl.txt And added robots_ssl.txt with following: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
But https pages are still being indexed. Please help.
-
Hi Rookie123
Having unique IP's may be of use from an SEO perspective if you have multiple sites that you are interlinking with the hope of boosting SEO. However there is no guarantee that Google will not be able to work out that the sites are still in fact related.
If this is a single stand alone site then I would not worry about having a unique IP as I am not aware of any tangible benefit and would be more focused on resolving the duplicate content issue.
Hope this helps.
-
Hehe. Some one on DP suggested that.
So are you saying just add this to htaccess
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} =on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.sitename.com/$1 [R=301,L]
I am just trying to understand what it actually do? Also I am guessing i will have to deindex already indexed https pages from webmaster tools.
-
Did you just copy code from Digital Point or have SEOmoz started putting ads in?
The nofollow should in theory stop bots wandering around the https version once they're on there, so can't hurt.
I think you're best redirecting the https version though if you don't need it at all.
-
Barry,
I will try that also. Also wanted to ask you what you think about adding following to the template.
if ($_SERVER['HTTPS'] = "on") { echo 'content="noindex, nofollow">'; }
-
Can you just redirect the https to the http version?
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} =on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
Its a wordpress site and actually I do not even have a single page that needs https.
I am also thinking of just getting rid of ssl from my site. I added it to have a unique IP for my site cause I had heard it helps with SEO but I think the issues outweigh the benefits.
What do u think is better, do these code changes or just get rid of SSL? -
The problem here is you've not told the robots to noindex the https version, you've simply said they're not allowed to crawl it, but if they see a link go to there they know it exists in some capacity. What you need is the robots noindex tag on all these pages.
If you have some way of differentiating the https pages in your template then you just need to add
to the header.
If you can't then you can try to do it by putting this bit of php in your header
if ($_server['https] == "on") {
echo ";
}?>
I would guess there's some dangers in that doing bad stuff to your site, so make sure and test it. If it appears on all your pages take it off immediately!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Page Break
Hey guys, A client has asked us to install a page break function on their Wordpress site in the hope of increasing page count. It's a very common practice but have never used it as part of a strategy. Any thoughts, pros or cons?
Content Development | | wearehappymedia0 -
Best practice for Wordpress /page/2/
I realize that it might be a minor point but it still bugs me. We have a blog with a number of posts. Content of the posts does not expire or age (in the rare case something changes, we do update the information in the posts). The wordpress blog is setup to display our latest posts and displays 15 posts at once. Since we have a lot of content, the older posts get pushed off the front page which is understandable and desirable behavior. However the pages that have older posts have names like "/page/2/", /page/3/, /page/4/ and so on. This does not look very SEO or user friendly to me. What do you think? Did you come up with something better then /page/ and then a number?
Content Development | | SirMax0 -
Shopify Blog vs Wordpress
We are moving our Ecommerce site to Shopify. Currently we run our blog on Wordpress and I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion on using the Shopify blog vs Wordpress?
Content Development | | Glaze0 -
I started a Wordpress blog, google indexed it...
How long before I can see those links show up in SEO Moz for my website? What elements is SEO Moz looking for before they add the wordpress site to my linking domains report? Regards, Jeff
Content Development | | biggieshaws0 -
Best Websites to help discover Topics
Hi I know I can use Twitter and latest posts on Google & Blogs, but I was wondering what are the best tools at the moment to use if you are looking to write about up to the minute information about a certain topic. Say the topic is London, is there a website or tag cloud to understand what people are saying about London right now? Anything better than Social Mention?
Content Development | | xoffie0 -
Second Blog on the Same Site? Best SEO Practice
I would like to start up another blog which has more of a "technical" topic coverage vs my regular blog, which appeals more to non-techie business folks. If the goal is to drive traffic ultimately to the main site, should I do this second blog on a different domain, a subdomain, or try to incorporate it as a separate-but-equal blog on the same domain as the currrent one? What would you do?
Content Development | | JMagary0 -
Opinions for the Long URL strings in WordPress Blogs.
We use Wordpress for our agency Blogs. The URL's are very long and the Moz does not like the long URL's. Should we use the stubby, short Wordpress URL's for each blog post? Is there a "Best Practice" for how one should use the Wordpress URL string?
Content Development | | theideapeople0 -
Connecting facebook and twitter to your wordpress blog?
Does anyone know a good plugin for connecting facebook and twitter to your wordpress blog? I’d like it so when i make a new post on my blog it automatically displays on my facebook/twitter
Content Development | | christinarule0