How to make sure dev site is not index in wordpress and how would it be affected?
-
hi guys!
I'm currently having a dev version of my site (dev.website.com) that once everything is done i would move the dev to the public domain (website.com). But since is a total duplicate content of my real site would it affect the seo? if so, i tried setting the reading privacy in wordpress so google would not index it but im afraid when i live it in the future and revert the setting back to normal it would affect the site seo.
any opinion and suggestion on this?
-
If you add a host name with your registrar the site then becomes available for everyone in the world. Even with a login you could have some leakage.
If your site is set up to only answer to http://test.sitename.com and the only place you put the translation for that is in your local host file there is no opportunity for leakage. You don't have to worry about trying to block access other ways.
-
what if i add a login in the front page just like leonie said? i assume it wont be index?
-
why not? isnt host name in dns a better choice? thats what im doing now
-
Don't register the host name in DNS. Just use local host file on your pc's for your development and testing processes.
-
Hi Andrew,
I would go with what you said originally. "noindex" the dev site (dev.website.com) then when you switch the site live, turn off "noindex". You won't get any SEO issues from doing this. The only possible issue you will get is if you forget to turn of "noindex" when the site goes live This will be a big problem so don't forget to turn it off!
Cheers
-
Might want to add the dev site to Webmaster Tools so you can easily remove any pages that do get indexed.
-
Hi, to be sure your dev site is not indexed put it behind a login / password. As google can't login to your site, google can't index it.
In WP you did the right thing, when you put your site live make sure you use a seo plugin (Yoast) and use canonical tag, to avoid duplicate content. https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
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
-
Site still indexed after request 'change of address' search console
Hello, A couple of weeks ago we requested a change of address in Search console. The new, correct url is already indexed. Yet when we search the old url (with site:www.) we find that the old url is still indexed. Is there another way to remove old urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversal0 -
Moving a lot of pdfs to main site. Worth trying to get them indexed?
On my main site we link to pdfs that are located on another one of our domains. The only thing that is on this other domain is the pdfs. It was setup really poorly so I am going to redesign everything and probably move it. Is it worthwhile trying to add these pdfs to our sitemap and to try and get them indexed? They are all connected to a current item, but the content is original.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Links to my site still showing in Webmaster Tools from a non-existent site
We owned 2 sites, with the pages on Site A all linking over to similar pages on Site B. We wanted to remove the links from Site A to Site B, so we redirected all the links on Site A to the homepage on Site A, and took Site A down completely. Unfortunately we are still seeing the links from Site A coming through on Google Webmaster Tools for Site B. Does anybody know what else we can do to remove these links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pedstores0 -
SEO - is it site or page
Hi When we're talking about SEO does the search engine only look at the whole site in general or do they look at the individual page when we're talking about SERP? So if you have a keyword "my search term" Does the search engine look at the site first or the page with the term on then rank you or is it the page then the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Why isnt this site ranking?
I just took over for a site and noticed they have no presence for any keywords...not even low ranks. Their backlink profile is not the best, but webmaster tools says they have no manual actions. vonderhaar.com Thoughts on the matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Panda 4.0 Update Affected Site - What should be a the minimum Code to Text Ratio we should aim for ?
Hi All, My eCommerce site got hit badly with the Panda 4.0 update so we have been doing some site auditing and analysis identifying issues which need addressing. We have thin/duplicate issues which I am quite sure was part of the reason we were affected by this even though we use rel=next and rel=prev along with having a separate view all page although we don't concanical tag to this page as I dont' think users would benefit from seeing to many items on one page. This led me to look at our Code to Content Ratio. We have now managed to increase it from 9% to approx 18-22% on popular pages by getting rid of unnecessary code etc. My question is , is there an ideal percentage the code to content ratio should be ?.. and what should I be aiming for ? Also any other Panda 4.0 advice would also be appreciated thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Google is indexing wordpress attachment pages
Hey, I have a bit of a problem/issue what is freaking me out a bit. I hope you can help me. If i do site:www.somesitename.com search in Google i see that Google is indexing my attachment pages. I want to redirect attachment URL's to parent post and stop google from indexing them. I have used different redirect plugins in hope that i can fix it myself but plugins don't work. I get a error:"too many redirects occurred trying to open www.somesitename.com/?attachment_id=1982 ". Do i need to change something in my attachment.php fail? Any idea what is causing this problem? get_header(); ?> /* Run the loop to output the attachment. * If you want to overload this in a child theme then include a file * called loop-attachment.php and that will be used instead. */ get_template_part( 'loop', 'attachment' ); ?>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TauriU0 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0