Meta Robots query

[RocketStats]

Hi guys,

I was ranking really well on my home page for certain keywords which has all dropped pretty dramatically over the last 3/4 weeks - I think the issue is since since the configuration of Yoast SEO Wordpress plugin.

In March (when my rankings were strong) my crawl test showed the top data in the attached image, and in May (now the rankings have dropped severly) they show the bottom data.

I don't fully understand canonical and Meta Robots so I am hoping someone can shed some light on the following points.

1. Will the change result in my loss of rankings.
2. How can I put it back to how it was in March?

PS. I haven't had any Google penalties.

Thanks,
Joshua

RfTar

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Joshua

Thanks, I see the ranking drop. However, have you lost traffic? I see most positions were on the 2nd page to begin with. I see this quite often, when sites don't rank on page #1, the rankings can drop/jump a lot around pages 2-5. I know it's not fun seeing a "drop" but ultimately I would focus on your traffic as a mindset.

I ask if this is a fairly new site, because it's a super competitive niche, and I'm surprised it ranked that well to begin with. If it's a new site, often Google will rank it higher for a little while to see how users react to it, and then it may settle back to a more "normal" ranking.

I'd also check your Search Analytics report in Search Console - do you see Impression and Position drops across the board? It's tempting to analyze only a few top keywords, but I'd try to look at things as a whole too.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Joshua

The noodp would not be playing a role in this. It only instructs Google to not use data from the Open Directory Project in snippets, but has no other effect at all.

[RocketStats]

Rankings drop:

http://imgur.com/phlwunJ

On April 14th all of these rankings dropped on the same day by 10+ places and have got worse since.

[RocketStats]

Hi Dan,

The issue seems to be that since I installed Yoast SEO and have had sitewide noodp activated that the rankings have dropped.

Do you think this could be playing a part?

Thanks,

Joshua

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Joshua

The settings look OK - what keywords were you ranking for that have now dropped? Also, when was the site launched?

-Dan

[RocketStats]

Can anyone help further with this?

[RocketStats]

Hi Eric,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

I wonder how it is possible that when the website was set to block robots, no index & follow and no rel-canonical it was ranking really well and since the change it has severly dropped?

What are the best settings to have for my home page which has most of the backlinks pointing to it?

Thanks,
Joshua

[GlobeRunner]

Joshua, it looks as if you turned on the canonical tag on a certain page. Usually you will have the canonical tag added to a page when it's generating duplicate content--and you want that page to be considered to be "combined" with the page you're "canonicaling" to.

So, if you have a product that comes in several colors, those "color" pages will canonical back to the main product page.

The meta noindex, follow tag really shouldn't be used in most cases, if you're going to stop the search engines from indexing a page on your site, you should consider if you really need that page on the site anyway.

In the screen shot you provide, you're not giving me enough information about which pages on your site you're canonicaling from--so I can't give you specific advice on that. But to answer your question, these settings can definitely affect rankings.