Fix for RankMath noindex on WordPress Category Pages
RankMath doesn’t always work as expected and can lead to a noindex issue on WordPress category pages. We found the fix!
RankMath is a helpful WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimise your content, fix technical SEO issues and improve your pages’ ranking on Google. It’s simple to use (usually) and lets you boost on-page SEO, better manage your keywords, and integrate with Google Analytics.
However, RankMath SEO doesn’t always work as expected. It can often lead to a noindex issue on WordPress category pages where pages show as “noindex” in the tool, even if you mark them as index elsewhere (i.e. you want them to be visible in Google search results).
This problem can seem tricky when you first encounter it. RankMath SEO seems to stop your pages from becoming viewable in search, while your page builder says they are.
It’s even more annoying when you start adding products or content to category pages, and the problem remains. The SEO tool is just trying to do its job but is getting in the way of making your products visible.
You can see if you have a no-index problem if you go to the RankMath SEO tab on your WordPress editor toolbar at the top of the screen. Hover over “Mark this page” and look for a tick next to “As Noindex.” If there is, it means this issue is likely affecting you. It shows that RankMath thinks the page content is “thin” and doesn’t want to expose it to Google’s page indexing bots, leaving it hidden from search results.
Fortunately, you can do something about this problem. The fix is straightforward, and once you know it, you can apply it to the rest of your product and category pages wherever you have this RankMath Noindex issue.
Here’s what to do:
- Go to your WordPress dashboard
Start by navigating to your WordPress dashboard and clicking “Titles & Meta” under the RankMath SEO sidebar. This will bring up the Global Meta options summary.
Don’t worry about all the complicated options. You don’t need to understand them all for this fix.
- Uncheck “noindex empty category and tag archives”
The next step is to uncheck the slider that says “noindex empty category and tag archives” below the “Robots meta” and “Advanced Robots meta” subsections. Checking this option tells RankMath SEO to set empty archives to “noindex,” which is sometimes helpful for avoiding indexing pages with thin content (something Google doesn’t like) that dilutes page rank. However, it can cause issues, as discussed here. Unchecking this ensures you can index all pages on your site, regardless of RankMath’s perception of them.
Ideally, RankMath SEO would update the page to “index” when you add items straight away. However, this doesn’t always happen because of caching issues. Fortunately, unchecking the “noindex empty category and tag archives” box refreshes the cache, so when you return to the category page, RankMath SEO marks it as indexed.
Hopefully this has resolved your issue. If you are looking for more Technical SEO tips and tutorials, check out our other posts here.