WP: Should I noindex my blog page?

This may end up as a stupid question but for the time being, it seems reasonable.

I am already noindex,nofollowing my categories and tags using Yoast SEO in Wordpress. I assume this is a solid measure to prevent Google from confusing duplicate content.

My site uses a static page for landing and all of my posts are navigated to through one or more widgets such as "Recent posts" or "Posts by category". That having been said, should I noindex,nofollow my actual blog page? I don't use this page anywhere in the site, it's just there because the Wordpress loop needs it to function. Is my blog page considered duplicate content in the eyes of GoogleBot?

For duplicate content, you need to use canonical tags, not noindex...

Burgertime,
Giorgio has a good point. You don't have to do anything that you are currently doing unless you don't want those pages appearing in search. Just use the canonical tag to let search engines know which page is the one to index.

I know you said you have Yoast but here are some others that have canonical features,

http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/canonical

Best,

Shawn

It is a common practise last few years to choose navigation for examp. categories or tags and use noindex for one of them. Usually tags you can do the same with archives.

TheContentAuthority said:

Burgertime,
Giorgio has a good point. You don't have to do anything that you are currently doing unless you don't want those pages appearing in search. Just use the canonical tag to let search engines know which page is the one to index.

I know you said you have Yoast but here are some others that have canonical features,

http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/canonical

Best,

Shawn

Click to expand...

GiorgioB said:

For duplicate content, you need to use canonical tags, not noindex...

Click to expand...

It's not possible to use canonical tags on a blog or category page, since the pages contain duplicate content from multiple pages so there is no ONE page to rel canonical....

Yes noindex duplicate pages, no index pages do still gain PR and pass linkjuice, matt cutts himself said it does anyway. Just make sure it's:

NOINDEX, FOLLOW

All links should be follow, since google does still crawl and follow noindex pages.