Would a robot.txt fix this SEO issue?

Not sure if this is the right forum. (I'm a noob)

I use a welcome gate on my wordpress site(growdude.com). It redirects first time visitors to an email capture. Problem is, google is crawling my welcome gate, instead of my blog's homepage.

How can I fix this?

 

Hi Rob a robot.txt should fix the issue

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex"> paste this in your meta tag within the header for your page see attached png ​

 

Aw

Thanks so much! So I just add that code to the index page of my blog? Do I need to do anything else? Like add a robot file?

 

No you just add the code into meta tag in the header for the welcome gate that should do it.

 

Well, the welcome gate is a wordpress plugin... so how do I find the header for it?

 

themes > edit themes > header - in your WP admin/dashboard

the header file will be in a list on the right

 

Again, sorry for being such a dev noob. But if I add this to the header of my theme, will the search engines pick up my all in one seo plugin, instead of the welcome gate?

Like how will it know what title and description to use if Im just adding this code?

 

Ooh hang on what are we talking about here? I just went to your site after posting but can't find any of what you are talking about?

 

I have a wordpress site(growdude.com). When you enter my url in the browser, the first page you will see is a welcome gate. Its a plugin that redirects from my blog to an email capture for first time visitors.

Google picks up the content of that welcome gate, instead of my blog title and description. How can I make google see the title, description, and keywords in my All in one seo plugin, instead of my welcome gate?

 

Oops my bad I must be the only one out there that didn't know about this plug in.I work with a lot of Americans and I thought it was just a way of saying landing page .My main guy has just done a quick research and he says google should still be indexing your home page it's part of the functionality of the plug in

 

I just found this

“Frequently Asked Questions”​

How Will Using A Welcome Gate Affect SEO & Google Rankings

My clients and I have found no negative effects of using a Welcome Gate whatsoever. This is because...

• The Welcome Gate is set up as a temporary, not permanent, redirect
• Google will still fully index your home page
• Your Welcome Gate will pass “link juice” directly to your home page
• The SEO attributes of your Welcome Gate are fully customizable (i.e. you can specify title tags,

 

You can't really make Google display any description. All you can do is try and do that for your main target of the page.

Surely as triumph rider said this should be covered by the plugin with a nofollow on it

Not a plugin I am familiar with but have seen other similar plugins getting their content diplayed by the G b4.

 

Well thats not true if you googe "grow dude"... you will see that the description and title are from the content of my welcome gate.

Also, I entered the title and description into the seo tab of the welcome gate plugin, but google still doesnt see them. I've waited weeks for google to see it, but its still not working. Ive added xml sitemaps plugin too.

Also, the support for welcome gate is closed. So I cant ask the creator.

 

well that's crap as far as an explanation on the plugin owners part as 301 is the only redirect the G likes and a temp redirect is no 301...

 

I know google does what it wants, but how can increase the odds of google indexing the correct title and description? Theres no robot.txt edit or something I can do?

 

Like if you go to mixergy.com, you will see that they use a similar redirect welcome gate, but when you google mixergy, you will see a custom title and description.

 

I don't have the time right now but me and the guys are kind of intrigued and want to look into it. If it can be customized as the builders say, it sounds like we could use it so if you don't get an answer from someone else I'll get back to you if we figure it out

 

best wait for that then as I am not seeing the page on either site so can't see anything what is being discussed.

 

It's using a 307, which makes no sense. From a technical point of view, it should be a 302. It definitely shouldn't be a 301. Google is indexing your site (at least going by site:growdude.com) and you can check this in Google Webmaster Tools, as well. One downside is that it is caching the that stupid Welcome Gate rather than your home page. Honestly, why do you use such junk? In SEO terms (at least for SEs), there is nothing to worry about (GoogleBot can then move on to the link to your home page from this idiotic welcome page and also has your sitemap.xml). From a visitor point of view, I'd bounce, mate. Others probably will too. Ditch it.

 

Exactly. I was just having the same issue. I'm using the same welcome gate plugin and it was doing the same with me. So I tried to find something that can help me with and found this post. Thank you guys for your help. I have already deactivated the plugin because I don't want to let this plugin to mess with my homepage anymore.

But just a question, what I can do (if anything) to make this entire plugin page noindex? I mean is there a way to do it? How can we noindex+nofollow a page that is created by a plugin?