Noindex,Follow tag (VQMOD)

This is a simple vqmod that puts <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> on certain pages. This is good for SEO purposes.

You do need to change catalog/view/theme/YOUR THEME/template/common/header.tpl. Thats the only tweak you need to do. Don't forget to rate my module.

Pages that will have <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> with this extension is:

Category pages: (Sort, Page, limit)
Manufacturer: (Sort, Page, limit)
Special: (Sort, Page, limit)
Compare: (Whole page)
Search: (Sort, Page, limit, whole page)
Account: (login, register, forgotten, voucher, reward, return)
Checkout: (Whole page)
Cart: (Whole page)
Information: (Contact)

You can easily change these to whatever you want, either you choose to not have it on a page or you want to make some new (Maybe i have missed one). You then do as follow:

To erase <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> for example contact you just delete these lines around row 163 in the vqmod:

<file name="catalog/controller/information/contact.php">
<operation>
<search position="after" index="1"><![CDATA[$this->language->load('information/contact');]]></search>
<add><![CDATA[$this->document->setRobots('noindex,follow');]]></add>
</operation>
</file>

And if you want to add a new one you can put it anywhere in the file and just alter the path name like this:

<file name="CHANGE THIS TO YOUR PATH">
<operation>
<search position="after" index="1"><![CDATA[$this->language->load('information/contact');]]></search>
<add><![CDATA[$this->document->setRobots('noindex,follow');]]></add>
</operation>
</file>

It does also works good for your custom created pages :).


Q.A:

Why would i do this?

Out of the box is OpenCart pretty SEO-friendly, but you can always do this better with some tricks and fixes. This will put the meta tag on specific pages such as onsite search results. This is crucial for SEO purposes to avoid certain stuff like duplicate content and low quality pages. If you do not do this it can result bad SEO and in worst cases you can get penalized for bad content.

Why not use /disallow in robots.txt?

I have seen lost of posts in this forum on this case of problem, the thing is that the robots.txt do not "unindex" your pages and many of the search engines do ignore this file. And Google has announced that noindex,follow meta tag is the code you need.