How do I set a noindex tag for RSS feed?

Hello,

To set a noindex tag for your RSS feed, you can follow these steps:

1. Access your WordPress dashboard.
2. Go to “Rank Math SEO” in the left-hand menu.
3. Click on “Titles & Meta” and then select the “Posts” tab.
4. Scroll down to the “RSS” section.
5. Enable the “Noindex RSS Feed” option.
6. Save your changes.

Here’s a screenshot to help you locate the option:

Once you have enabled this option and saved your changes, the RSS feed page, such as “https://rankmath.com/kb/quick-actions/” will have a noindex tag. This means that search engines will not index this page.

Please note that it may take some time for Google Search Console to reflect this change. If you have any further questions or need assistance, feel free to ask.

Thank you.

Sources:
Fix Excluded by NoIndex Tag – Google Search Console Status » Rank Math
How to Fix the Submitted URL Seems to Be a “Soft 404” Error » Rank Math
Using Rank Math’s ‘Quick Actions’ Admin Menu Item
Advanced Tab in Rank Math SEO’s Meta Box

Hello,

We apologise for the confusion with the steps to noindex RSS feeds.

You can add the following filter on the website to set the feed URLs to noindex:

add_action( 'template_redirect', 'noindex_feeds' );
function noindex_feeds() {
    if ( ! is_feed() ) {
        return;
    }
header( 'X-Robots-Tag: noindex', true );
}

Here’s how you can add filter/hook to your WordPress site: https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/

However, please note that when you set noindex to your feed URLs that means Google will not index them on SERPs, but Google will still be able to crawl those URLs. If you don’t want Google to crawl those URLs then you can add the following disallow rule to your robots.txt file.

Disallow: */feed/

Here’s a guide on how to edit your robots.txt using Rank Math:
https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-edit-robots-txt-with-rank-math/

Once done, allow Google some time to re-crawl your site to reflect the changes.

Concerning your other query, it is not really necessary to noindex your RSS feed unless you have a specific reason for doing so. In most cases, it’s fine to let search engines index your RSS feed. See these articles to make a decision:
https://www.seocomponent.com/blog/does-rss-feed-benefit-seo/
https://www.digitalwebsolutions.com/blog/rss-feed-seo-benefits/

We hope this helps.

Thanks.