Should I Add a Noindex Robots Meta Tag to Dated Archives
In brief, no, never add a noindex robots meta tag to dated archives, this wastes link benefit.
If you follow best SEO practices and remove the Archive Widgets from your WordPress site there shouldn’t be any internal links to your Dated Archives (this is good), over time Google will slowly deindex any that aren’t linked to (can take months, there’s no rush).
The best SEO option is setup 301 redirects to redirect link benefit/ranking (recovers ~85% of the link benefit) from the dated archives to the sites Home Page.
The Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin has this option under
“SEO” : “Titles and Metas” – “Archives” Tab : Under “Date Archives”
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