How to Exclude Content from Your RSS Sitemap

You may have content on your site that you don't want to submit to search engines.

If that's the case, All in One SEO can help you.

Content is typically submitted to search engines using sitemaps. One of the sitemaps that All in One SEO generates is the RSS Sitemap which contains your latest content so that search engines can index it faster.

Search engines can also find content on their own by either crawling your site and following internal links, or by following links from someone else's site to your content. This is less reliable and takes longer for them to find your content.

You can choose to exclude content from your RSS Sitemap so that search engines aren't notified when content is published.

Excluding Content from Your RSS Sitemap

To get started, go to Sitemaps in the All in One SEO menu and then click on the General Sitemap tab.

RSS Sitemap tab in Sitemaps menu in All in One SEO

Scroll down to the Advanced Settings section and click the toggle to display the Advanced Settings.

Advanced Settings in the RSS Sitemap settings

Excluding Posts

Here you’ll see a setting for Exclude Posts / Pages.

Exclude Posts / Pages setting in RSS Sitemap Advanced Settings

Start typing the title of any content in this field and a drop down will appear that shows matching content. Click on the content you want to exclude and it will be added in the field.

Typing the title of a page in the Exclude Posts / Pages field

You can then repeat this by typing the title of and content and selecting it.

You can also click the + button shown below to display a drop down with a full list of your content.

Click the Plus button to display a list of all content in the Exclude Posts / Pages field

You can use this field to exclude any content from any post type.

Excluding Terms

In the Exclude Terms field, type the name of any category, tag or other taxonomy term and a drop down will appear that shows matching content. Click on the content you want to exclude and it will be added in the field.

Exclude Terms setting in General Sitemap Advanced Settings