diff --git a/frontend/nginx.conf b/frontend/nginx.conf
index c195cb7..82cdf15 100644
--- a/frontend/nginx.conf
+++ b/frontend/nginx.conf
@@ -2,7 +2,10 @@ server {
     listen 3000;
     server_name _;
     root /usr/share/nginx/html;
-    index index.html;
+    index index index.html;
+
+    # Staging: keep out of search engines (remove when going live on official domain)
+    add_header X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow" always;
 
     location /api/ {
         proxy_pass http://backend:8000/api/;
@@ -31,5 +34,6 @@ server {
     location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg|woff|woff2|ttf|eot)$ {
         expires 1y;
         add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
+        add_header X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow" always;
     }
 }