Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by David Q. Baughier on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 04/22/2021).

Which tags I should care about?

I didn`t really understand how to use tags when I first created my site. I have way more per post than I should and they are just whatever words came to mind after I wrote the post. I didn`t realize that a post/page was created for each and every tag used, which means now my site has 600+ pages rather than the around 100 pages I expect people to actually go to. Online research turns up few recent articles or guidance on if, how, and to what extent SEO damage is done by deleting all the tags. I don`t get amazing traffic right now but am working on it and if there is going to be a traffic hit, I`d rather take it now before my traffic grows.Does anyone have actual experience and data to support if I should leave tags alone, delete them, or just not add them to future posts and let them be?Thanks.
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Michael Martinez: If you decide to delete a tag archive, redirect its pages to another point on the site. You can`t help but change how the PageRank-like value flows around the site, but you can optimize the after-effects.

    Don`t be afraid to make changes if you`re unha…

  • David Q. Baughier: Michael Martinez Thank you. I can`t imagine others linking to tag pages on my site. Based on what I read, there may be 404 errors but at the same time, I also read that google doesn`t ding my site because of that. Would you recommend just submitting sitemaps that don`t include the tag pages?

  • Michael Martinez: David Q. Baughier It`s the internal link pathways you need to worry about with tag pages. ALWAYS redirect the URLs for content you`ve deleted.

    You should update your sitemap files as needed, and you can always submit them to Bing and Google as desired.

  • Sanket Maheshwari: I deleted crappy tags that I created years ago. Didn`t see any major fluctuations.All in all, I was happy internally that I don`t have a lot of `bs` tags anymore.

    But, that could be because they were no indexed for a long while and might not have enough effect in the first place to affect the rankings in any case.

    I`m assuming you have them indexed and afraid of deleting it. Well, one thing could be test and see for yourself what happens. But..if you happen to have really precious traffic (or afraid of any negative consequences), well you can *maybe* skip it.

  • David Q. Baughier: Sanket Maheshwari Thanks, that`s a good data point. I only get about 550 a month in organic traffic so it hasn`t taken off yet. But if I do nothing and that number grows to 5000 in six months and then I delete the tags, then my traffic gets penalized, I think that hit and time to overcome the hit would be more drastic. What are your thoughts or expectations?

  • Sanket Maheshwari: David Q. Baughier assuming your keywords have high volume, I would delete quite a bunch of tags to clean out the clutter and keep some of them.

    Anyway, I`m yet to see any positive results of keeping tag pages indexed (apart from some micro niches).

    Also, deleting tags won`t result in any kind of penalty ever - atleast what my previous experience suggests. Rather, having them indexed can lead to thin duplicate content pages - has happened before when Yoast acted up on me and fuking indexed everything

  • David Q. Baughier: Sanket Maheshwari If I just bulk delete all tags in Wordpress post page, does that also delete the pages that have been previously created when I first listed the tags?

  • Sanket Maheshwari: David Q. Baughier nope, it won`t delete the pages.But if you`re sceptical - create a dummy page, dummy tag and then delete the tag to see if anything happens.

  • David Q. Baughier: I use yoast (free version) as well. I wish I had a clue about SEO at all when I spent the first year building out my site and content of more than 50 posts. Now I`m going back and trying to improve the SEO (slugs, redirects, on page SEO, internal linking, etc.) We`ll see how things workout in a few months.

  • David Q. Baughier: Sanket Maheshwari That`s good to know. So I have to find the pages (where?) in my wordpress and delete them manually?

  • Sanket Maheshwari: David Q. Baughier I didn`t really get your question

  • David Q. Baughier: Sanket Maheshwari If I don`t want the tag pages to show up on search engines, you are saying I have to delete the pages that were created when I first listed tags for each post. How do I do that? Where do the tag pages exist in my wordpress site?

  • Sanket Maheshwari: David Q. Baughier right now what you can do is either

    1) Delete the tags (tag pages which are listed in `Tag` menu right below Posts/Pages/Categories). This will create some 404 errors (as we have just deleted some existing pages, but you can always mass redirect these if relevant)

    OR

    2) no-index these tags so Google will deindex currently indexed tags, and will not index tag pages in future.

    Now you can do a combination of both to some extents. But I`m true believer of keeping less tags and no-indexing them if not important.

    No-indexing can be done through any SEO plugin out there.

    Also, I would highly recommend you to wait for more people to share their opinions too.

  • David Q. Baughier: Sanket Maheshwari Thank you for taking the time to respond.

  • Michael Martinez: David Q. Baughier " if I do nothing and that number grows to 5000 in six months and then I delete the tags, then my traffic gets penalized"

    Not necessarily.

    Just delete the tags you don`t want and redirect their URLs to an HTML sitemap page or similar tags or a category.

  • Richard Hearne: Assuming WordPress site - there are various plugin that allow you to manage and merge tags. Merging will update the internal pointers in your database, and should help to ensure that posts still have tags. With just 500 tags that would be what I would do.

    As an aside, I often have to work with sites using 6+figure # tags, and then this issue is a real nightmare.

  • David Q. Baughier: Richard Hearne Ouch

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 04/22/2021).