Should I delete all tags and just use my categories to organize content?
-
My website NorthernCaliforniaHikingTrails.com/blog has 400 or so tags, and it also has an extensive set of categories.
I'm thinking about deleting all the tags, but keeping the categories and consolidating them a bit.
Is there a significant SEO advantage to having tags in my case? I've seen a few very high-ranking websites actually rank for a tag, but I doubt my site will reach that level.
Any help appreciated!
-
Thank you, Dan. Your answer is very helpful!
-
Hello!
Generally, the only value tags hold would be to provide and extra detailed internal navigation on the site. Categories are for the broad topics, and if you wanted, you can also tag posts with more detailed topics or with some other categorization convention (ie: you could classify trail types - "fun", "challenging", "scenic" etc). And then provide a way to navigate to them by linking them in a sidebar, etc
Other than internal navigation though, tags really hold no value - so you can totally just delete them and rely on categories.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Content Strategy/Duplicate Content Issue, rel=canonical question
Hi Mozzers: We have a client who regularly pays to have high-quality content produced for their company blog. When I say 'high quality' I mean 1000 - 2000 word posts written to a technical audience by a lawyer. We recently found out that, prior to the content going on their blog, they're shipping it off to two syndication sites, both of which slap rel=canonical on them. By the time the content makes it to the blog, it has probably appeared in two other places. What are some thoughts about how 'awful' a practice this is? Of course, I'm arguing to them that the ranking of the content on their blog is bound to be suffering and that, at least, they should post to their own site first and, if at all, only post to other sites several weeks out. Does anyone have deeper thinking about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Meta Description used in webpage content? impact of this technique.
I just do competitor Analysis, one of my competitor follow technique like Use Meta Title as H1 tag on each page Use Meta Description on Content section ( Same as meta description ). Please suggest me is this technique work or have any benefits of this kind of thing in ranking or visibility.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Are rel=author and rel=publisher meta tags currently in use?
Hello, Do these meta tags have any current usage? <meta name="author" content="Author Name"><meta name="publisher" content="Publisher Name"> I have also seen this usage linking to a companies Google+ Page:Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | srbello0 -
GWT does not play nice with 410 status code approach to expire content? Use 301s?
We have been diligently managing our index size in Google for our sites and are returning a 410 status code for pages that we no longer consider "up-to-date" but still carry value for users to access to have Google remove them from our index to keep it lean. However we have been receiving GWT warning across sites because of the 410 status codes Google is encountering which makes us nervous that Google could interpret this approach as a lack of quality of our site. Does anyone have a view if the 410 approach is the right approach for the given example or if we should consider maybe simply using 301s or another status code to keep our GWT errors clean? Further notes there is hardly ever any link juice being sent to those pages so it is not like we are missing out on that the pages for which we return 410 are also marked as noindex and nofollow
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petersocapro0 -
Duplicate Content: Is a product feed/page rolled out across subdomains deemed duplicate content?
A company has a TLD (top-level-domain) which every single product: company.com/product/name.html The company also has subdomains (tailored to a range of products) which lists a choosen selection of the products from the TLD - sort of like a feed: subdomain.company.com/product/name.html The content on the TLD & subdomain product page are exactly the same and cannot be changed - CSS and HTML is slightly differant but the content (text and images) is exactly the same! My concern (and rightly so) is that Google will deem this to be duplicate content, therfore I'm going to have to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of all subdomain pages, pointing to the original product page on the TLD. Does this sound like the correct thing to do? Or is there a better solution? Moving on, not only are products fed onto subdomain, there are a handfull of other domains which list the products - again, the content (text and images) is exactly the same: other.com/product/name.html Would I be best placed to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of the product pages on other domains, pointing to the original product page on the actual TLD? Does rel cannonical work across domains? Would the product pages with a rel cannonical tag in the header still rank? Let me know if there is a better solution all-round!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold0 -
How to resolve duplicate content issues when using Geo-targeted Subfolders to seperate US and CAN
A client of mine is about to launch into the USA market (currently only operating in Canada) and they are trying to find the best way to geo-target. We recommended they go with the geo-targeted subfolder approach (___.com and ___.com/ca). I'm looking for any ways to assist in not getting these pages flagged for duplicate content. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jyoung2220 -
Advanced Title Tags
Looking for some advanced help here. I've been reading a lot of conflicting information on this, and I am hoping someone can clear this up. My question is regarding length and complexity of title tags. For example, my top level keywords are: IT Support, IT Services, IT Outsourcing, Help Desk, etc. I also have pages for many modified versions ex: IT Support Services, Managed IT Services, etc. I have robust pages for each. Should my title tag be: IT Support | CSM Corp. - Simple IT Support Company | CSM Corp. (Picks up a longer tail) or IT Support | Secondary Keyword | CSM Corp. Does adding secondary keywords dilute the strength of the primary keyword? If long is preferable, can someone give me an example using "IT Support"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Duplicate Content Question
My understanding of duplicate content is that if two pages are identical, Google selects one for it's results... I have a client that is literally sharing content real-time with a partner...the page content is identical for both sites, and if you update one page, teh otehr is updated automatically. Obviously this is a clear cut case for canonical link tags, but I'm cuious about something: Both sites seem to show up in search results but for different keywords...I would think one domain would simply win out over the other, but Google seems to show both sites in results. Any idea why? Also, could this duplicate content issue be hurting visibility for both sites? In other words, can I expect a boost in rankings with the canonical tags in place? Or will rankings remain the same?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyLB0