Less Tags better for SEO?
-
I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site. Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes.
This is what I am planning:
- Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/). With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important.
- Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries. I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so. I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site.
I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.
-
I have added an update here: http://moz.com/community/q/reviewing-category-tag-policy-update
-
Thank you. The example page i linked is actually a resource that helps with conversions. . The content at the top will highlight the better posts rather than some of the fluff posts that I rel canonical or no-index (i.e. old offers etc). The problem is that if I do more than 100 words, it would end up fluff. I think it adds value by linking to some external resources and key posts, so I will work towards building that up over time.
But thank you for your indepth reply. You are saying alot of what I was thinking, but not convinced enough to make the drastic changes I probably need to do.
I am tempted to remove tags. I don't think anyone ever visits them.
Update: I have now removed the tags. I can always create one or two new categories if I need to in the future, but for now I think I have made the best decision for my site. 160 pages that were never visited and diluted link juice have just been deleted.
-
I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site.
Everyone should do this. I do it once every year or so.
Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes.
I agree. I don't use tag pages.
Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example).
Where I have used categories, I wait until I have a substantive amount of material to appear on the category page. I visited your sample page and can't tell if the hundred words or so at the top is yada yada yada content or real beef. If it is real beef then go with it. If it is yada yada yada then wait until you have a large enough number of posts that your page is of substantive length.
Also, I run periodic traffic assessments on my category pages. If some of them are not bringing in the traffic or at least showing traffic growth then I delete them (301 redirect to the blog homepage). My philosophy is that a compact site competes better for difficult, high-traffic terms if it does not have a lot of useless pages.
I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry,
Yes, these never should have been created.
and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense
If this is going to create pages that compete with category pages then just delete them.
I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site.
In my opinion, tag pages are dangerous if they have snippets of the same content that appears on category pages and on the main blog page and its paginations. Also, tag pages that are same topic as category pages are a bad idea in my opinion.
If you are not indexing pages they will pull zero traffic from search. If you have links to them then you linkjuice is being scattered into potentially low-value pages. I am all about internal linking but keep my philosophy that compact sites compete more strongly for the difficult queries where the big traffic is earned.
-
Neither have been indexed due to that very reason... duplicate content, poor quality \ thin content.
-
Have both the categories as tags been indexed by Google? Usually you leave one of them out of the indexes of Google to make sure you don't get in trouble with creating a lot of duplicate content and not unique pages.
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
-
On-page SEO
This is a question for the organic SEO experts, once you added the main keyword that you want to rank for in the homepage title, meta title plus meta description, perhaps once or twice in the text on the homepage. How often do you then write it in the content marketing, say blog posts, we want to rank higher on Google for "SEO agencies Cardiff" however if you mention this in the blog posts too much say once a week, this could lead to over optimisation issues?
On-Page Optimization | | sarahwalsh1 -
SEO for E-Commerce Sites
Hi Everybody, I have two e-commerce sites just launched with not much content at the moment just user login pages for the clients to avail the service. The management is not interested to put much content there i think. Maximum what they will be putting only 5 pages of content in total, not more than this. Any practical tips how to optimize such sites especially when there is not much content. Best
On-Page Optimization | | Sequelmed0 -
H1 Tag on Homepage
The name of our company is LEDSupply; our tag line is: "For All Your LED Project Needs!". Currently the H1 Tag for our homepage is LEDSupply: For All Your LED Project Needs - Low Prices, Big Bulk Discounts & Free Shipping My questions is should I break out everything but the tag line so the new H1 tag is: LEDSupply: For All Your LED Project Needs! Which is better in your opinion? Here is a link to our homepage: http://www.ledsupply.com/ Thanks! -Brooke
On-Page Optimization | | saultienut0 -
Colons in title tag?
Does Google view the colon as a keyword separator like it does with the pipe (|) character? Currently, our site automatically constructs the title tag based on the page name given by the user. Long ago, we started using the colon character to visually separate the brand & model of the product from the size, and as a result, all of our title tags have been constructed this way. This was done more to make it easier to read for humans than for search engines. My question is - should I consider getting rid of the colon from our title tags? To give more info, our website sells tires. So, for any given model of tire, there might be 25-100 different individual sizes. The tags are constructed as follows: (brand)(model) : (size). Here's an example from our site: GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC : 225/45R17 91Q The brand is General Tire, the model is the Altimax Arctic and the size is 225/45R17 91Q Since this entire string really constitutes the full product name, should I remove the colon so that Google views it that way? Or, since I have used a colon instead of a pipe, will Google simply ignore it and treat the entire string as one keyword phrase?
On-Page Optimization | | kcourtem0 -
Fewer keywords in title tag?
Hello, I have a title tag that includes three keywords and has a total of 59 characters. The third keyword is not very important. If I eliminated the third keyword, leaving the first two (for a total of 48 characters), would the ranking value of the first two keywords increase? Does including the third keyword dilute the value of the first two? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
Onpage SEO before Offpage?
Hi there, I want to ask why should a website first have Onpage optimization and after that Offpage optimization or Link building/earning? I have read that this is better, even obligatory in many articles but I am not sure for the reason and benefits of that. Can at least social media optimization start at the same time or at the middle of the Onpage optimization?
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Wordpress categories tags and robots.txt
I am relatively new at this and see a variety of people that seem to disagree on if you should block google from indexing category and tag pages through robot.txt or no-follow because of google viewing it as duplicate content. I tryst this communities answers over the web at large obviosly, so what do you all think? Thanks, Steven
On-Page Optimization | | sfmatthews0 -
Keyword use in Title tag?
To improve SEO on a particular keyword, should you use that same keyword in the title tag of multiple pages within your site? Will that help or would it actually hurt by causing pages within your site to complete against each other for that keyword? Does it make a difference if that keyword is truly used on all those different pages?
On-Page Optimization | | KHCreative0