Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
If I change Tags and Categories in Wordpress blog post, will it negatively affect SEO and cause 404s?
-
Hi,
I have belatedly come to the conclusion that I have been using tags and categories when blogging in wordpress incorrectly. The result is that Google seems to prefer to show my archives and tags in search results rather than the post itself. Not good UX.
As the site is only a few months old, am I best to learn my lesson and tag and categorize correctly moving forward
or
Should I go back in to these posts and clean them up & categorize and tag correctly. If I do this, will it cause 404s and hurt my SEO?
Thanks!
-
Thanks Tymen, Anthony - that helps a lot. It is indeed - domain.com/post-title (no category in url) so I am safe to clean up the site without repercussions. Better to learn this lesson now than down the line. Cheers!
-
Came to say just this. Great answer, Anthony.
-
The answer to this question will depend a bit on how you have your current blog post URL slug set up. If you are using domain.com/category/post-title-here and then change your categories, this will cause 404s (which you can fix by redirecting).
If you are using a domain.com/post-title-here or other option, you will be just fine to clean up, edit and alter your category and tags. I would suggest NoIndexing your tags. The decision of NoIndexing categories will depend on how you plan on using them.
If the site is only a few months old, I strongly suggest fixing this now and setting yourself up for better long term success.
-
Hi John,
You could clean them up and 301 redirect the old/wrong tags/ categories to the correct new page/post. This way the visitors will not notice anything and you let Google know where you want people to go to.
I would also take a look at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/no-indexing-wordpress-taxonomies-do-or-dont/49508/
In this article it is explained how to "noindex" Tags and Categories in WP. This way you will avoid a lot of duplicate content.
Good luck!
Regard, Tymen
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
-
Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?
Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry. We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is: Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects? If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?
Technical SEO | | Breemcc0 -
Does the use of a unicode character high up on page adversely affect SEO?
I work for a company in the travel industry and we are currently in the process of building out a 360-degree video landing page to inspire travel to our destination. There is some desire from individuals on my team to use the unicode degree symbol ( ° ) after 360 to ensure clarity. We currently have the ° symbol in the Page Title and H1 tag. Does the use of a unicode character adversely affect SEO? Our concern is that it is very unlikely that people are searching for 360-degree videos using the unicode symbol. We also have it fully written out as well. Just want to make sure we won't get dinged for this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | andrewddc1 -
How to Delete the slug /category/ from wordpress category pages
Hi all, I would like to ask you what's the better way to eliminate the slug /category/ form the wordpress category pages. I need to delete the slug /category/ to make the url seo frendly. The problem is that my site is an old site with the page indexed by Google for a long time. Thanks for your advice.
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
Changing title tags, do we need 301 redirects
I found many duplicate title tags and I'm in the process of changing it Do I need 301 redirects in place when I switch it? I am only changing the title tag. Also, we are switching over to a new site very soon, I am worried that we might be using too many 301 redirect "hops" because we are doing a lot of optimization as well. (video from matt cutts describing 301 redirects and hops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA. Does anyone have any experience in doing too many redirect hops that it affected your rankings? Any good ideas to avoid this?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
Does posting an article on multiple sites hurt seo?
A client of mine creates thought leadership articles and pitches multiple sites to host the article on their site to reach different audiences. The sites that pick it up are places such as AdAge and MarketingProfs and we do get link juice from these sources most of the time. Does having the same article on these sites as well as your own hurt your SEO efforts in any way? Could it be recognized as duplicate content? I know the links are great just wondering if there is any other side effects especially when there are no links provided! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Blog post summary pages
I'm wondering post-panda if its wise to block access to blog post summary pages like this one: http://www.howtotradestocks.org/blog/page/15/ Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Header Tags
Ok so I am writing different pages and the first heading is an H3 just because I wanted to it be a certain size. Then as you see the content, I have an H1 tag. Example page: http://www.oxfordmshomes.net/condos/acadia-court-Oxford-MS you can see that "Acadia First" is the first thing you see on the page and it uses an H3 element. Long story short, my hierarchy is wrong. Does this have any negative effect on my SEO efforts?
Technical SEO | | blake-766240 -
Changing DNS -- SEO implications?
Hey Moz, We're migrating an old site on an old server over to a new server/DNS. The plan is to keep the same URL structure and reuse our existing URL's. As long as we make minimal changes to each page's content, we should be able to update our DNS entry and get all the pages recreated and assigned to their correct URLs without any reduction in SEO rankings. Is this correct? This site gets a lot of organic traffic and ranks highly on some challenging keywords, so it's key that we retain our rankings as much as possible. I've read that it's wise to lower the DNS time-to-live to one hour, about a day before the move, to help Google crawl the DNS a little quicker. Are there any other recommendations you guys can offer or past experiences?
Technical SEO | | stephen_reply0