WordPress Tags and SEO
-
Good Morning everyone,
I am trying to decide how I am going to handle an issue on two WordPress websites.
I recently acquired 2 new clients that used to do business with the same SEO company. Neither of the clients know of the other but both had the same story about said SEO company. The usual complaints, I wont get into details.
My issue is the old SEO company basically was spamming keywords and utilized tags to do this.
For each of these clients they had very thin spammy blog posts written and then had a multitude of spammy tags used as keywords here is an example
https://captainjacksboatingschool.com/middlesex-county-boating-safety-class/
Each one of these tags is creating duplicate content. How do i properly handle these tags? Do i delete? Do i need to redirect into one main page after deletion. I much rather use plain English and authoritative based Categories. In fact I never use tags, only categories. They do not seem to have much seo value.
Both clients who were with this company have the same Tag setup... Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I do not want to loose the customers current rank because i want to do things my way
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
-
This is essentially what i was thinking too.
i was hoping to get a few more responses from the community, but i value your input. I have already started moving in this direction.
Thank you,
-
Hi,
I personally think you should only allow Google to index tags if you have a big number of posts that use these tags organically, not for keyword stuffing and spammy activities.
In the case you mentioned, I would disallow Search Engines from indexing tag pages. And if you believe that these tags should not be on that website, then you should delete them. Looking at the example URL you sent, its clearly created in the attempt to trick Google.
I would start first with disallowing search engines from indexing them, then I would go head and slowly remove these tags.
If you have posts that are not 100% relevant to the business and are high quality, consider removing those too. This particular page is not doing well really from linking or authority point of view. See the image I attached
I hope this helps.
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
-
Does same description in the directories of all affect SEO or not? - But unique on the website
Hi, I would like to do some directories. When I checked with a person for his recent work, he has given the same description in 50 directories he has done for a client. Does this affect SEO or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnuManish0 -
Old subdomains - what to do SEO-wise?
Hello, I wanted the community's advice on how to handle old subdomains. We have https://www.yoursite.org. We also have two subdomains directly related to the main website: https://www.archive.yoursite.org and https://www.blog.yoursite.org. As these pages are not actively updated, they are triggering lots and lots of errors in the site crawl (missing meta descriptions, and much much more). We do not have particular intentions of keeping them up-to-date in terms of SEO. What do you guys think is the best option of handling these? I considered de-indexing, but content of these page is still relevant and may be useful - yet it is not up to date and it will never be anymore. Many thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | e.wel0 -
Is toggle Good For seo
Hi there, I have Client Who dont want to show his content to publicly, So team decided to use toggle, So Google can also See Content, But i want bu sure. Does Google will really cache that Content?? Does it down my website Ranking?? Please any one can Help, I need urgent basis Thnx in advance Falguni
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iepl20010 -
Is horizontal hashtag linking between 4 different information text pages with a canonical tag to the URL with no hashtag, a White Hat SEO practice?
Hey guys, I need help. hope it is a simple question : if I have horizontal 4 text pages which you move between through hashtag links, while staying on the same page in user experience, can I canonical tag the URL free of hashtags as the canonical page URL ? is this white hat acceptable practice? and will this help "Adding the Value", search queries, and therefore rank power to the canonical URL in this case? hoping for your answers. Best Regards, and thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Muhammad_Jabali0 -
Have just submitted Disavow file to Google: Shall I wait until after they have removed bad links to start new content lead SEO campaign?
Hi guys, I am currently conducting some SEO work for a client. Their previous SEO company had built a lot of low quality/spam links to their site and as a result their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically. I have analysed their current link profile, and have submitted the spammiest domains to Google via the Disavow tool. The question I had was.. Do I wait until Google removes the spam links that I have submitted, and then start the new content based SEO campaign. Or would it be okay to start the content based SEO campaign now, even though the current spam links havent been removed yet.. Look forward to your replies on this...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sanj50500 -
Do sitewide links from other sites hurt SEO?
A friend of mine has a pagerank 3 website that links to all my pages on my site on every page of his site. The anchor text of all these links are the title of each page that it links to. Does this hurt SEO? I can have him change to the links to whatever i want, so if it does hurt, what should i change the anchor text to if needed? Thanks mozzers! Ron
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100 -
SEO Experiment with Google Docs
Please check out this doc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/19VS4SnVvq6VJHQAIrB3CX7iL1ivZU4DH6fyfrHLsNFk/edit Any insights will be highly appreciated! Oleksiy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcrfintl0 -
How Is Your Approach Towards Adult SEO?
I would like to know how SEOMoz community members approach adult SEO. How do you approach a project when you get one (if you do it that is). If you dont do adult SEO, why do you not do it? Is it because it's much more difficult than normal SEO or do you not want to associate yourself with that industry?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConversionChamp0